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Karen Vaites Profile picture
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Feb 17 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
As we near 2 yr anniversary of US COVID restrictions, borne most heavily by children…

Docs speaking out for normalcy for kids find their home locations & kids’ details posted online by anonymous trolls.

In viciously personal threads that get amplified by PH Twitter giants.
I’m not going to give one more eyeball to the thread by linking to it. Good for Twitter for removing the doxxing Tweets and at least Gonsalves came to his senses.

But this is what passes for discourse in America. For advocating for approaches already successful in Europe.
I will, however, amplify these replies to Gonsalves,

Because they are 🎯.
Twitter destroyed the platform when they allowed anonymous trolls to flourish.

Every aspect of our national discourse has declined since. Especially #onhere.

Thank you to everyone still standing up for kids, in spite of the toxic nature of the conversation.

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More from @karenvaites

Karen Vaites Profile picture
Feb 19
I've been digging into claims that @CDCgov recently lowered its bar for children's speech development.

CDC did change milestones. Today, it's out of line with @ASHAWeb & NY State.

Importantly, these other orgs haven't changed any guidance during the pandemic.

Let's unpack.
Now, I'm not a speech pathologist, nor do I play one on Twitter. But literacy advocates & Speech & Language Pathologists share common advocacy terrain, so I Know People.

I had many conversations today with SLP friends. The universal refrain:

@ASHAWeb is the Gold Standard.
The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (@ASHAWeb) is clear that "saying fewer than 50 words" when a child is two years old is a sign of a "language problem."

See:
asha.org/public/early-i… Image
Read 28 tweets
Karen Vaites Profile picture
Feb 18
This is a really important piece by @natwexler.

First and foremost, it's the only reporting I've seen on a major achievement by @TNedu:

Almost all Tennessee districts now use high-quality curriculum! That's HUGE.

forbes.com/sites/nataliew…
Increasing use of high-quality curriculum is a longtime goal of many states. In fact, 13 states participate in @CCSSO's High-Quality Instructional Materials and Professional Development (IMPD) network, squarely focused on this goal.

TN is one of the 13...
learning.ccsso.org/high-quality-i…
And so far, it's the biggest success story, given this traction.

In 2019-20, I had a chance to visit six of the pioneers in this work with the #KnowledgeMatters School Tour, and the local leadership was abundant.

Here was one thread – it's long, but...+
Read 8 tweets
Karen Vaites Profile picture
Feb 17
There’s something exceptionally important about the design flaws of the two most popular curricula in K-12 education:

👉 They track children in kindergarten.

That makes them structurally ableist, and some would say racist.

Let’s unpack.
The main reason kids don’t get enough work with books at their grade level:

These curricula put kids into leveled reading groups, in which they do their literacy lessons with books at that level.

When you go into classrooms, you find kids in low, medium, and high groups.
It’s treated like a smart, even scientific approach.

But there is zero evidence that it works, and compelling evidence that challenging all kids with books at their grade level develops reading skills more effectively. More info summarized here:

eduvaites.org/2019/11/02/lev…
Read 8 tweets
Karen Vaites Profile picture
Feb 16
This piece continues the @nytimes coverage pattern when it comes to K-12 education:

An over-weighting of identity politics, to the exclusion of other major issues concerning parents.

🧵

By @thomasfullerNYT:
nytimes.com/2022/02/16/us/…
Did you know that San Francisco declined to reopen schools in Fall, 2020 even though local COVID positivity was less than 1%… even as other districts opened at similar (in NYC) and higher (in sun belt) rates?

The NYT piece does not tell you this.
Did you know that SF schools remained closed until Spring, 2021… as most schools across the US reopened? (Reminder: 60% of US schools had opened by mid-October ‘20.)

And that SF parents protested the closures at the time?

@thomasfullerNYT doesn’t get into these details.
Read 22 tweets
Karen Vaites Profile picture
Feb 16
I picture @DrJayVarma reading this tweet and thinking the same thing I am thinking:

Why didn’t Eliza cover this closure as a “dark moment” when it was happening…

👉 And she was one of the most empowered people who could have stopped it?
Remember that time NYC schools closed, and only @michaelgartland of the @NYDailyNews reported on the fact that BDB was acting against the advice of experts like @DrJayVarma?

What might have happened if Eliza had covered that angle?

🤔

nydailynews.com/coronavirus/ny…
Remember when @elizashapiro covered the closure of schools for 1M children as if it was just a labor power struggle?

Not in the piece:
- health experts
- reassuring NYC testing data
- concerns about children
- a hint of the parent outrage / national outcry abt the closure

🧵:
Read 4 tweets
Karen Vaites Profile picture
Feb 15
Denmark to mostly-American COVID Twitter:

Stop with the misinfo.

Well done, Danes. Well done.
en.ssi.dk/covid-19/typic…
Their Twitter:
“Dear Eric,”

Standing O, Danes. 👏👏👏👏👏

Now imagine if we had an agency doing this. Accurately, of course.
Read 4 tweets

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