That's me in the spotlight...Losing my articulation.
Trying to keep a view
And I don't know if I can do it
Oh no, I've said too much
No...I haven't said enough
So the 2011-12 WKCE scores are out. You've probably been smacked upside the head with the typical district spin doctoring to make these scores appear as if Sun Prairie should be proclaimed the best district in the state. Um...No. Sorry. Not the case. But let's savor that for a bit shall we? Let's talk about something that NO ONE is talking about: Language Arts.
Your SP-EYE blog has discussed for years the decline of Language Arts skills. This year, Sun Prairie eschewed instituting something like Latin--which would absolutely benefit all students and enhance our Language Arts skills--- and instead brought in Mandarin Chinese. There. That's something that's certain to raise our grammatical skills. Not!
Alas, we are not alone. We're all in this together. We looked at the 16 Dane Co. school districts and then focused on the 20 school districts closest in size to ours (10 larger and 10 smaller). Sadly, this epidemic is not going to be contained. No matter where we looked, Language Arts (you know...writing and communication ability in our prime language...English) is consistently the lowest scoring of the five subject areas covered by the WKCE.
Consider this
Consider this,
the hint of the century
Consider this, the slip
That brought us to our knees, failed
What if all these fantasies come
Flailing aground
Now I've said too much
Hasn't No Child Left Behind (NCLB) been declared DOA? Isn't it time we focused on more than just reading and math? Sure, text messaging is so gr8 and kewl ...but have we completely thrown writing out with the bath water? Has three truly become a crowd instead of a Charlie Sheen fantasy? This may come out wrong, but we're sidin' with Charlie on this one. Reading and Arithmetic go so much better with Writing as the pickle.
Consider this the hint of the century folks....we're fast losing our ability to communicate in our own world. Mandarin Chinese is not going to be the solution. We need to get back to basics in our own language. English is recognized as the business language of the world...and yet it's the subject on which our performance is worst? Shame on us.
If you look at the numbers, it seems clear that we do OK at grade 4, where we generally are 50/50 with Language Arts and Science as the lowest scoring subject. But at Grade 8, in 100% of the 35 school districts evaluated, Language Arts is low subject on the totem pole. Shameful. Our performance picks up a tad by Grade 10, but still...Language Arts is the poorest performing subject for 14 of the 16 Dane Co school districts and over half of the school districts similar in size to ours.
Frankly, while Dane Co. is viewed overall as one of the best counties in the state for schools, our performance in Language Arts isn't so hot.
But that was just a dream
Try, cry, why try
That was just a dream
Just a dream
Just a dream, dream
We hoped for the longest time that our school district administration would get with the program here. We had hoped our elected leaders would push the issue from the board table. Unfortunately, there are not 4 votes right now that will stand up and tell the district that the time is past due for the district to re-focus on Language Arts. We once imagined being leaders in ALL subjects.
But that was just a dream.
With acknowledgement to R.E.M. for the use of their track "Losing' My Religion" to highlight this issue. We are forever in debt to the individuals who turned us on to R.E.M. back in Aiken in '84.
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