The Wilson Reading Program and Public School Education Scam

From an ATR:

I got certified level 1 in the Wilson Reading Program. I did the course and it was very  intense and most certainly worthwhile. 

The Wilson program was in every building I visited this year.
 

Because I am an ATR,  I got to observe other teachers teach Wilson, and  I  was  appalled to see how many are teaching this program incorrectly. This program is only as good as the teacher.  Many times I have heard parents say, "Wilson didn't work for their child."  I then wondered if the teacher was certified or trained which parents are not aware of.

 

I thought if I was certified in Wilson, it would open doors for me in finding a reading position.  Unfortunately, nobody cares what my qualifications are. Another big fraud going on that I am learning about is medicaid.  Many agencies bill for services such as speech, OT, etc and these services are not rendered and parents have no clue. 

 

From Betsy Combier's website Parentadvocates.org (2009) 

The New York City Public School Education Scam by Robin Hansen
The New York public schools, have not met ANY of he prescribed conditions to make the Wilson program effective. NYC schools ONLY REQUIRES THE TEACHER TO GET 3 DAYS OF TRAINING before sending them out to teach! There is no test they need to pass. Nothing. The district has been silent on the effectiveness of the Wilson implementation. If it was effective, wouldn't they be publishing those numbers for all to see? Why wouldn't they announce their great results to the world?

           LINK


What's worse than a school district that refuses to implement an effective methodology, proven to help dyslexics and other reading disorders?

How about a school district that masquerades as one who implements a well known reading program to help special education readers? The sad thing is that New York public schools have posed as a model in helping children learn to read. For years, they have advertised the implementation of the Wilson reading system. The Wilson reading program is a highly effective methodology that works with dyslexic readers. Wilson is especially popular with children in the older grades who have fallen behind.

However the key to getting any proven methodology to work, is the program MUST be delivered with fidelity. It must have a well trained teacher, the proper student to teacher ratio, and it must be given in the timely recommended manner.

A reading program can be compared to medication. It must be the right formula, the right dosage and given at specific recommended intervals. If these conditions are not met, then the program will not work and it will emotionally damage and frustrate children who so desperately.

The New York public schools, have not met ANY of he prescribed conditions to make the Wilson program effective. NYC schools ONLY REQUIRES THE TEACHER TO GET 3 DAYS OF TRAINING before sending them out to teach! There is no test they need to pass. Nothing. The district has been silent on the effectiveness of the Wilson implementation. If it was effective, wouldn't they be publishing those numbers for all to see? Why wouldn't they announce their great results to the world?

On March 20, 2009, City Council candidate Jo Anne Simon testified at the New York State Assembly Committee on Education Hearing held at New York City Technical College. She testified:

"Everyday Math, a terrific, but fundamentally different, curriculum has not been implemented correctly, if at all. When controversy arose, instead of training teachers on how to implement the curriculum, and educating parents and the public about why it was innovative and robust, the chancellor backed off on its implementation. Such a program should be rolled out gradually with sufficient resources expended on training and on-going support and guidance for teachers. In the world of reading, the schools contracted with Wilson Reading program, a solid, evidence based, structured multi-sensory program of direct instruction in reading. But teachers received minimal training in its theory and foundation, and in its implementation. The public schools cannot reach validconclusions about pedagogical approaches that teachers don't know how to use.

Teachers are also poorly trained, if at all, in the use of effective and positive behavior management techniques. As more children with special needs are educated in generaleducation classes with teachers not trained to educate these children, more teacher experience in behavior management is needed, not less. Contrast that lack of training with a recent press reports that in a pilot program in Queens, police officers were being given two weeks of training in the use of soft, Velcro handcuffs for young school children. Teachers were given a weekend of Wilson training. When children are really learning how to read and learn, they have a sense of accomplishment and behavior management is a vastly less problematic enterprise. It should be easy to see the results of this misplaced emphasis in our school system.

Moreover, parents and educators are fearful of speaking up. Whether true or not as a practice, the fear of retaliation chills public participation even further.

Something is wrong with this picture.

In talking with parents and educators, there seem to be two prevailing principles which guide the current administration's implementation of the law granting the mayor centralized control of the schools: a disdain for meaningful involvement of parents and educators and disdain for transparency. As one parent told me, Parents feel disenfranchised. Our voices are largely ignored and we are treated as obstacles, not partners, in the education process. The SLT and CEC structures are completely toothless. I have been on the school leadership team for four months. It is clear that the SLTs and the CECs are fronts for the DOE.
As educational historian Diane Ravitch stated in her testimony before this Committee in February, the system of mayoral control of the schools "needs change because it lacks accountability. It lacks transparency. It shuts the public out of public education. It has no checks or balances. It lacks the most fundamental element of a democratic system of government, which is public oversight." I believe that pretty well sums it up."

Dee Alpert, publisher of Special Education Muckraker stated.

"Several years ago, I attended a Reading Wars panel with a NYC DOE reading "expert" panelist. She waxed verbose re their marvelous Wilson training program. I asked around and learned that, at that time, the NYC DOE had about 2,500 teachers so "trained." Looking for something positive to say about the NYC DOE's special ed. programs and services, I wrote to the NYC DOE's chief of special ed. and asked for its evaluation of this program. She replied saying that they were not going to evaluate its effectiveness until they had a "critical mass" of teachers trained. Hmnnn. Critical mass? I wondered if she was waiting for some kind of implosion.

A year or two later, after hearing that they now had 4,000 teachers trained, I asked again. She replied that they did not need to evaluate their Wilson program since it was scientifically-based. But she did fess to the fact that they were to do an evaluation in the near future by asking their Wilson teachers what they felt could be done to make them more effective.

Uh, oh! So I e-mailed a high level DOE official a while later, asking just for any data they had re the effectiveness of their custom Wilson program. Not for an evaluation: just for the raw numbers. In reply I received an extremely testy e-mail telling me that I had asked before for the same information (I had not) and that I still wouldn't be getting it.

I recently spoke to an extremely intelligent, caring young woman who is a NYC DOE Teaching Fellow. The NYC DOE had decided she should be a special education teacher. She was sent to its custom Wilson training program. I asked her how she found it. She replied without hesitation: "totally useless." Then she said that she'd heard they were discontinuing it.

The moral of the story? Well, there's real-world "trained," and then there's education-industry "trained." According to the Wilson web site, it requires many courses, plus substantial hours of work under the supervision of an appropriately-credentialed Wilson professional before one is allowed to call ones self "Wilson trained." And it recommends this advanced level of training to work with kids who have reading disabilities. Whereas the NYC DOE gave staff 3 days.

On the one hand, another NYC DOE teacher who took its custom Wilson training told me she'd been required to sign an agreement to not call herself "Wilson trained" and not to do anything relating to Wilson remediation outside the NYC DOE.

Teachers who "think" they are competent Wilson providers will testify in IDEA hearings that they are properly Wilson-trained - and hearing officers will believe them! In a recent impartial hearing,a NYC DOE custom-Wilson "trained" teacher was represented as a fully qualified,"Wilson trained," reading remediation professional by a district special education official. Under oath. This kind of scam puts parents who seek reimbursement for the competent outside remediation they secure or their children at a huge disadvantage - sometimes an insurmountable one."

Wake up New York taxpayers!! This fraud of pretending to educate children and train teachers is a national shame. NY schools know what to do, but refuse to do it effectively so it will work.

Maya Angelou once said "When we know better, we do better." I guess she didn't meet the NYC schools administrators.

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