October 5, 2011
Jßorilani» OObserüer
Parent's
Corner
in R o \ Hi k \i)o \
Parents Preamble: I will ensure my child
receives a quality education. If 1 don’t fight
for my child’s education, no one else will. It’s
worth the effort. My child’s future depends
upon me.
Parents and community, we must ensure
our children are reading at or above grade
level by third grade. Most children are 8
years old in third grade. We need a massive
community RB8 Campaign: Read (At grade
level) by 8 years old.
A recent Annie E. Casey Foundation re
port shared that, "Educators and research
ers have long recognized the importance of
mastering reading by the end of third grade.
Students who fail to reach this critical mile
stone often falter in the later grades and drop
out before earning a high school diploma."
The Casey report further stated that
"Third grade is an important pivot point in a
child's education, the time when students
shift from learning to read and begin reading
to learn. Interventions for struggling readers
after third grade are seldom as effective as
those in early years."
Meanwhile, the National Assessment for
Educational Progress, also known as the
Nation's Report Card,' shows that for 2009,
two thirds of students did not finish third
grade with essential reading skills and were
reading below grade level.
The report also found that the graduation
rates for black and Hispanic students, who
were not proficient readers in third grade,
Page 5
Read at Grade Level by 8 Years Old
lagged far behind those for whites
with the same reading skills.
Lastly, the report states, "Black and
Hispanic children are not only more
likely to live in poverty, they also are
more likely to live in neighborhoods with
concentrated poverty and low-performing
schools. The findings also show that only 42
percent of white students read at the profi
cient level in fourth grade, and this falls to 16
percent for black students and 17 percent for
Hispanics.
Parents, please don't believe school sys
tems or politicians who say they will magi
cally correct this academic house of horrors.
Here is their track record for improving edu
cation.
In 1983, Secretary of Education Terrel Bell
released an analysis of the American educa
tional system, "A Nation at Risk." The report
stated, "The educational foundations of our
society are presently being eroded by a
rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our
very future as a nation and a people."
"If an unfriendly foreign power had at
tempted to impose on America the mediocre
performance that exists today, we might well
have viewed this as an act of war."
Twenty seven years later we have spent
billions of dollars on school systems, con
sultants, education reform committees, and
high-priced school administrators who never
had 90 percent of children performing at
grade level in their professional careers.
The result has been abysmal reading and
math scores, horrendously low scores for
poor children, Hispanic and black children;
ever exploding dropout rates; and SAT col
lege entrance exam reading scores at the
lowest level on record.
Parents and community members, it is our
responsibility to ensure our children don't
fall into this academic bag of tricks.
Pathetically, we have learned that corpo
rations which build prisons carefully exam
ine third grade reading scores for black and
Hispanic boys to help make projections for
the number of prison cells needed in the
future.
Ron Herndon is a longtime advocate for
educational opportunities fo r African-
American children. He has served as direc
tor o f Head Start in Portland since 1975.
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