Friday, September 10, 2021

Jerry Von Korff Facebook discussion with Luqman Michel


 


Wednesday, September 8, 2021

Does More Money Buy Better Education--Minneapolis edition(2)

Luqman Michel

Jerry Von Korff, do you know what you mean by students with dyslexia? Would you like to discuss this matter openly right here?

Note: This post is to ensure that my comments will not be deleted like it has been on many of the FB comments I have made. Bethany Lee, a dyslexia advocate, is the latest to delete all my comments and her responses from FB.

 

Jerry Von Korff

Subd. 2. Dyslexia. “Dyslexia” means a specific learning disability that is neurological in origin. It is characterized by difficulties with accurate or fluent recognition of words and by poor spelling and decoding abilities. These difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component of language that is often unexpected in relation to other cognitive abilities and the provision of effective classroom instruction. Secondary consequences may include problems in reading comprehension and reduced reading experience that can impede the growth of vocabulary and background knowledge.

In addition, Minnesota statutes provides support for students who exhibit the "characteristics of dyslexia" so as to assure that districts do not use the lack of a diagnosis as an excuse to deny appropriate support.

Luqman Michel

Excellent! Thank you for your prompt response. Let us continue with this.

The definition you have given is more than 50 years old. Let us not get into reading comprehension, vocabulary and fluency. Let us take the first step - decoding. If a child is unable to decode then the rest will not happen. Do you agree?

 

Luqman Michel

"This group was created to discuss how to improve academics in the Minneapolis Public Schools. The first area of focus is early literacy."

Are you sure this is true? Then, let us start it from the very beginning as in the song in 'Sound of music'.

(I am recording the above comments as I lost a few weeks’ discussion with Bethany Lee, a dyslexia advocate, who deleted all my comments on FaceBook. Many Americans have a habit of deleting comments when they are unable to respond to direct questions.)

2 comments:

Luqman Michel said...

Many so-called educators tell me that there are many other matters that affect a kid's decoding. When I ask what they are, I am told that vocabulary, comprehension and fluency are important.

I agree but the first rung in the ladder of education is decoding. A child who is unable to decode cannot comprehend and he cannot read fluently.

Fluency, comprehension and vocabulary come at a later stage.

Luqman Michel said...

Ninety-five percent of the kids hitting the wall in learning to read are what we call NBT: Never Been Taught. All of these kids that I had tried to teach and who didn’t do well had by nine years of age already begun to avoid the reading process because they couldn’t do it.(Dr. Reid Lyon)

10 times the number of kids who have innately biologically ordered learning difficulties have learning difficulties that are a consequence of what they learned…... Until such time we can read that they are cognitively going askew relative to what they have learnt in the past then our teaching is kind of brute force against this deep core stuff that is working against us.
How much of what they are struggling with is an innate learning problem and how much of what they are struggling with is what they have learned in the past working against them learning now.