Robert Pondiscio: Why Our Kids Can't Read
A former teacher says there are bigger problems in K-12 education than CRT and wokeness—and that school choice may not fix them.
I'm the father of two adult sons who are thankfully out of the K-12 educational system. I say thankfully because I found education inherently anxiety-inducing. Turning your kids over to a school for years is no simple thing and my own ambivalent memories as a student didn't help.
I'm pretty sure it's always been this way, but today it just seems at a fever pitch of awfulness. There's growing (and ineffective) per-pupil spending; lack of meaningful choice for many, if not most, parents and students; a lack of transparency and accountability; the lingering effects of COVID-related lockdowns; the rise of highly politicized curricula about everything from critical race theory (CRT) to gender and sexual orientation; and a return to fights over library books.
Today's guest is Robert Pondiscio, an education expert with the American Enterprise Institute who wrote How the Other Half Learns, a fantastic book about Success Academy, a controversial and highly effective charter school system based in New York City (watch my 2019 interview with him about that). What's more, he actually taught in a low-income public school in the South Bronx.
Pondiscio is going to add another worry to our list of concerns: Schools aren't teaching kids to read in any meaningful way. He's a strong advocate for all forms of school choice and reform, but he says choice itself is simply not enough to help the lower-income kids who can most benefit from a really good education.
We talk about all that, plus wokeness and a ton of other related topics. Let's call this episode "Everything You Wanted To Know About What's Wrong With K-12 Education But Were Too Afraid To Ask." It first ran as a Reason livestream at YouTube (watch here) and is cohosted by my colleague Zach Weissmueller.
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The problem is government involvement with education.
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That’s not the main problem. The main problem is in thinking that because a few things are efficiently taught in classes, that most things should be. Hence schooling has expanded far beyond its usefulness, and probably would have even in anarchy. But since we’re not in anarchy, since the (wrong) idea is that there’s economy of scale in all teaching, the idea’s been accepted worldwide that teaching is a proper and even function of government, which has given teaching access to our pockets, so it continues to grow.
So really the main problem is school per se. It’s as if long ago people had observed how efficient it was to farm on a large scale, and therefore the idea had gotten around that most of our nutrition should come via mega-farms serving us at long tables that we would orient our affairs around. It would’ve become a government function too because it could hardly help but become and remain one. And then because of the similar incentives, we’d all wind up over-served bland calories, and mostly get fat because why waste it, huh?
We all are forced to pay ever more into government schools for our entire lives either through direct taxation or through rent to those who pay..no consent, no accountability..the whole concept of forced funded and controlled “education” is rotten to the core.
Learning has never ever been cheaper or easier with the vast abundance of quality materials for free or nearly so. What is so expensive is the industry, the bureaucracy, the admin, the child care, etc.
Reading happens naturally when children have a REASON TO CARE and are not forced to read before they are curious and driven to comprehend. Just being exposed to interesting writing all around and having a bit of coaching to assist the learner makes it flow naturally..its’ about internal motivation, in an environment rich in the written word. Read to kids and let them beg to learn! Listening to audiobooks that are enticing also gets kids interested in being able to read because they develop a love of writing.
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Pondiscio is going to add another worry to our list of concerns: Schools aren’t teaching kids to read in any meaningful way.
We know that, because we know that the schools’ educational priorities are NOT to teach your kids to read in a meaningful way, but to concentrate on other areas. I wonder what those other areas might be?
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This is perhaps one of gillespie’s most stupid assertions, and one that demonstrates a need to try to ‘own the conservatives’ w/ the sub-headline. The fact that the issues of illiteracy, inability to complete basic mathematics is due to poor education, education dominated by the left-leaning groups that now blame systemic racism for their failures seems to escape pleather jacket’s grasp.
Groomers gonna groom.
“A former teacher says there are bigger problems in K-12 education than CRT and wokeness—…..”
Actually, one reason the children can’t read is because the teachers insist on speaking all their time on implementing “CRT and wokeness”. They think that is their main goal as a public school “teacher”.
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I learned to read before I went to school. My grandmother enrolled me into a children’s book of the month club.
Parents are failing their own kids by expecting the schools to be the only source of education. Government has picked up on this and will gladly be a co-parent.
And the funny thing is that those of us with normal hearing all learned to talk with hardly any deliberate, let alone formal, instruction in doing so. Once you know how to listen and talk, reading and writing is just the next step, and not as big a one. Same with extra languages.
give little johnny an ipad and call it a day. who cares that he develops the attention span of a spastic labrador. add some dreadful bad diet and the tableau is complete.
“give little johnny an ipad and call it a day. who cares that he develops the attention span of a spastic labrador. add some dreadful bad diet and the tableau is complete.”
You should really do some reading on the concept of “false equivalence”.
Put simply, the issues of CRT, wokeness, and sexual identity activism in the schools are rough proxies for that of parental control. There’s little to no significant appetite for these educational fads outside of the educational bureaucracy (and, yes, teachers are bureaucrats). Let’s face it, you really don’t hear much in the way of parents saying they were going to enroll their kid in a school, but decided not to because it didn’t have enough wokeness. If the educational bureaucracy was succeeding in their reason for existence, teaching children basic literacy, numeracy, and critical thinking skills (I know, that’s not why public schools really exist; but it’s why parents willingly support them), they might have a ground to stand on. But, if the schools aren’t able to meet that basic function, then they’ve lost any practical or moral authority to insist parents bow before their credentials.
Homeschool your kids if at all possible.
Teach them phonics and they can read anything.
Just let them read, and they can read anything. It works for listening.
Don’t let anyone associated with the Anime Rev Kirkland try to teach them.
Meh, who needs to read. We have podcasts now.
In any state, you will find great disparities between reading and math scores in various school districts.. The teachers probably all took the same education courses at university, and many of the successful districts spend less per student than the unsuccessful districts. And they all have teacher unions. So what accounts for the disparities?
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Whether the students want it.
That’s racist!! At least according to the Smithsonian and their sources.
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“…So what accounts for the disparities?…”
Gonna go with parental involvement.
they can’t read because their devices have HAMMERED their attention spans to 12 seconds. the schools are also culpable but the way that tik tok and insta have altered their cerebrums cannot be undone
I consider Mr. Gillespie one of the premier interviewers in the pod space, but this one was rough. You guys talked over your guest with random anecdote and irrelevant historical moments. We are all waiting to hear Mr. Pondiscio’s solution to widespread poor reading comprehension and you never allowed it to be articulated. Waste of an opportunity.
While it is fun to blame the government, the root cause is at home.
Parents simply need to stand up,put down their own toys and READ to their kids.
We made it a point to read to our kids everyday, which they loved. The younger one would target anyone who sat down in the living room, plop into their lap with a book and say “Read please”.
As they were growing up, there was No Cable, No Video Games, No Computer Games.
There were almost daily trips to Barnes & Noble and the Recycle Bookstore with understanding that books were ALWAYS in the budget.
The “reading bomb” went off early for each of them and they never looked back.
Both finished their schooling with University Diplomas on time and got professional jobs (without any college debt I’m please to brag).
But we NEVER expected “The Government” to task responsibility for them learning to love reading.