Vocabulary Declines, With Unspeakable Results The first step to fight income inequality: Do a better job of teaching kids to read.

ED Hirsch:

For all the talk about income inequality in the United States, there is too little recognition of education's role in the problem. Yet it is no coincidence that, as economist John Bishop has shown, the middle class's economic woes followed a decline in 12th-grade verbal scores, which fell sharply between 1962 and 1980--and, as the latest news confirms, have remained flat ever since.

The federal government reported this month that students' vocabulary scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress have seen no significant change since 2009. On average, students don't know the words they need to flourish as learners, earners or citizens.

All verbal tests are, at bottom, vocabulary tests. To predict competence most accurately, the U.S. military's Armed Forces Qualification Test gives twice as much weight to verbal scores as to math scores, and researchers such as Christopher Winship and Anders D. Korneman have shown that these verbally weighted scores are good predictors of income level. Math is an important index to general competence, but on average words are twice as important.

Yes, we should instruct students in science, technology, engineering and math, the much-ballyhooed STEM subjects--but only after equipping them with a base of wide general knowledge and vocabulary.

Related: 60% to 42%: Madison School District's Reading Recovery Effectiveness Lags "National Average": Administration seeks to continue its use.

When all third graders read at grade level or beyond by the end of the year, the achievement gap will be closed...and not before.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at December 25, 2012 2:43 AM
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