Literacy for the 21st Century

K-12 Next Generation Sunshine State ELA Standards

November 12, 2008

Tampa

Carol Jago

www.caroljago.com


A Sense of Urgency …

• Every school day 7,000 high school students drop out.

• Only 70 percent of all entering freshmen and half of students of color finish high school with a regular diploma.

• Only 30 percent of students entering high school read at grade level.

• An estimated 85 percent of current jobs and almost 90 percent of fast-growing and best-paying jobs now require some post-secondary education.

- Alliance for Excellent Education

Rising to the Challenge

A survey of recent public high school graduates, college instructors, and employers

-  •Public high schools are failing to prepare a substantial minority of graduates for the demands of college and the workplace.

-  Employers and college instructors say that many graduates come to them inadequately prepared.

-  40% of high-school graduates say that they are inadequately prepared to deal with the demands of employment and postsecondary education.

-  More than 80% of graduates say that, if they could attend high school over again, they would work harder and take more rigorous course work.

- ACHIEVE, Inc.


Reading Between the Lines

ACT report on college readiness in reading

·  Performance on complex texts is the clearest differentiator in reading between students who are more likely to be ready for college and those who are less likely to be ready.

·  A complex text will contain multiple layers of meaning, not all of which will be immediately apparent to students upon a single superficial reading. Such texts require students to work at unlocking meaning by calling upon sophisticated reading skills and strategies.

Six Aspects of Complex Text

1.  Relationships: Interactions among ideas or characters in the text are subtle, involved, or deeply imbedded.

2.  Richness: The text possesses a sizable amount of highly sophisticated information conveyed through data or literary devices.

3.  Structure: The text is organized in ways that are elaborate and sometimes unconventional.

4.  Style: The author's tone and use of language are often intricate.

5.  Vocabulary: The author's choice of words is demanding and highly context dependent.

6.  Purpose: The author's intent in writing the text is implicit and sometimes ambiguous.

Reading Between the Lines

ACT report on college readiness in reading

April, 2006


Double the Work

Challenges and Solutions to Acquiring Language and Academic Literacy for Adolescents

Alliance for Excellent Education, 2007, www.all4ed.org

·  57% of adolescent English language learners were born in the United States. The large numbers of second and third-generation LEP adolescent who continue to lack proficiency in English in secondary school suggest that many LEP children are not learning the language well even after many years in U.S. schools.

·  Of the 43% of English language learners who are foreign-born, those who enter U.S. schools in the later grades are more challenged than their younger peers because of the fewer resources at the secondary level and the shorter time that schools have to ensure that they learn English and master academic content areas.

·  Given that these student are simultaneously learning the language and learning the content, THEY MUST WORK TWICE AS HARD in order to meet accountability standards.


“The Neglected R” Findings:

Writing is not a frill for the few but an essential skill for the many.

·  The amount of time students spend writing should be at least doubled.

·  Writing should be assigned across the curriculum.

·  More out-of-school time should be used to encourage writing.

·  Standards, curriculum, and assessment must be aligned.

·  Assessments of student writing must go beyond multiple-choice items. Assessment should provide students with adequate time to write and require students to create a piece of prose.

·  Common expectations about writing should be developed across disciplines.

·  States should provide the financial resources necessary for the additional time and personnel required to make writing a centerpiece of the curriculum.

The Neglected R

National Commission on Writing in America’s Schools and Colleges

http://www.writingcommission.org/


THE POOL PLAYERS.


Seven at the Golden Shovel

We real cool. We

Left school. We

Lurk late. We

Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We

Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We

Die soon.

By Gwendolyn Brooks

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