Music to my ears-this was such an excellent research era that developed very important work-prior to all the horrible effects of the whole language fad.Eighty years ago the teaching was so much better for literacy,reading,spelling and writing-which done with confidence and ease-leads to comprehension.Yes to background knowledge and vocabulary analysis.

Interestingly,Europe never bought into non phonetic teaching,the educational elite didn`t swallow Ken Goodman`s theory and say-AH!!!They said it made no sense to them.They have continued to teach linguistically.

Frankly, I agree largely with Hirsch. The way to do it IS the direct teaching of the missing vocabulary, however, this is much better achieved with 2 years of JJK before kindergarten in tiny classes but only in poor areas. Yes this is harder outside major cities because the poor are blended in with the rest while in Toronto, Ottawa, Hamilton and other cities the poor areas are well known. Against my better judgement if someone wanted to substitute “low scoring” schools instead of “poor schools” I would not put up too much fuss because to me they will also be the poor schools.

Certain parent advocates don’t even like it mentioned that poor kids arrive on the first day of school with only half the vocabulary but it is a fact, it is not a blame the parents strategy in fact I don’t blame the parents I blame poverty.

Yes schools have never done enough about this but they have consistently underestimated the problem between age 2-9.

Jo-Anne, every decade we go backwards in history, the illiteracy rate goes up. There was no golden age before Goodman. That said, we are far from doing enough either in teaching necessary vocab to young kids but also never doing enough to make this easy, like starting earlier with much smaller classes and well trained teachers.

>>Interestingly,Europe never bought into non phonetic teaching<<

That is correct, Europe except Great Britain.
That’s why for somebody coming from Europe it is unbelievable first of all that any adult in their right mind would even consider teaching reading any other way but phonetically and secondly that a lot of people have come to accept as natural extremely poor performance in reading.

If students try to read by guessing words based by recognizing their shape or by guessing the word based on the first letter and the pictures in the book, good luck!
All the vocabulary in the world is not going to make them a good reader!

Sure, a good vocabulary helps immensely and reading comprehension skills need to be taught.

However reading comprehension can only be built after a student knows how to decode fluently words that he has never seen before.

And I stress fluently; unless you can decode relatively easily, by the time you get to the end of the sentence you would have forgotten the individual words you have read so far, so you can’t even start to figure out the meaning of the sentence.

Let’s not confuse recognizing familiar words with reading!

Going back to vocabulary ...
In all countries there are differences in the student’s vocabularies when they start school.

However in other places but North America, where factual knowledge is not looked down upon and is part of the curriculum, the vocabulary builds up for every student. 
Thus, the gap between the better students and the weaker students narrows and even the weakest students have larger vocabularies.

It is the so-called “progressive” theory of learning with its bias against factual knowledge that irresponsibly cuts down the chances of the weaker students to catch up and get a decent education!

“Mastering Reading Through Reasoning” by Arthur Whimbey is an extremely good book for reading comprehension.

I have used it with my son. He loved it!
The materials are so logically organized that the book teaches by itself.
If only we had curriculum materials written the way this book is!

By the way ... my son is considered “smart” because he usually understands new concepts correctly at his first read.

Smart? No, just very well taught.

Arthur Whimbey’s “Intelligence Can Be Taugth” also goes against the grain of the accepted myths.

They are old books, rather hard to find but worth every penny.

Thank you SQE for listing them in the resources list.

Of course Canadian 15 year old read better than any country in Europe (except Finland).

Doug who?

Funny for a guy who hides his identity behind a pseudonym. I am out in the open about who I am like Malkin and Doretta and Jo Anne, and almost nobody else. Makes you go Hmmmm

I agree with you Europe-Balanced Literacy Theory that skips the foundation of systematic phonemic awareness and phonics aggravates the hardship of students vulnerable to literacy problems -ESL,First Nations,L.D.,black kids at the Afrocentric school,boys.

when they opened the school at TDSB that would offer a successful formula for black kids getting devastated by a community of experts who continue to fail the kids-80-85% of them could be learning to read AND spell with multisensory explicit systematic research based instruction and trained teachers.They refuse- instead they came up with metacognition-go figure.

If you tests the kids end of grade 1and 2-I`m sure 70% of them are struggling to learn to read and spell.
But never mind-it will kick in…
The tragedy is-there`s no consequence for these people-because it`s education and not medicine,they get away with it.

Here’s what may seem a silly question, but what ARE the teaching faculties teaching budding educators in the form of reading instruction? Could we actually see a model of the curriculum from a teacher’s college?

Doug and others, people are free to use whatever “handle” they like here.  They do so for the same reasons parents and teachers have always been afraid to make waves—parents fear retribution against their children and teachers fear retribution from their union.
It happens and you know it.

I would have the same question about math.

Are we sure everybody who graduates teacher’s college knows well at least fractions, percentages, order of operations, powers, prime factors decomposition and basic algebra ?

From what I see, I’m beginning to doubt it.

Really, the way “Math Makes Sense” textbook has been written - by teachers I assume - and the fact that I’ve never heard teachers raising questions about the quality of such textbooks makes me think that most elementary teachers have a very weak grasp of math.

So they do whatever, whichever way they are best able to just to say they’ve done it.

No wonder students get turned off and consider even basic math very hard.

Europe makes a good point-the publishers hire authors-individuals-to write stuff-based on their own beliefs-they publish theses texts and sell them across the country-did they check to see if the children learn from the text and if the teachers can use it successfully?No.

What program a few years ago was removed-the math curriculum-it was so bad that everyone was talking about it.

What happened to 3 years of math instruction from those texts and the kids who sadly were in that quake?

Dr.Reid Lyon quote"textbooks are like pharmaceuticals”
they must be tested to see if they work-as he scolded the publishers in one of his lectures.

when one of my children was in grade 8 I recall the teacher telling us that if she(the teacher) tried out a particular new math text and had the students try it out and offer up comments they received a discount on a purchase of said books.

So that year those students experimented with the books which were later rejected. It was a math year wasted as far as we were concerned.

Also the Nelson series of math texts and Math Quests texts are nothing to write home about.

That was it-Quest-I wonder if it is still on the Trillium List of approved materials for the province.

I am unhappy with Trillium List-who says something should be on the list and why?

Jo-Anne, it looks like something was edited… but you mentioned Dr. Avis Glaze. Dr. Glaze is our board’s Director of Education, she’s not an educator, she’s an administrator. Her schools are stock full of barely literate boys. My boy was one of them and that board’s SE skills and remedial is nonexistent. My poor little girl, who had an IEP, was stuck in the back of the class drawing pictures. I hold Dr. Glaze (and in our case our PS principal) responsible for the failure of SE in our boards schools .

Our old school, North Hope Central PS, is fourth from the bottom in EQAO and is hemorrhaging students to the catholic, french, private and other schools. Just in our small area we have 10 homeschooling families. This school year we started with 120 students, next year I’ve been told it’s now under 100. I don’t know the exact numbers, but when my daughter started 6 years ago enrolment must of been about 160. The local catholic schools average 10% better score on EQAO and the Cobourg Catholic HS is a full 20+% better on EQAO.

Peterborough and area doctors and lawyers don’t send their kids to public schools, they send them to Trinity College, Bethany Hills and Lakefield Academy. Dr Avis’ own teachers won’t send their kids to some of these schools. I know for sure of one teacher that sends her girl to Trinity, but our principal explained she is ?gifted?. I know of two other teachers sending their kids to french immersion, even though they are not french. We were warned by a friend (who is a KPR teacher) not to send our kids to Dr Hawkins senior PS as it has the worst reputation in the whole KPR board.
I’d really love to see the stats on how many of KPR teachers are actually sending their own kids to the local PS schools.

You are very aware..this is what we have-zero accountability-we know the reason for failure-we know how to fix it- but they won`t budge-it`s a dictatorship.

Dr.Avis Glaze was the head of the Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat till a year ago.

Here is the link, for Dr. Avis Glaze. I will let others decide for themselves. In my opinion, there is too many of them in the public education system, at the top, serving their own best interests. And where their own personal philosophy is applied to all things that they do, ignoring their failures. Of course, since they are not held accountable, our children are paying a dear price.

http://www.avisglaze.ca/index.html

No wonder our board sucks, she’s too busy with her other interests to worry about our kids.
And what do you want to bet that she does some of this fine work on our dime?

Kind of reminds me of Linda Darling-Hammond…and just how is her little school working out?

This isn`t good-to single her out-it is my fault-

Avis is very committed to children but not informed about the empirical research on Reading-I actually think Nancy`s post hits the nail on the head.

It is really frustrating though that in education a synthesis on research doesn`t impact on their guidelines.Like Nancy-I don`t get it.

I also don`t think she stands alone-more like a herd mentality.

LDH remains one of the preeminent education thinkers in the USA. Stanford agreed to take over a distressed very low achieving SF school as a demo school and 2 years later, although the school had made gains in both years, the local board voted 3-1 with one absent, to close the school. I guess they will have to work hard to get help from Stanford in the future.

Glad you see it my way. I just got off the phone with the principal of a school that is 1 1/2 hours away from my community. My child is going to a regional heritage fair, which her project is one of the winning projects at the local level. My child received her bottom braces yesterday, and now she is sporting the look of medal tracks on her top and bottom teeth. As a result, her mouth is sore for at least the next 7 days or so, and her diet has been reduced down to soft food. All I requested is mash potatoes with gravy. No cannot do, and all children must select from the menu that has been given. I asked if someone can run down to the local restaurant, for the mash potatoes and gravy, if she supplied the money. No way, and it is not allowed.

He was very business like, and had little concern for the difficulties. One must followed the rules. As a result, I have no choice but to drive down there, to hand her mash potatoes with gravy, at 12:00. I can assure you, I will than be escorted out of the school, with no regard to traveling distance, and be told not to come back until parent viewing time.

I bet that situations like what my child is in, is covered by their how-to and what-if situations. More than likely, it is probably based on children should not stand out as being different, among their peers. In this case, she be the only one with mash potatoes and gravy. I also got a feeling that parents are suspected to lie and exaggerate when it comes to their children. If it wasn’t that far, I would have gotten into the car, and tell them off in person.

Here is a quote from her site.

“It is her core belief that educators play a fundamental role in sustaining democracy. The professional learning of those who work in schools must be a government priority, as it currently is in Ontario. Her focus is on maximizing the talent of students, teachers and administrators by developing the knowledge, skills, attitudes and dispositions necessary within an informed, literate and caring society. Her major assertion, based on her experience as a leader in Ontario?s literacy strategy implementation, is that we can, indeed, improve results without rancour or ranking.”

How does denying mash potatoes and gravy to a child who has a very sore mouth, and at the moment is on a soft-food diet, teaching a child to care or for that matter, the other students who may or may not believe she has a sore mouth?  No wonder my child reminded me three times;  her real worry is that her simple need will go unmet, if it was left up to the school.

Guess what Doug-LDH is one of us at SQE and believes the first steps in teaching children to read and spell for optimal classroom success is alphabetics-phonemic awarenss and phonics-the whole 9 yards…leads to fluency,vocab and comprehension…

can you believe we`re soulmates?

2006159.pdf (application/pdf Object)

http://www.cluteinstitute-onlinejournals.com/PDFs/2006159.pdf

My apologies..

I have no objection to it either in primary grades, after which it needs to increasingly take a back seat. Balanced literacy, also advocated by her contemplates this.

Correction on the balance literacy, Here is a link, of a teacher that is a great fan of balance literacy.

After reading it, one would get a real sense that a teacher is teaching to the brightest. Not one mention of students who are failing to learn the all important goals in balance literacy. Third, balance literacy appears to be the replacement of teacher training,

Here is the link, and I let the readers come to their own conclusions. I know what I have concluded, my child would still not learn to become a good reader and writer.

http://www.teachersnetwork.org/aboutus/kappanpaez.htm

When the Toronto Catholic board began using balanced literacy about 8 ago or so they called it the Four Blocks.

A family member was teaching in the primary section and was telling me all about how wonderful it was.  I figured it was at least better than what the board was doing before—which really was hit and miss—mostly whole language or if you were lucky the teacher was older and used phonics on her own.

Anyway, the family member later told me excitedly that they were now using the Fifth block.  I asked what that was.  Answer—remedidation.  Huh?
I asked if the Four Blocks were so great why did they need a Fifth?  No response, just a puzzled look.

They do so for the same reasons parents and teachers have always been afraid to make waves?parents fear retribution against their children and teachers fear retribution from their union.
It happens and you know it.

Horsefeathers. Teachers have nothing whatever tio fear from their union in expressing opinions about curriculum, policy, procedures, ideology and the like. There are many fora where union members have at each other in very raucous fashion with wide divergence of opinion. There are no penalties for being a *bleep*-disturber, curmudgeon or boat-rocker.

However, teachers are rightly afraid of adminstration—school and board administration and also the Ministry. Thanks to Bill 160 (unless that provision has since been revised) teachers can theoretically be fired without notice for “disloyalty” to the Ministry, and any open criticism can be (and usually is) punished in a variety of ways. Employees may not publicly criticize policies and practices of the employer. Period. Retribution is a real and present threat, but not from the union.

Not that I have been privy to insider’s information on teachers’ unions, but I will differ that teachers may not fear to have a different opinion, but they do so, knowing it may not serve their own best interests. By advocating for a different approach, or even the radical concept of DI, where some if not all union members opposed; it may harm the individual teacher for advancement.

As I have observed, the top brass of a teachers’ union rarely advocates for their students best interests, when the interests being advocating for are not in the best interests of the union. Unions, as well as the administration are at fault. Below, is a link of a teacher, pointing out his side, Why American School Fail.

“C. Who do teacher’s unions represent anyway?

There is so much wrong with the U.S. school system that blame can spread to everyone involved, including the teachers. Granted that most of the teacher’s problems are inflicted on them from on high, but their failure to do anything meaningful about the problem is something they are potentially able to address. The major obstacle they face is the behemoth known as the Teacher’s Union. Like a great whale, it is a huge and bloated organism, its weight matched by very few other political entities (maybe the AFL-CIO and National Rifle Association), yet toothless and an easy target for smaller and more predatory creatures.”
http://hubpages.com/hub/Why-Americas-Schools-Fail-Part-VI-C-Teachers-Unions

In my opinion, my child’s learning has been impacted by the inability of the teachers within the public education system to correct academic deficiencies of their students, by all arms, including the unions. Having good intentions, should never replace effective teaching methods and curriculum, to correct the learning problems that students may encounter. And more importantly, the learning difficulty should never be used as the reason, why ‘little Suzie’ is failing.

Just curious then-based on these last 2 postings-what do you think causes the University departments who do research-who know something is wrong in an area-but do not go to the press with the information-do they also fear retribution-medicine seems to have this figured out-the researchers would be compelled to discuss it and find a voice for it???

I`m always trying to figure this out-
“The trouble with Dyslexia is it`s a neurological problem-the solution is educational_”

This is a quote from 1920-
Dr.Shaywitz says in her book called -Overcoming Dyslexia-says 20% of the population are dyslexic and another 20% have a mild form of it-can also be understood as a neurological deficit.
I am starting to think Ministries of Education don`t read books.

Sorry,in the last line-phonological deficit-a little bit like a kid with 2 left feet who is not athletic or is a lousy dancer..

I read an interesting paper a while back, that children who have dyslexia or children with a mild phonological deficit, are on a different evolutionary pathway, than other humans. What they don’t know, is it a throw-back or is it a new line that will eventually replace what is considered normal development of the brain.

That said, I often have describe my child as having two left feet and two left hands, to the school, and other educational officials, in my pursuit to obtain the proper services for my child. In doing so, I have provided the research, the knowledge why my child should receive certain services, to correct the weaknesses. To my surprise, most are shocked at the advances being made. To my dismay, the few who are in the position and the power to make it happen, are the very same ones who will defend their position, and dismiss the research at the same time.

TDSBNW, I think you are saying the teaching methods and the curriculum are imposed by the Ministry, and that therefore the main culprit to hold accountable for the teaching methods and their results is the Ministry, is that correct?

On the other hand, if Doug is representative of the union’s position, the union leadership agrees with the Ministry.
Has the union ever raised the issues of curriculum, policy, procedures, ideology with the Ministry?

Or perhaps you are saying that since there is no consesus among teachers on these issues themselves there are no issues to be raised by the union.

If you were a parent where would you start, what would you ask for that is doable in order for your child and his classmates to learn reading, writing and basic math well?

TDSBNW, I think you are saying the teaching methods and the curriculum are imposed by the Ministry, and that therefore the main culprit to hold accountable for the teaching methods and their results is the Ministry, is that correct?

Correct.

Doug’s opinions are his own, and do not (to the best of my knowledge) represent official policies of OSSTF or ETFO or .OECTA or any other teacher federation.

ETFO supports teachers, and so often delivers some workshops and curriculum-related mini-courses in response to requests from the membership, and these of course reflect the mandated curricula from the Ministry. This is what teachers are charged with “delivering.”  Attempts to change what teachers “deliver” must be addressed to the source—the MOE and, secondarily, the boards.

Unfortunately, if a parent strongly disagrees with or has issues with the mandated curricula, s/he doesn’t have many options. If Balanced Literacy isn’t working for a child, the parent will have to teach the child himself/herself, or find someone else to do it (usually for a fee).  Middle-class parents often do this:in some surveys, up to 80% of students in high-SES areas have private tuition, while lower-income families must rely on themselves or the extended family or merely hope for the best. I find this a serious equity issue.

In some cases, Special Education services provide alternative teaching protocols, but this is not usually the case. The MOE does not provide training for teachers certified in Special Ed to learn other instructional methods. The courses required cover definitions, labeling, “exceptionalities,” philosophy, some pseudoscience and paperwork, but nothing about teaching methods that differ from those prescribed for the regular classroom.

There may be changes imposed with the increasing demands of parents of children with autism for appropriate teaching for their children, but so far these have been mostly cosmetic and superficial.

Although the MOE has mandated that schools apply the principles of applied behaviour analysis to programming for children with autism, most boards have few or no employees who have any training or expertise in this area. I attended one of the 5-day summer training institutes paid for by the MOE that were supposedly to teach system employees about ABA, but not a single presenter had a background in ABA and most of the material (while interesting) had nothing to do with applied behaviour analysis.  This disjunct between ostensible purpose/content and reality is unfortunately not an anomaly.

So, even if a teacher were knowledgeable about let’s say direct instruction methods and would want to use them, she could only do so at the risk of being disciplined by the ministry or even losing her job.

Is that correct?

Well, if teachers have to write their own materials the way you described in previous posts, aren’t they allowed to write them any way they see fit - and that may include sequential, direct instruction?

NOTE: Personally I think writing curricum materials every time it’s crazy; it must take a huge amount of time, and why would they be better on average than already existing, tested materials?

See ... the way I see it is: surely one way or another I can help my son be good at reading, writing and basic math.

But, unless all his classmates are reasonably good - roughly the same level of mastery and factual subject knowledge - so that they can all keep learning more together and the teacher does teach them new knowledge all I’m doing is ensuring that he gets bored to death, gets to be a troublemaker because of boredom and probably gets turned off from school anyway.

I don’t get it.
If this is what continues happening in every grade, high school - where you have very different levels of mastery in the same class and hormones raging -must be pure mayhem!

How can one teach anything if the pre-requisite knowledge is not there?

Teachers do a great deal of direct instruction, but they are not supposed to use “programs” to do it, but rather to develop their own materials to suit the needs of their diverse learners.

The Ministry of Education’s solution to the issues you bring up is Differentiated Instruction (D.I.) and Universal Design for Learning (UDL).

Here are some links to get you started:
http://www.edugains.ca/newsite/di/difinstgains.htm
http://www.oapce.on.ca/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/a_reflection_on_differentiated_instruction.pdf
http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/adaptivetech/Differentiation/index.html
http://www.nldontario.org/articles/DifferentiatedClassroom.html
http://www.curriculum.org/secretariat/march29.shtml
http://www.lkdsb.net/program/elementary/intermediate/di/index.html
and from Kitchen Table Math, these posts:
http://kitchentablemath.blogspot.com/2010/03/differentiated-instruction-fordham.html
http://kitchentablemath.blogspot.com/2010/03/instructional-grouping-vs.html
http://kitchentablemath.blogspot.com/2010/03/allison-on-professional-development.html
http://kitchentablemath.blogspot.com/2010/03/anonymous-on-chicago-schools.html

School boards do buy trainings and curriculums-
I know McGraw Hill`s Reading Mastery is in many boards-Reading Recovery-
I have 500 teachers trained in Ontario for early intervention and special education—we have 130 in DSBN alone and 55 in Waterloo Catholic-and we have 2 more standardizations coming on board this spring-it makes zero sense for teachers to make their own stuff because research based methodology is very explicit and must adhere to Orton as well as phonemes and phonological awareness training and synthetic phonics- methodologies should transform a special education department and put every teacher on the same page to get a whole new level of professionalism. This would not be as urgent if the Universities taught practical application-but they don`t.

TDSBNW thank you.

I’ve read the links about Differentiated Intruction.
In my opinion they are so unrealistic it is mind-boggling.

Here is a teacher’s viewpoint on Differentiated Instruction.
“But again, Catherine, differentiated instruction solves the school’s problem: it allows them to promote full inclusion. Full inclusion is politically correct, cheaper in terms of staffing, rooming, and other logistics, and takes the onus off of the school (while placing the burden on the teachers, parents and students.)

The evidence based analysis is not about the schools’ problems, it’s about the student performance. But student performance ISN’T the schools’ problem (what happens to a school with low performance?), nor administrators’ problem (even if a school closes, what happens to the administrators in a district?)

The way that teachers are made to sign on to differentiated instruction despite the teaching difficulties is by reiterating the talking point that it allows everyone to feel good about their performance in the classroom, by meeting everyone on their level, and that no one has their failures causing hurt feelings in such a classroom.”

As I see it, and in particular the younger grades, it actually will hinder the process of identification of reading, writing and numeracy problems. Children who fall into the mild to moderate category, many of them will not be identified until the junior levels of 5 to 7.

Joanne, I have never found a list of approved curriculum and resources for special education. Once in a while, one may find programs for the autism kids, but nothing for reading problems, or writing. I have tried in pass years, at the upper levels if there is a list. I have been told, there is no such list, and that it is up to the school. Other parents in different provinces, get various answers, but often are directed back to the school. In my opinion, children who have difficulties in reading, writing and numeracy, are being managed, and not addressing and targeted the weaknesses of the children.

But thanks for the information. I will be passing this down to the other LD parents. There may be hope for the boards, but I won’t hold my breathe on it, because it may depend on what type of children that are receiving the Reading Mastery or Reading Recovery. Often to our dismay, it never seems to be the mild to moderate children, where often there is huge jumps made, compared to other children who are considered severe. A secondary problem, is the criteria that must be met, before a child can take advantage of the reading program.

Points of clarification:

1)the KTM commenter Nancy quotes above is not a teacher, but a professional physicist who homeschools.

2) Reading Recovery is not a special education program, but a 1:1 16-20 week program for 6-year-old students in Grade 1 only. Because of its very high cost ($10000+ per student, depending on what costs are calculated into the mix), many Ontario boards do not have Reading Recovery, since research out of New Zealand and elsewhere has shown equal benefits from small group intervention of the same type but with 3-5 students per teacher for instruction. This significantly lowers the cost. TDSB has Reading Recovery, TCDSB does not.

3) Reading Mastery is a basal reading curriculum for Pre-K to Grade 6. No Ontario boards use it in the regular grades, as it does not align with the Ontario Curriculum. The K-1 level of Reading Mastery is sometimes used in Special Education settings.  This is not a boardwide feature in any Ontario board so far as I know. However, some Ontario boards are implementing SRA Corrective Reading in junior-intermediate grades for their “LD” students. Among these are Peel DSB and Waterloo Catholic:
http://www.ontariodirectors.ca/pages/CODE_Chronicles/files/CODEchronicles3_pg8.pdf
http://www.wcdsb.ca/about/pdf/Board-Improvement-Plan-K-12.pdf
http://ldx.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/41/4/333
Dr. Maureen Lovett’s “EMPOWER” program which was inspired by Reading Mastery but incorporates other elements of metacognition and self-talk strategies is being used by the TCDSB, WCDSB and others (see bottom of p. 3 here:
http://www.tcdsb.org/news/2009-04-28 TCDSB, Celebrates Exemplary Practices.pdf
she has also developed an intensive intervention for secondary students, entitled PHAST PACES (you can google it) which is offered for credit in the TCDSB.

These empirically validated and intensive interventions are outliers, however.

I didn`t feel it was elegant on this site to mention my curriculum-the Remediation Plus System.However,the above has me forced to do it.

WCDSB-Does not have Empower-which is not an Orton Gillingham based curriculum-WCDSB-has Remediation Plus in all it`s schools -WDSB-It has Empower.

WCDSB is using Remediation Plus as an early intervention with groups of 4 kids(grade 1 and 2) and does it early as well as when the children are identified LD-as they and I both know-why wait for failure when
you can do so much to avert the impact of reading failure on a child`s life.

I know we will see more of this kind of thing as we enlighten administrators about the reading research on our visits.The lack of knowledge in the field-running an organization in the dark-stems from Ministry Guidelines that are failing the students.
One board-actually 2-says-please inform the Ministry of all this.
OISE research department says-oh them-that`s just politics.

We are all trying-those enlightened-read Children of the Code and discover the frustration of the great scientists-they wonder why but still try to persist in their respective lives to try to change the tide.

In the circle of LD parents, Remediation Plus gets a thumbs up. Although not at all based on a scientific methodology, LD parents have a tendency to rely on word of mouth, and what the journals have rated the effective programs, their weaknesses and strengths. A lot of Canadian LD parents get asked about Remediation Plus by Americans, especially parents dealing with the older age group. I know it would help my own kid a great deal.

A major complaint from the LD parents, or parents who have children that have not been identified formally, but have reading issues, but all sitting in the regular classroom, do not qualify or meet the criteria, to take part in reading programs that are offered by the board. It appears to be based on grades, than anything else. A kid with a 80%  or more, is not going to be perceived as having a major reading problem, even though the kid was identified earlier on in the younger grades.  Nor are they, looking at previous demand written class tests, CRTs, that will show consistently,  their poor performance. Many parents have been told, if they give it to their child, it would have to be given to the rest that are in need, in the regular classroom. The school will say we cannot afford it.

If my child was sitting in one of the schools at the Waterloo board, she would not qualify. Often what happens in the urban areas, the parents will go and seek out private tutoring. The parents in rural parts, have far less options. So, if a program came to a rural school, like Remediation Plus, it is kept very quiet by the school, to control the number of students, and to prevent desperate parents who have been asking for a reading program, whose children are sitting in the regular classroom, but not accessing SE services.  At the present time,  there is such a program being test piloted in the local high school. No one knows how many students, what is the name of it, and who is benefiting from it. One would think, that kids like my child, would be selected, since there is so much documentation regarding their learning problems, that is rooted in reading, and by extension in writing.