BookNook 📚’s Post

As New York State grade 3-8 student assessments wrap up this week, the most recent data from the 2022-23 academic year represents a warning bell for us all.    Our new analysis paints a concerning picture of overall student proficiency levels, particularly in third-grade ELA and eighth-grade math, two critical indicators of student success. What’s worse, student outcomes are even lower and more alarming for Black, Latinx, and students from low-income backgrounds.     Our report, Warning Bells: The Growing Proficiency Crisis Among New York Students, also shares recommendations for education leaders to raise student outcomes, as well as improve assessments by focusing on racial and cultural inclusivity of the tests; providing students with high-quality literacy and math curricula; increasing transparency and timeliness around the release of assessment data this year; and more.  Read more: https://lnkd.in/enbRjAkR

This about says it all! Massachusetts is #1 in public education in the United States, but look at these MCAS stats! We see this everyday when working with students. Many, many students have weak math schools (even the ones who go to math enrichment programs outside of school), poor study skills, difficulty with grammar, spelling, and sentence structure when writing, and very poor reading comprehension skills. These are students from the "best" public suburban school systems in the state. Our test prep programs are a 12-15 month process, because we work so hard on building skills in each and every tutoring session. Our goal for our students is to not only be successful on the private school (and college) entrance exams, but in school, and ultimately in life. https://lnkd.in/dDxqt5FE

📊 Continued Academic Growth in NC Schools: A Positive Trend with Room for Reflection The latest accountability report from the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction shows that our students are making strides, with academic growth continuing to rise across the state. This is a testament to the hard work of educators, administrators, and families who support our students daily. However, alongside this growth, we still see persistent challenges, including teacher retention and resource allocation. Given the evolving needs of our schools, how can North Carolina’s education system better support teachers in driving sustained student growth? Is our current structure providing the necessary tools, training, and resources, or do we need deeper reforms? 🔍 What structural changes or supports do you believe are critical to empowering educators and ensuring the long-term success of our students? https://lnkd.in/eA6yFaVy #Education #NorthCarolina #TeacherSupport #StudentSuccess #EducationalReform #AcademicGrowth

Earlier this month, the California Department of Education (CDE) released the 2024 edition of its California Dashboard touting continued academic progress and a decline in chronic absenteeism while also highlighting continued trends of concern across a number of student groups throughout the state. What is always difficult to take fully into account are the host of contributing internal and external environmental factors that have the ability to greatly impact student achievement and school operations. With that being said, it all begs the question, "What does this mean for Columbia Elementary School?" In short, we made gains in Math, Chronic Absenteeism, and the Suspension Rate, while also stabilizing in ELA. What is of further interest or note is that nearly 75% of our students who took the CAASPP in 2023 and again in 2024 showed growth in both ELA and Math. Last school year we saw these gains just from putting in place consistent expectations in our learning and operations, supporting our classrooms, and listening to our students, staff and families. This school year we are fully staffed, have in place new programs, put in place a structured schedule to equally serve the core content, related arts and enrichment across all grades, hired Literacy and Math Interventionists, and expanded student experiences during and outside of the school day. We are proud of what we accomplished in a short time frame and very excited for next year's report . #MovingForward #SmallButMighty https://lnkd.in/gCtP8CED

Eighth-grade students are averaging their lowest-ever reading scores since the Department of Education began tracking nationwide progress in 1992. The newly released results for the 2024 National Assessment of Student Progress paint a dim picture of reading skills among students who are on the verge of entering high school, even as the data shows that absenteeism rates have begun to trend down since the last NAEP in 2022. Reading scores for 8th graders have fallen in eight states and seven of the nation’s 25 largest school districts since 2022. The results are even worse compared to pre-COVID-19 pandemic tests—8th-grade reading scores were lower in 28 states and 11 of the 25 largest districts compared to the 2019 NAEP. #education #schools #students #teachers #popculture #trends

Free SecEd webinar for education staff on key Secondary School transition points (Year 6-7, Year 9-10). 4pm-5pm on Weds 2nd Oct. Register to watch live or to be sent the recording once available: https://lnkd.in/e3SDbxKn. Topics: - Why can student attainment and progress sometimes take a hit during year 6 to 7 transition? - What can secondary schools do right now to address this issue? - What kind of pastoral support is required? - What kind of academic support is required? - What information do we need to gather about new students in order to protect their learning and progress? - How can we assess the learning level of year 7 students arriving in our school? - How can we quickly identify specific challenges or issues for students, especially those more vulnerable young people? - What specific challenges does the transition from key stage 3 to key stage 4 present? What can go wrong for students during this transition? - How much of a step-up academically is key stage 4 study? How can schools support students in this regard? - This year’s year 10 cohort arrived at secondary school (in year 7) at the height of Covid – what implications does this have for the support we must offer?

🔁 Charter School Leaders: Are you providing the right support for teachers to drive sustained success? With North Carolina's academic growth on the rise, it's time for charter schools to reflect on how you're equipping teachers to meet student needs. Are you offering the necessary resources and professional development to ensure both educators and students thrive? What operational and/or financial obstacles are standing in your way? Reflect and reach out. #CharterSchools #EdLeadership #TeacherSupport #NCCharters #StudentSuccess

Schools’ efforts to support students’ whole selves sometimes ends up undercutting their academic preparation. Schools have shifted the focus of social-emotional learning away from a model that was mostly about supporting academics, emphasizing “self-discipline, and empathy, and delayed gratification” to something “much more therapeutic,” focused on trauma and harm. K-12 is spending most of its time and resources trying to heal the trauma of a pandemic and trying to adapt and help students adapt to this new world. And this thinking, has informed academic policies like grading for equity — an effort to remove teachers’ bias, comparisons to classmates, and students’ behaviors from grades — can inadvertently weaken students’ academic preparation by de-emphasizing deadlines. So there’s now debate over whether the approach schools are taking is “necessary support, versus enabling,” and over “the degree to which what we are seeing in youth is still a product of the pandemic versus other habits that were simply accentuated by the pandemic, particularly around shifting the locus of their identity and their activity online.”

📉The latest Nation’s Report Card (NAEP) results confirm a troubling trend: reading scores for fourth and eighth graders have declined again from 2022 to 2024. This follows a downward trajectory that began even before the pandemic. NPR’s Cory Turner pointed out on an Up First podcast that “the lowest performers in reading are actually scoring worse now than the lowest performers who took the test 30 years ago.” While this is alarming for all students, it’s especially concerning because many of the lowest-performing readers are students with disabilities. These students often have Individualized Education Programs (IEPs), yet far too many still lack access to the evidence-based literacy instruction they need to succeed. In some cases, IEP goals begin shifting toward “functional skills” as early as middle school—when, in reality, every student should have the opportunity to meaningfully build their literacy skills until the day they exit public education. We know that literacy is foundational—not just for academic achievement, but for future earning potential, access to higher education, and even the ability to live and engage in the community independently. And yet, despite decades of research on what works, students with disabilities are still being left behind. To reverse this trend, we must ensure that all students—especially those with disabilities—have access to explicit, systematic, evidence-based reading instruction. Literacy is not just a skill; it’s a gateway to opportunity. 🔗 Sources: 📌 The Nation’s Report Card - https://lnkd.in/djvSSA38 📌 US children fall further behind in reading, make little improvement in math on national exam (AP News) - https://lnkd.in/dhzUpVEn 📌 Transcript: Up First podcast (NPR) - https://lnkd.in/dVSBs9A3 #TransitionPlanning #TransitionServices #LiteracyCrisis #EducationMatters #ReadingScores #NAEP #SpecialEducation #EvidenceBasedInstruction #IEPs #Dyslexia #FutureOfWork #IndependentLiving

From the archives... This article not only highlights the failure of a nationalized schooling system but indicates that it is not likely to find satisfactory solutions as long as it remains centralized. The article does touch on decentralization as a potential solution, but I fear that even if all responsibility is delegated to the states (the first major step that should be taken), some states will operate as inefficient a bureaucracy as the federal government does. Further decentralization to districts would be even better, until districts could put individual schools under the direction of parent boards (preferably the parents of the students actively enrolled). Regardless of how decentralized schooling becomes, it still leaves institutional schooling as the default paradigm, and this comes with a cumbersome burden of educationally ineffective schooling procedures. Of course, some have jumped straight passed all this rigamarole, bypassing thousands of middlemen and mountains of bungling bureaucratic processes, and gone straight to the most decentralized option possible: parent-directed, privately funded, free market enabled education based primarily in the home and augmented by co-operative communities of families, online auxiliaries, and/or entrepreneurial education providers. Pure, unadulterated, home education. #HomeEducation #homeschool #homeschooling #education #GetOutNow #PublicSchoolExit #ChristianEducation #EdcuationIsDiscipleship #ChristianHomeschoolRevolution https://lnkd.in/gWg9wWWD