As to what students should know upon entering high school, for now, you
can look at your state standards. If they are dumb, there's not much you
can do about it if the state is implementing standardized testing and
complying with No (affluent) Child Left Behind, which penalizes
low-scoring schools by giving them even less in the way of resources and
support.

What WE think they should know is a pipe dream at this time. Revising
goals of grammar education is a long-term goal. Right now, we will only
get people's attention if we attend to their immediate needs -- develop
teaching strategies that will WORK in helping students learn the
material they need to pass standardized tests, as well as understand
their own writing better. The two goals are not mutually exclusive. If
anything, state standards that focus on the usual inventory of
correctness issues are quite impoverished in their ambitions. What they
ask for can be embedded in a larger and better language-awareness
curriculum. I've said before that the standards documents do not dictate
HOW to teach.
--
***************************************************
Johanna Rubba, Associate Professor, Linguistics
English Department, Cal Poly State University
San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
Tel. 805-756-2184 ~ Dept. phone 805-756-2596
Dept. fax: 805-756-6374 ~  E-mail: [log in to unmask]
URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
***************************************************

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