What a Brazilian state can teach the world about education

The Economist:

hen amaury gomes began teaching history in Sobral in the mid-1990s, its schools were a mess. The city of 200,000 people lies in Ceará, a baking-hot north-eastern state that has one of Brazil’s highest rates of poverty. When local officials ordered tests in 2001 they found that 40% of Sobral’s eight-year-olds could not read at all. One-third of primary pupils had been held back for at least a year. Staff were not always much better, recalls Mr Gomes. He remembers a head teacher who signed documents with a thumbprint, because she lacked the confidence even to scribble her own name.

These days Mr Gomes is the boss of a local teacher-training college, and his city gets visitors from across Brazil. In 2015 Sobral’s primary-school children made headlines by scoring highest in the country in tests of maths and literacy, a milestone in a journey begun almost 20 years before. The pandemic has thrust the city back into the spotlight as a model for educators seeking to reboot schooling after lengthy closures. In November ambitious officials from other parts of Brazil trooped into Mr Gomes’s college, the first group since the start of the pandemic to attend one of the tours Sobral offers to curious outsiders.

Success stories are important to Brazil’s beleaguered educators, now more than ever. Before the pandemic only about half of children could read by the time they finished primary school, compared with nearly three-quarters in other upper-middle-income countries. In 2017 the World Bank warned that it could take 260 years before Brazil’s 15-year-olds are reading and writing as well as peers in the rich world. Since then many Brazilian pupils have missed around 18 months of face-to-face lessons as a result of school closures (most schools have now reopened). Few countries kept classrooms shut for as long. Data from São Paulo suggest that during this period children learned less than a third of what they normally would have, and that the risk of pupils dropping out tripled.

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?