The Free Press
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Why 65% of Fourth Graders Can't Really Read
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Why 65% of Fourth Graders Can't Really Read
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For many parents, the last few years have been eye-opening, as they saw the education system in America crumble under the weight of the pandemic. School closures that went on far too long, ineffective zoom school for kids as young as kindergarten, and other stringent policies that we’re still just beginning to understand the devastating effects of. But like many things during the pandemic, COVID didn’t necessarily cause these structural breakdowns as much as it exposed just how broken the system was to begin with. 

Nowhere is that more clear than in our episode today about why 65% of American fourth grade kids can barely read. And about how during the pandemic, parents, for the first time, came face to face with just how bad and ineffective the reading instruction in their kids’ classrooms is and started asking questions about why.

That is the subject of Emily Hanford's new podcast from American Public Media, Sold a Story, where she investigates the influential education authors who have promoted a flawed idea and a failed method for teaching reading to American kids. It’s an expose of how educators across the country came to believe in something that isn’t true and are now reckoning with the consequences – children harmed, money wasted, an education system upended. 

Today, guest host Katie Herzog talks to Emily about her groundbreaking reporting and what we can do to make things right. 

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One big picture corollary that they hint at but don’t fully address: we have a glut of people who are crendetialed as teachers but whose actual training and skill set is antithetical to teaching. They’re anti-teachers. It may be true that many of them have the best of intentions. It may be true that they have an ability to learn new information and change course. But a lot of them really just need to go.

This is an extremely difficult thing. People who went to college to be teachers, took out loans, devoted their lives to this, they don’t react well to being fired. But a lot of these people probably should be washing dishes or selling office supplies. They have a piece of paper that says they’re a teacher, but they can’t actually teach. This problem is most notable in the DEI industry, but in education, law, business, the rottenness of education, the hollowness of credentials, these are not problems that can be remediated with a little course correction. The vested interest of all these miseducated people in maintaining their social status and paying their loans is a massive force that has to be overcome to make any real social progress.

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Throwing a kid into school and being surprised they aren’t learning is akin to throwing a cookbook into a refrigerator and being surprised you don’t have dinner at the end of the day. I had to find a work schedule that would accommodate me volunteering in my kid’s classroom, at least once a week, so I would know what he was learning. The real question is why parents had no idea what their kids were learning until the lockdown.

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