🧵Sight reading a.k.a. whole language or balanced literacy is alive and well in many public school districts.

Yet it was proven to be disastrous at teaching students to read over 180 years ago.

The genesis of this tragedy is outlined in the book, Crimes of the Educators. 👇 Reverend Thomas H. Gallaudet invented the sight method of teaching reading in the early 1800s to teach deaf-mutes to read.

🧵My homeschooling family recently escaped Illinois.

My former state rep, Illinois Democrat Terra Costa-Howard, sponsored legislation, HB2827, the Homeschool Act, to "protect" (regulate) homeschool students.

This is outrageous for 4 reasons: Reason #1: Repeated failure

The relatively affluent Chicago suburb I used to live in boasts "good schools" as one of the justifications for the outrageous property taxes.

Yet 40-50% of the students in these "good" suburban schools are NOT proficient in math or language arts according to the Illinois State Report card. Education bureaucrats gloss over this fact by focusing on so-called year over year improvement, a red herring.

The numbers in Chicago are much worse as only 25% and 18% of students are proficient in language arts and math, respectively.

Homeschoolers repeatedly outperform their public school counterparts academically, so why are Illinois politicians focused on "protecting" homeschoolers and not fixing the problems in Illinois public schools?

🧵Tennessee School Choice is sold as the answer to failing public schools.

But is it?

The Freedom Matters podcast took a deep dive with Classical Conversations CEO, Robert Bortins about why the Tennessee school choice bill may be the worst.

Here are my top 10 takeaways: 👇 1. School Choice is sold as a free market, but it's a quasi market.

Government funding in K-12 education is no different than government funding in healthcare or college.

It distorts the market with perverse incentives, thereby causing increased costs and lower quality.