Changing How We Teach

3 Pages 810 Words

Changing How We Teach
In Escambia county of North West Florida the results of Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) for 2004 reveal that our students continue to fail to meet the grade when it comes to reading. Our education system does not prepare our students well enough to graduate from high school and being prepared for college or being able to truly function in the work force is rare. Our system doesn’t work and we need to change it.
This year only 29% of ninth grade and 26% of tenth grade students were reading on grade level. Florida state law requires a student to pass the FCAT in 10th grade, this is achieved by getting a score of 3 on a scale of 1-5, in order to graduate and receive a diploma. About 32% of Florida freshmen fail to earn a diploma four years later (LaCoste, Crisis in the classrooms). Nearly 70% of new enrollments at the local community college require reading remediation classes before they can even begin college-courses (LaCoste, Everyone’s problem).
Several factors have contributed to this problem; lack of required reading classes beyond elementary school (LaCoste, Behind the crisis…), lack of a consistent and focused reading technique program in elementary school leaves many children unable to read at grade level by the end of fifth grade, and social promotion, the promoting of children to the next grade level with their peers even though they are not prepared (LaCoste, Crisis in the classrooms).
The long term affect of this is the lack of an educated, prepared and capable work force. The existence of jobs that only require a basic reading and writing capability are almost non-
existent; the growing trend in business is to be more competitive, that requires employee’s to have computer skills and to be able to read and communicate effectively.
Fixing the problem will require more than one solution, just putting band-aids on may satisfy the community’s call for improvement but they ...