Reading First: Another Cookie Cutter Curriculum

It is my understanding that congress has recently voted to decrease the President’s budget request for Reading First and that subcommittees in both the House and Senate have voted to cut the program altogether.

As a teacher and a parent I’m frustrated and disgusted with what No Child Left Behind and its programs like Reading First are doing to education, which is especially repugnant in light of a recent investigation that has shown financial links between certain publishers and Reading First officials. Reading First makes a mockery of teaching and learning by putting real reading last instead of balancing comprehension with decoding. If anything, the scales should tip in favor of comprehension--I have never heard someone finish a good book and say, “You’ve got to read this book—you’ll just love sounding out the words!”

Sarcasm aside, I believe that measurable standards of excellence and accountability are needed, but cookie cutter curriculums and high stakes testing are not the answer. I’ve seen studies that show the greatest achievement gap in literacy is found among adult members of poverty, and if we are to improve literacy rates, we need to start now, by improving the lives of poor children, taking care of their schools, hiring first-rate teachers to teach them, and putting books they love to read in their hands, their schools, and their libraries.

If you agree with me on this issue, please speak out. If you don't agree with me, I hope you'll reconsider your position, and in the meantime, I’ll see about starting up some bake sales to raise money for books for kids.

Any blisters I get from cookie cutters will be apropos.

Bush and His Economic Stimulus Package

My sister Kelli sent me some info recently about that 9-11 conspiracy theory that won't go away--the one that says our administration was in on it. Since believing in my government is no sacred cow to me, it wouldn't surpise me one bit to find out the hijackers were backed by our country's leaders somehow. That being said, I checked things out at Snopes Dot Com, and it came back as an urban legend. But the skeptical side of me wonders, "Well... who's behind Snopes Dot Com?" Whether or Bush and Company were behind nine-eleven, what they have done SINCE then just makes me SICK!

To get a broader perspective, let's go back in time a little bit, back to Jimmy Carter's presidency. He was from Georgia, where one of their main products was peanuts. While he was president the price of peanuts went sky high. Never did come down, and the once-poor-peanut farmer got rich. How convenient. And then there were the Arkansas chicken price hikes while Hill and Bilary ran things. To continue the pattern, evern since Bush and Cheney have been in office, the price of petroleum just keeps going up. now that we're getting the Economic Stimulus Tax Rebate, look where it's gonna go--in the oil man's pocket. How convenient--about the only economy that's gonna get stimulated is the personal economy of the oil man. Hard times for him? Nope, just a whopper of a hard-on that he can take all the way to the bank. The Economic Stimulus Rebate is nothing less than Viagra for Exxon.

It's demoralizing and scary to see what's happening with the economy. I guess the A-Rabs didn't need to hijack airplanes or invade us with weapons of mass destruction to bring our nation down--Between them and our own oil industry, they've managed to hijack and terrorize the the barrel loads of black gold instead, and where is Our Commander In Chief? Oh yeah, he's busy keeping the surge of young men going to Iraq where they can die for a democracy that isn't even wanted, while here at home our ecomony sags so badly that our fighting men have little more than a piss pot to come back to. Bush is sticking it to our soldiers while his big buddies in the petroleum industry are sticking it to us with their dicked up, erected prices. It's nothing but a frenzied, dieselized orgy for all those oil people, and I never have been into group sex.

Maybe 9-11 was a conspiracy designed and carried out by our own people, but since that didn't bring the nation to its knees, they went to Plan B--they're gonna cripple us at the gas pumps. You can bet a few loners will be left standing, and those are the conspirators. You'll know who they are--they'll be hoisting a bulging bank bag in one hand and their phallus in the other.

Talk about a stimulus package.

Woodshed at Winter's End

Weathered pine planks house a bark-bottomed blackness
where snow-pressed strands of October grass
rest in steep recline.

Split fir once filled the darkest corner, barred the threshold.
Not today. Dwindling ever down with the waxing
days of March.

Sawdust coats the snow-seeped path, hides black earth beneath
where spring's budding blades
pose unseen.

© Connie Fletcher 2008