DALS Lifelong Learning Network

From the New York Times newspaper website this morning:

American Children’s Reading Skills Reach New Lows [headline]

"In the latest release of federal test scores, educators had hoped to see widespread recovery from the learning loss incurred during the Covid-19 pandemic."

"Instead, the results, from last year’s National Assessment of Educational Progress, tell a grim tale, especially in reading: The slide in achievement has only continued."

"The percentage of eighth graders who have “below basic” reading skills according to NAEP was the largest it has been in the exam’s three-decade history — 33 percent. The percentage of fourth graders at “below basic” was the largest in 20 years, at 40 percent."

"In fourth-grade reading, students who score below the basic level on NAEP cannot sequence events from a story or describe the effects of a character’s actions. In eighth grade, students who score below basic cannot determine the main idea of a text or identify differing sides of an argument."

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The article went on to speculate on the possible causes of our continuous drop in K-8 reading scores: student absences from school, students' spending too much time on their mobile phone and computer apps, etc.

One very important fact, however, was not mentioned: We stop teaching reading at the end of grade 3, and those students who have low reading skills or are illiterate are then just pushed along until they graduate from high school. And what the data shows is that 19% of our high school graduates can't read, and 32 million adults in the United States can’t read above a fifth grade level.

We need to change our K-12 school system to teach reading every year in every grade level, and we must also include technical reading: how to read a rental agreement; how to read a loan contract; how to read a credit card contract; how to read instructions for taking certain medications, etc. And we must invest much more money in recruiting and training reading teachers. Period. Full stop.

We adults need to listen to our children. The children and young adults in Gen Z and Gen Alpha are very intelligent, insightful, and amazingly resilient, and they all have excellent BS detectors.

Gen Z and Gen Alpha have a very clear and concise understanding of what is happening in the Gaza Strip, and they have declared that the actions of the Israeli military forces as directed by PM Netanyahu, are indeed committing horrific acts of genocide that have now killed over 26,000 Palestinian civilians. And they are correctly pressing President Biden and our leaders in Congress to stop supporting PM Netanyahu until there is permanent cease fire and a dedicated commitment to rebuilding the Gaza Strip and the West Bank as the first step on a pathway to peace.

Gen Z and Gen Alpha also have a very clear and concise understanding of the true reality of candidate Trump. They tell it like it is, and they have determined that he is a fake, fraudulent, uncaring, arrogant, bully, who needs to be put in prison.

And Gen Z and Gen Alpha are miles ahead of all of the adults when it comes to understanding Artificial Intelligence and how it is being used and abused to create false photos, news reporting lies and disinformation, and plagiarized student essays. Gen Z and Gen Alpha children and young adults can spot a deep fake in less than five seconds and they immediately call out fraudulent BS.

And we adults can all take many lessons from these very bright, ethical, moral, humane children and young adults. We just need to shut up and listen to them with full attention and strong empathy.

What is wrong with the major media companies, and why do they keep skirting the truth about citizen Trump? Example: headline in today's New York Times:

"Why a Second Trump Presidency May Be More Radical Than His First"

May be more radical? Please. Trump has made it abundantly clear that if elected he will immediately take actions to:

1. Destroy the US Constitution and to suspend our elections laws.
2. Destroy the federal government and end the civil service laws, and he will install his loyalists to operate all of the federal agencies, bureaus and departments.
3. Round up millions of immigrant refugees, put them in prison camps, and ultimately deport them. And the refugees' children will be kept in cages.
4. Execute retired General Mark Milley for treason.
5. Remove the directors of the FBI, the CIA, the NSC, the CDC, the NIH, etc. and he will dismantle the Interior Department, the BLM, the State Department, and the Justice Department.
6. Install himself as our extreme fascist dictator with unlimited powers.
7. Destroy certain media companies he does not like.

Trump is a clear and present danger to all Americans, and to our democracy, our constitutional republic and our national security, and it is time for the media companies to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about Trump and his clones in Congress, as well as his teams of corrupt lawyers, and his corrupt and criminal advisers.

Trump has duped and defrauded the American people and he has sold his extreme white supremacist, racist, sexist, violent fascism to his base of supporters with a continuous stream of lies, disinformation and false propaganda created by Stephen Miller and others. Trump has zero integrity, zero ethics, zero morality and zero humanity, and he will crush anyone who gets in his way.

It is time for all loyal, patriotic, hard-working Americans to demand the truth from our media companies, and time to come together in a huge movement to mobilize millions of voters to elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and Democrats, Progressives and Independents to Congress to replace and remove the extreme fascist Trump clones.