America can't wait until middle school!
Sent to the Columbus Dispatch, May 30, 2012
High school credit for middle-school courses is of course a step in the right direction, but doesn’t go nearly far enough (“Middle-schoolers get additional shots at taking high-school courses,” May 30).
Why wait until middle school? We should strengthen instruction in the earlier years as well. Back in 1998, I called for prenatal phonemic awareness training (published in the professional journal Reading Improvement), which, along with a more rigorous and extensive preschool program, should prepare children for high school credit classes much earlier than middle school.
Of course this increased academic load will require a longer school day. For a reasonable suggestion, please see O’Neal and Hicks’ paper in the Journal of Irreproducible Results in which they conclude that a 21-hour