It was a dry summer. We were watering our driveway garden every other day, and it would still droop on hot days, which were plentiful. So when I woke up yesterday to a cool, drippy world and again today, I was pleased.
Never more than a visitor to a farm, but once a Midwesterner, always a Midwesterner.
I checked out the brief discussion about third-grade reading in the comments of the last post. I understand that Mark was pointing out the grammatical mess of the original statement, and also Julie’s point that third-grade reading skills are important. They were talking past one another, but no biggie.
It so happens Michigan’s schoolchildren are doing abysmally, and have slipped precipitously in recent years. The GOP, in seeking to make this a campaign issue, are bringing up the so-called Mississippi miracle, in which that beleaguered state made tremendous gains in elementary reading accomplishment through the time-honored strategy of Getting Tough and Demanding Excellence, etc. I’ve been reading about this for a while, and it kept ringing a bell, because it sounded so similar to a plan that was briefly in place in Michigan, in which any kid who wasn’t at grade level in reading by the end of third, would be held back a year.
It didn’t last long. Schools hated it, teachers hated it, parents hated it, and when the Dems took a trifecta in the state legislature, it was promptly repealed.
I’m oversimplifying it to some extent. It wasn’t simply read or flunk; there were strategies for remedial support, etc. But the bottom line was the flunking part. Flunking isn’t just a disaster for children. It throws a monkey wrench into school administration, teaching plans and even student households. One or two failures in a year is one thing, but when a large cohort of children are facing retention, it has all sorts of ripple effects that were likely not considered when the law was passed, as “pass or flunk” reads better in a campaign speech than “reading comprehension is complicated and can be negatively affected by various factors, including…”
Here’s a blog by a Michigan teacher from 2019 that gets into the weeds, if you’re interested.
A friend who covers education pointed out that the Mississippi miracle shows its flaws within a few years. Sure, hold a kid back, cram them with remedial instruction, finesse the test scores and squeak them into the next grade level, a year older than their classmates. Then wait for the collapse, because within a few more years, certainly by middle school, those hard-fought gains are gone.
In fact, with the details changed, it’s exactly the argument conservatives make for doing away with Head Start — the gains achieved at preschool disappear by third grade, etc.
It’s almost as though teaching reading — teaching anything — is harder than it seems to a state legislature. It involves pretty much every factor in how education is structured in this country, including but not limited to home environments, household income, summer slide and everything else. I’m not a teacher, and I can’t even begin to know how to teach a kid to read. Kate basically taught herself, because she had an older, exhausted mother who was always happier to read to her rather than chase a soccer ball around the yard. Her teachers handled the rest of it, and today she has a library card. Happy ending.
I once visited a grade school in Grand Rapids. With “challenges,” as we say, including a large number of children of migrant agricultural workers, who might only be enrolled a few weeks before their parents decamp for another crop to harvest. The principal was heroic in his work to get these kids reading and supported for it. He stood at the door at dismissal on Fridays to make sure every kid was carrying a book to read over the weekend. There were regular staff meetings where students at risk of failing were discussed, with teachers huddling on what might work to get them making progress. It was a day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month push, and they had the improving scores to document it. But it was never easy, or simple.
OK, then. What was the infuriating news of the weekend? It all blurs together after a while. But here’s a good piece on the destruction of the Kennedy Center, a gift link. (Note: Unless otherwise noted, everything I post is a gift link, or already free to read.) Lede:
A storm brought down a five-foot piece of ceiling plaster at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts this month and its leadership sprang into action. One thing they did not do was repair the damage.
Instead staff members left the mess on the carpet for nearly two weeks, posting photos on social media with commentary like “the place is falling apart and @realDonaldTrump wants to fix it.” They measured plaster shards and mapped the “debris field” like investigators after a plane crash, for a 55-page briefing for the center’s board about the building’s decay. No one was injured but Mr. Trump claimed online that a security guard had narrowly avoided “certain death.” Less than two hours later, his allies on the board voted to close the center, citing safety concerns.
I hate this era so, so much. Not a good way to go into the week, but here we are. Gird your loins; the midterms are still coming.
Icarus said on September 20, 2026 at 6:50 pm
We have lived in Mississippi-stan for 5 years now. My wife was a valor Victorian, and I’m not slouch. I’d like to say our kids are responsible for raising the bar, but they just might be the tallest midgets.
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alex said on September 20, 2026 at 9:04 pm
Speaking of reading at grade level, I read a very powerful piece this morning by Nikole Hannah-Jones of the NYT (remember Project 1619?) about how she thinks she may have failed her daughter by sending her to a New York City public school. It delves deeply into the failures of public education these days — and, yes, the systemic racism that pervades everything in this goddamned country.
Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/20/magazine/ny-public-schools-black-students-segregation.html?unlocked_article_code=1.C1E.LS6K.8Z8-xRJ4ly8X&smid=url-share
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Suzanne said on September 20, 2026 at 9:23 pm
If I did this correctly, this should be a gift link. A depressing gift link.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/08/reading-crisis-postliterate-age/687618/?gift=F58N5IOcUo4qAP_lFh-H9yJ2l9w4G08xD_CSr1l5LLA&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
I grew up in a house of non-readers. I am not sure how I came to embrace it but it came easily to me and I have always loved to read. I have a college educated husband and 2 college educated children. One of my children is an avid reader; the other and my husband are not. I know far too many people who either proudly admit that they never read books and haven’t for years or do read but only one narrow type of book—thrillers, mysteries, Christian romance, etc. but nothing else ever. My daughter’s 8th grade English teacher told her (my daughter) that she (the teacher) never read books over 150 to 200 pages because basically long books were too hard.
The Atlantic article above delves into why current reading trends are so troubling. It’s complicated. How are teachers supposed to urge kids to read books when their parents never do and tell their kids it’s a waste of time?
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Mark P said on September 20, 2026 at 9:47 pm
When I started working in Huntsville Al, 40 years ago, I participated in a reading tutoring program at an elementary school. Once after I had been doing it for a while, a kid I had tutored the past year came up to me in the hall and said to me that I probably didn’t remember him. I think it had meant something to him but he was afraid it had not meant anything to me. I’m probably reading too much into it, but it hurt my heart a little. And still does.
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Sherri said on September 20, 2026 at 10:59 pm
Nikole Hannah-Jones writes about choosing a public school for her daughter, and the struggles: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/20/magazine/ny-public-schools-black-students-segregation.html?unlocked_article_code=1.C1E.vJ6s.32GFq2O09ocC&smid=url-share
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David C said on September 21, 2026 at 6:01 am
I doubt much has changed in reading books since I was a kid. I hated mine. I wasn’t interested in the stories at all. Our school library was a joke too. I didn’t start to read much until our township finally built a library and I could read what I damn well pleased. Maybe now they try to figure out what a kid is interested in and let them read about that. Back then it was “Here kid, read this”.
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Dorothy said on September 21, 2026 at 8:11 am
Non-readers mystify me. Reading is like breathing to me. My mother noticed that my daughter was reading before her fifth birthday. I didn’t know what she meant and Mum said “She interrupts me while I’m reading to her and asks me to show her some of the words.” I had experienced that but never really gave it much thought but she was right. That was reading!
I have a video of her reading to her brother and our friends’ sons when we were at the beach in July 1988. Then in kindergarten her teacher told me Laura used to read to the other kids sometimes. The teacher told me a few of the other parents asked how Laura came to be such an early reader, and she said “I think she was almost self-taught. And her parents read to her a LOT.” I think she was reading at a seventh grade level in second grade. It sounds like bragging, I know, but it’s just telling her story of how young she was when she was reading.
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Deborah said on September 21, 2026 at 8:15 am
I grew up reading lots, we went to the library every Friday, got just about as many books as we could carry, then spent the week reading those until the next week. My mom always had a book in her hand, even while cooking, which made her a lousy cook, burning everything. My dad didn’t read as much as we did, but he did read, mysteries mostly. But we didn’t have many books on our shelves because we couldn’t afford them, the books we read came from libraries, thank god for them.
I started LB on reading early, she would sit for hours listening to me read to her. I put words on cards onto things in her room, like bed, window etc, then we would play games with them. She’s always been an avid reader, actually voracious.
It’s always been important to me. It’s hard for me to imagine not being able or not wanting to read. At least now-a-days there are plenty of accessible audio books, are they even popular?
edit: https://ssrs.com/insights/how-many-americans-listen-to-audiobooks/
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Michael said on September 21, 2026 at 9:26 am
Mark P.,
As a retired teacher, I am often humbled/embarrassed by former students who tell me how much I meant to them and the impact I had on their lives. I think the biggest thing I did was call them by name in the hall and ask how they were doing.
To quote a former colleague and one of the finest teachers I’ve ever known: “It’s all about connection, 100%.”
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Little Bird said on September 21, 2026 at 10:36 am
I really wanted to start reading because I knew the funny pages would be funnier if I could read them myself. Deborah spotted that and ran with it. I love reading, but hate reading aloud. I trip over the words if I have to speak them. Probably because I read really fast and my mouth can’t keep up. It makes me sad to know that kids these days not only don’t read much, but CAN’T.
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Scout said on September 21, 2026 at 2:07 pm
I’ve always been an avid reader. I attribute it to being an only child who hated being bored and as long as I had a good book to read, I never was. My Mom was also a big reader and trips to the library were normal routine. My daughters didn’t enjoy reading as kids but now they are both big readers and belong to several book clubs together. That makes their grandma and me very happy.
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Julie Robinson said on September 21, 2026 at 2:41 pm
Deborah, audiobooks are wildly popular now and much improved from the days when they were abridged or poorly narrated. I’m a big fan of Libby, the library service for audiobooks and ebooks, but there are many other options. You download the book directly to your phone or tablet so you get immediate gratification. Well, unless there’s a wait for copies, but I’m okay with that since I’m a library lifer.
Because of my vision issues, reading in print creates eyestrain. After the newspaper everyday, I don’t have much capacity left, so it’s rare for me to read anything except an audiobook.
My mom became a librarian when I was 10, but before that we visited a couple of times a week, a pattern I followed with my own kiddos. One struggled a bit but was soon sorted with some extra tutoring at home, and the other picked it up just from bring read to.
I started reading to them when they were only days old. I knew the importance of babies hearing a lot of words every day, and turned to books when my one-way conversations ran dry. They responded with body language and coos, especially to rhymes, so I knew we were on the right track even when people laughed at me.
I diagnosed my husband as dyslexic when our kids were little, one of the vast numbers of baby boomers in classrooms with 40 or 50 students. Teachers couldn’t possibly give much individual help. He loves reading, but is very slow, and has much better comprehension with video learning. So he watches something on TV and I go into another room and listen to an audiobook.
But his reading issues are the major reason we didn’t enroll our kids in the public school system, which was still using the 40+ classroom model at the time. I know there’s been huge improvements since, and I’m very glad. Thank you to Ian Rolland and his group of parents that sued for better education.
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Deborah said on September 21, 2026 at 3:01 pm
Julie, LB didn’t go to public schools either partly because of the number of students per teacher and when she was in grade school we lived in an iffy urban neighborhood and the public school she was designated to go to was in terrible shape. Her father was the principal of the Lutheran grade school, so she went there K-8th, then she went to private high school. The public high school she would have had to go to had a metal detector the kids had to walk through when they entered, guns and knives were regularly confiscated from students. There was a lot of poverty and crime in general in the area. Those are the schools that don’t get tax money to help.
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Julie Robinson said on September 21, 2026 at 6:09 pm
Deborah, pretty much ditto except it wasn’t a high crime level, just small nicely kept homes that weren’t very expensive. That was what we faced at the grade school. When we walked into our eventual school there were 12 kids in the kindergarten class and they were all reading, writing, and doing addition. I wasn’t allowed to bring her to the public school, whereas she was welcomed and given the special person chair at St John.
As for D’s high school, it was caught up in race riots and he did have to walk through metal detectors and duck to avoid fights in the cafeteria. At least he wasn’t shaken down for his lunch money like middle school!
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Colleen said on September 21, 2026 at 7:46 pm
I was an early reader…I remember reading the class a story in kindergarten. When I was little, my dad told me “you can find out anything you need to know in a book.” I was voracious through school (public school) and one of my core memories is near weekly trips to the downtown library in Fort Wayne with my dad….my sister and I would wander around, not sticking to the children’s section, collect some books,and meet up with my dad at the circulation desk.
Both of my parents were readers. We just moved my dad to a “grandpa dorm”, and one of our big issues is what the heck to do with all of his books?!
These days, I don’t read much,and wish I did. But I fall asleep three pages in.
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basset said on September 21, 2026 at 11:14 pm
The two boys my nephew and his ex had together are both starting school this year. Nephew reads to em every night he has em and they love it. Ex says she never reads to em, they’re “too old for that.”
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ROGirl said on September 22, 2026 at 5:29 am
My parents read to me, but after I had learned how to read, I insisted on reading to them. We regularly went to the library and I would get a stack of books and read them all in pretty quick order when we got home. I still love to read and go to my local library, but I do fall asleep when I read in bed.
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kayak woman said on September 22, 2026 at 9:32 am
I come from an extended family of readers and I often think that whatever parenting mistakes I made when my daughters were young, one thing I did right was read to them, even after they became independent readers. I enjoy reading aloud and have good memories of a summer at our family’s beach on L. Superior when I read Indian in the Cupboard (on the beach) to multiple generations of people. In recent years, I have embraced audio books mainly because they allow me to multi-task a bit.
P.S. From the small world department, I know the MI teacher you linked to from college. We were both high end flute players. She went on to become a high school band director. I fell (backwards, like how did I get here?) into the tech world and eventually left music behind. We didn’t know each other well as we only crossed paths for a year or so.
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Jeff Gill said on September 22, 2026 at 9:14 pm
A quick note for those I know have been following events on other social media: my sister & brother & I got our mother moved to a new memory care facility today, from Bloomington up to the southern edge of Noblesville, Indiana.
And it’s been a month of living in the Upside-down of the “senior care industry” and the “assisted living space” for “memory care functionalities” which exist in an uneasy balance with real estate investment trusts, and leveraging properties for shareholder benefit. Meanwhile, we are all if not shareholders, then residents, patients, customers, payees, POAs, beneficiaries, authorizations, arrearages, portals, all mixed in with the occasional reference to mission statements which literally have the ability to make me see red, or at least a faint pink mist at the edges of my vision, and to start humming “One Day More.”
Oh, why not everyone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sv-BxH3SVS8
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Dave said on September 22, 2026 at 11:51 pm
Lifetime reader, at least from the time I got my first library card and I’ve had a public library card every place I’ve ever lived since, with the exception of Athens. I don’t read many dense books today but I’ve always got a book around to read and I didn’t come from a family of readers. I don’t recall ever seeing my mother read anything but magazines and the only time I ever saw my father reading a book was when he was recovering from open heart surgery. I did, however, have an uncle who was an English teacher who loved reading and books and explaining books.
Way off topic but today I learned from listening to Sirius XM 60’s Satellite Survey, that the song, so well known in Ohio, “Hang On, Sloopy”, was originally written about a girl from Steubenville named Dorothy Sloop, who was a jazz singer and who attended Ohio University for at least one year and never OSU, which is so strongly attached to the song. Hostess, did you know this?
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basset said on September 23, 2026 at 7:58 am
Didn’t know about the Ohio State connection, can someone catch me up on that?
IIRC, the Left Banke’s “Walk Away Renee” and “Pretty Ballerina” were both written about the same woman.
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alex said on September 23, 2026 at 9:32 am
Dave, what I found even more interesting about “Hang on Sloopy” is that the lead singer and guitarist of the McCoys (the band that popularized the song) was Rick Derringer, who hailed from the same corner of Ohio as Nancy’s husband, Alan Derringer. However, it appears that Rick Derringer’s birth name was actually Zehringer and Derringer was his stage name. (Alas, he also became an outspoken Trumper. He died this year at the age of 77.)
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Jakash said on September 23, 2026 at 12:58 pm
While there’s no mention of Dorothy Sloop, Rick Zehringer gets a shout-out. Here ya go, Basset. “An Ohio State tradition since 1965.”
At football games, “at the end of the third quarter, you can count on Ohio Stadium erupting into dancing as The Ohio State University Marching Band performs ‘Hang on Sloopy.’
…
“…The timing is dynamite: The McCoys’ ‘Hang on Sloopy’ hits No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 list on Oct. 2, 1965 — exactly one week before the Ohio State marching band played it for the first time in Ohio Stadium.
…
“It became synonymous with Ohio State and the state of Ohio, with the 116th Ohio General Assembly passing a resolution to make ‘Hang on Sloopy’ the state’s official rock song on Nov. 20, 1985.”
https://www.osu.edu/impact/life-at-ohio-state/hang-on-sloopy
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Dave said on September 23, 2026 at 3:42 pm
Alex, Rick was actually from Fort Recovery and/or Union City, which is split between Ohio and Indiana. I believe he was born in Celina, OH, without looking it up. As I’ve said before, I knew his father, who a track supervisor or, as they called them in those days, a roadmaster for the Nickel Plate and later the Norfolk and Western Railway and had him ride with me a couple of times as they were required to ride trains occasionally. He was commonly called Peck Zehringer but his given name was John.
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Sherri said on September 23, 2026 at 6:13 pm
Still fighting the insurance battle, but some progress has been made. As I understand things, Microsoft terminated my husband’s health insurance the day he retired. We signed up for COBRA, but the COBRA benefits administrator only notifies the insurance company once a week, and we missed that week’s cutoff. So, now, a week later, the health insurance company knows about us! Yay!
But…we still can’t get our prescriptions filled. Because the COBRA administrator also has to let the pharmacy benefits manager know, and that happens 24-48 hours after they notify the health insurer. So until that goes through, hopefully in a day or two, my pharmacy just sees our insurance as terminated.
Two highly educated people, hours spent on the phone with multiple companies – I don’t get how anyone gets anything done.
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Jeff Gill said on September 24, 2026 at 8:39 am
As I’m putting my mother in a new memory care facility, message from my wife that our Medicare supplemental through the Emeriti program from her higher ed retirement just more than doubled. So now that I’m home, we’re burning half of today to meet with someone an hour away to figure out our options, with me just onto it (within six months gives me flexibility she doesn’t have since she retired over a year ago), and we’ll have to pay to save any money for her. It’s all just three walnuts and a pea, except there is no pea.
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Julie Robinson said on September 24, 2026 at 9:51 am
When will our politicians wake up and realize how broken healthcare and health insurance is?
I’m on day four of trying to get treatment for my shoulder injury, which apparently isn’t going to heal itself. All I’m asking for is imaging and an ortho referral, and it seems insurmountable. Along the way I’ve picked up the valuable knowledge that l a message left on the nurse line will never be listened to as they are so far behind. Silly me, thinking it would be faster than a mychart message.
My doctor had a second baby earlier this year and I’m really wondering if everything is okay with her. Still, her staff should be able to handle simple requests.
It’s no wonder people end up at the ER for everyday care.
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alex said on September 24, 2026 at 10:43 am
Just had an appointment with my diabetes nurse practitioner yesterday and it’s amazing all of the things that will change when I begin Medicare one week from today. I’ll be seeing her quarterly instead of twice a year (mandated by Medicare), and with any luck I’ll be able to go back on Mounjaro which was making me lose weight and delivering much better lab values than the Ozempic which I’m using because my ACA plan took Mounjaro off of its formulary.
I still haven’t received my Medicare card even though I have my new supplemental insurance cards from Humana. Not sure what’s up with that.
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Julie Robinson said on September 24, 2026 at 11:37 am
Alex, if you have an online account with Medicare you can print a copy of the card. Mine was delayed too.
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Julie Robinson said on September 24, 2026 at 2:01 pm
The saga continues but I’m getting an X-ray tomorrow afternoon. I won’t bore everyone with how much time and effort that took to accomplish. At one point I was being told the wait would be longer than a week. This is to get an X-ray anywhere in the Orlando Health system. I ask you.
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susan said on September 24, 2026 at 3:32 pm
Julie, did you try going to an urgent care/walk-in clinic or whatever they are called in your area? That usually works.
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Julie Robinson said on September 24, 2026 at 4:21 pm
That idea is looking better and better in hindsight.
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Mark P said on September 24, 2026 at 4:33 pm
Around here, urgent care sends you to the ER for x-rays. Or anything else serious.
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Scout said on September 24, 2026 at 4:38 pm
Julie @ 27 asked: When will our politicians wake up and realize how broken healthcare and health insurance is?
Answer: As long as THEY get Cadillac Care for life, why would they give a rat’s left foot about the rest of us? Too many of them are addicted to the campaign money they get from the insurance/pharma cabal that nothing ever will change.
We are seriously looking into retiring in Mexico. Besides wanting good, cheap healthcare we’re simply exhausted by the corruption and dysfunction of our shithole government. Even when (not if) we take back the House and Senate in November, things have been so thoroughly fucked in less than 2 years by the Rapepublicans, there is no way they get unfucked in less than a decade or two, and that is if we also win in 2028 and 2032. And we all know that the price increases coming our way for literally everything, thanks to Pedolph Shitler’s Iran mis-adventure, will never go back down again. And we also know that when the Dems can’t instantly fix the mess, voters will put the Nazi fascists back in power because that’s how our idiotic undereducated citizenry rolls.
Sorry to be a pessimist, I’m in a permanent funk these days.
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