Hello, America

 I'd like to make one suggestion. Please learn a little more about what's going on in public schools.

 K-12 is increasingly mediocre because the preferred theories and methods are dysfunctional. They were designed that way; or they turned out that way. Either way, our Education Establishment does not seem interested in making things better. They're more interested in cajoling the public into accepting whatever is offered.

To summarize, you can't teach children to read with Sight- words (or whatever it may be called in your area); you can't teach arithmetic with Reform Math (in any of its many varieties); you can't teach knowledge with Constructivism (under any of its many names).

This stuff is to education what sitting is to running.

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What to do? Learn how these various gimmicks work. You will no longer respect them or the people pushing them.

My main education site Improve-Education.org has articles on most of these methods. See "Top 10 Worst Ideas in Education" HERE for the list, and a recommended article on each idea.

 Or search Google for a subject you are interested in plus the name Bruce Deitrick Price; you'll find a selection of articles.

Or obtain a copy of "Saving K-12-- What happened to our public schools? How do we fix them?" Available on AMAZON.

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Update: "Saving K-12" is available as e-book on Kindle. 

https://www.amazon.com/Saving-K-12-Happened-Public-

Schools-ebook/dp/B079YHYQ87/ref

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Free Book Explains Problems in Reading    

I have five educational booklets on Teachers Pay Teachers. All excellent, for $2.50 or $3.

This one is FREE because I want everyone in America to read it. Only 8 pages. And FREE. The perfect deal. 

Rudolf Flesch explained in 1955 Why Johnny Can't Read. All the nonsense he exposed then is still in the schools today! Let's fix this abuse.

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Dyslexia – Bah Humbug

The great debate, raging throughout American society and the field of education, is whether dyslexia is actually a real thing. Shouldn't it be easy to tell? Yes, of course, if the Education Establishment were scientific as opposed to being ideological.

 Here's the whole thing condensed to a few words: children must learn to read with phonics. If you make them memorize sight-words (as happens throughout our public school system) they will have a lot of difficulty and collateral damage. 

 Having difficulty and damage--are you ready? – is what our public schools call dyslexia. They cause it and then they label it. Then they say to the parents, it's your fault because you had a defective child!!!

 If you raise children in a house with lead paint, you can expect mental difficulties. Sight-words inflict cognitive damages comparable to those inflicted by lead paint. Keep children from eating lead paint; and children will no longer have these problems.

 The link below goes to "Dyslexia is a Myth" on American Thinker. My original title was "Dyslexia--Bah Humbug." I liked this title, so I'm happy to use it here.

This article mainly presents Samuel Blumenfeld's excellent analysis of the dyslexia issue. Every parent with young children in the public schools should read this article. LINK
 

Warning to parents: teach your children to read before school starts

Many public schools still teach sight-words. Take precautions.

School starts in a few months. Take steps now to make sure your kids understand the basics of reading. The basics are simple. You can teach them in a few minutes.

Problems occur if children are made to memorize sight-words without ever hearing about the basics. So here are the basics 1-2-3:

1) Children must learn to say, and then to print, the alphabet (the ABC's). They can identify any letter they see. 

2) Then they learn that the letters stand for certain sounds, A is for aaa. (Some experts say, skip the names of letters and just teach the sounds.)

3) Then children learn the blends; that’s when you say the T-sound (tuh-) and an A-sound quickly....and you get "taa."

That’s phonics!

That’s the basis of everything that goes on in a phonetic language. Most children will figure it out for themselves given enough time. The problem is that less-verbal kids need direct instruction the most.

If the child ends up at a school that still teaches sight-words (also known as high-frequency words, Dolch words, whole words and other names), that child can be slowed down drastically.

Here are some resources you can use. They all deal with the same problem from different directions. So pick one and start:

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"54: Preemptive Reading" 
provides quick intro to phonics concept.
LINK 

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Best video on reading.  
If too small, view on YouTube.