Vermilion Education Gives Pennridge School District Curriculum A Right-Wing Makeover
Over at the Bucks County Beacon, I took a deep dive into some of the specifics of a curriculum review at Pennridge School District, where an unqualified Hillsdale grad is trying to dewokify the school. It’s not a short piece, but it’s a picture of the kinds of things these folks want to implement when they get their hands on the steering wheel.
Adams notes that ELA teachers face students who not only lack reading proficiency, but also are not very interested in reading. (Nothing mysterious here; how many people are really interested in doing things they don’t do well.) “Vermilion Education recommends” several ideas to “effectively increase reading interest and proficiency.” Adams throughout the report speaks of Vermilion Education recommending or analyzing, as if Vermilion Education is anything other than Jordan Adams with a website and logo. But that gets us to skip past an important question — does Jordan Adams have any qualifications for declaring what will increase reading proficiency and interest? (Spoiler alert: he does not.)
So what does he recommend?
Raise the reading level of texts. Adams talks about meeting students where they are and then challenging them, and claims that research has proven that grade level texts are key to reading proficiency (and he offers a footnote to an opinion post that doesn’t prove that at all). In fact, the issue of leveling texts has been debated by researchers long and hard.
If the book is too hard for some students, don’t differentiate by giving struggling students lower reading level work. Instead, give struggling readers an abridged version or the audiobook version. Isn’t the abridged version at a lower reading level? Doesn’t the audiobook require no reading at all? Adams says that the most struggling students should, as homework, listen to the audiobook while reading along in their abridged version.
Adams notes that ELA teachers face students who not only lack reading proficiency, but also are not very interested in reading. (Nothing mysterious here; how many people are really interested in doing things they don’t do well.) “Vermilion Education recommends” several ideas to “effectively increase reading interest and proficiency.” Adams throughout the report speaks of Vermilion Education recommending or analyzing, as if Vermilion Education is anything other than Jordan Adams with a website and logo. But that gets us to skip past an important question — does Jordan Adams have any qualifications for declaring what will increase reading proficiency and interest? (Spoiler alert: he does not.)
So what does he recommend?
Raise the reading level of texts. Adams talks about meeting students where they are and then challenging them, and claims that research has proven that grade level texts are key to reading proficiency (and he offers a footnote to an opinion post that doesn’t prove that at all). In fact, the issue of leveling texts has been debated by researchers long and hard.
If the book is too hard for some students, don’t differentiate by giving struggling students lower reading level work. Instead, give struggling readers an abridged version or the audiobook version. Isn’t the abridged version at a lower reading level? Doesn’t the audiobook require no reading at all? Adams says that the most struggling students should, as homework, listen to the audiobook while reading along in their abridged version.