MLA Responds to Spellings Commission

Here's a story in Inside Higher Ed about the MLA's new evaluation of the Spellings Commission report on higher education. Apparently the report focuses on how the Spellings Commission ignored the role of the humanities in student learning. Interesting comments from Gerald Graff in the text of the article and some responses to the article from Anne Herrington, Richard Ohmann, and others.

A Barely Passing Grade

USA Today has a report about a study funded by NICHD that "take[s] teachers to task for spending too much time on basic reading and math skills and not enough on problem-solving, reasoning, science and social studies." Of course it's the fault of the teachers. Who else could it be?

Study gives teachers barely passing grade in classroom
By Greg Toppo, USA TODAY
The typical child in the USA stands only a one-in-14 chance of having a consistently rich, supportive elementary school experience, say researchers who looked at what happens daily in thousands of classrooms.

The findings, published today in the weekly magazine Science, take teachers to task for spending too much time on basic reading and math skills and not enough on problem-solving, reasoning, science and social studies. They also suggest that U.S. education focuses too much on teacher qualifications and not enough on teachers being engaging and supportive.

Funded by the National Institutes of Health, educational researchers spent thousands of hours in more than 2,500 first-, third- and fifth-grade classrooms, tracking kids through elementary school. It is among the largest studies done of U.S. classrooms, producing a detailed look at the typical kid's day.

The researchers found a few bright spots — kids use time well, for one. But they found just as many signs that classrooms can be dull, bleak places where kids don't get a lot of teacher feedback or face time. (Read the rest here.)

Dibels, the Bible, and NCATE

Here's a link to this week's Time Magazine cover story on the "The Case for Teaching the Bible." No talk of such a course here in New Mexico (none that I'm aware of anyway), although a couple of high schools where we place student teachers have long-standing Bible as Literature courses. Our English education students can take a Bible as Literature course as an option in our program but not many do.

The Washington Post had a long-story on the front page of the Monday edition on testing, including a sidebar about Dibels.

Finally, I spent a good part of yesterday in meetings about our upcoming NCATE visit. Apparently, everyone lives in fear of Standard Two these days. Any stories, thoughts, or advice?

Don't Just Ignore It, Kill It

See today's Inside Higher Ed for a report on a talk given at CCCC by MIT's Les Perelman about how he coached a student to get a score of 5 on the new essay portion of the SAT:

While many colleges have said that they don’t think the new essay adds much (and many institutions that use other parts of the SAT don’t use the writing scores), Perelman issued a “call to arms” for educators to not just ignore the essay, but to try to kill it. “It does harm,” he said repeatedly in his talk, which was illustrated with slides (received with chuckles and applause by the audience) comparing the College Board to snake oil salesmen. Mixing metaphors a bit, Perelman said colleges must “chase the money changers from the temple” of higher education.

The essay is harming students, Perelman said, because it rewards formulaic writing that views the world as black and white, isn’t based on any facts, and values a few fancy vocabulary words over sincerity. He also said that while most college instructors work to “deprogram” students from the infamous “five paragraph essay” they learned in high school, the SAT test reinforces that approach. Perelman and others noted that the problem isn’t limited to the time students spend actually taking the SAT, but that many students devote months or years of study with coaching services to learning how to write the way the College Board wants — and with students fearful that a poor score will hurt their chances of college admission, they focus on that kind of writing.

More on Reading First

From the Houston Chronicle and the Associated Press:

March 23, 2007, 6:14AM
Report finds Education Department improperly backed aspects of reading program

By NANCY ZUCKERBROD
Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Education Department officials and their contractors appear to have improperly backed certain types of instruction in administering a $1 billion-a-year reading program, congressional investigators found.

The Government Accountability Office report supports assertions by the inspector general of the Education Department, who has released several reports in recent months into the Reading First program.

The program is a key part of the 2002 No Child Left Behind law. It offers intensive reading help for low-income and struggling schools.

The GAO, Congress' investigative and auditing arm, surveyed states to get their views on the program.

In a report due out Friday and obtained by The Associated Press, the GAO states that some states said they received suggestions from federal officials or contractors to adopt or eliminate certain programs or tests.

Read the rest here, or you can go directly to the GAO report.

Reading Recovery and NCLB in the News

A couple of items of interest in the news today, one from Education Week on the appearance of Reading Recovery in the Department of Education's "What Works Clearinghouse" and the second from the Christian Science Monitor about the politics of NCLB.

Education Week
Tutoring Program Found Effective, Despite Cold Shoulder Under Reading First
By Debra Viadero and Kathleen Kennedy Manzo

Reading Recovery, a popular tutoring program for struggling 1st grade readers that has been a target of criticism in recent years from the Bush administration, has received a rare thumbs-up rating from the U.S. Department of Education’s What Works Clearinghouse.

'No Child Left Behind' losing steam
GOP lawmakers are among the biggest critics of Bush's school reform program.
By Gail Russell Chaddock | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON
Support for No Child Left Behind – President Bush's signature education reform – is fraying as it heads into reauthorization this year.

The heaviest criticism is coming from within his own party. Conservative Republicans in the House and Senate introduced bills last week that allow states to opt out of most of the law's requirements, while keeping federal funding. Backers of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) say that move would gut the law.

The Influence of Charter Schools

From today's Washington Post:

Charter School Effort Gets $65 Million Lift

By Jay Mathews
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 20, 2007; A01

The charter school movement, begun 16 years ago as an alternative to struggling public schools, will today make its strongest claim on mainstream American education when a national group announces the most successful fundraising campaign in the movement's history -- $65 million to create 42 schools in Houston.

The money, which comes from some of the nation's foremost donors, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, would make the Knowledge Is Power Program the largest charter school organization in the country. KIPP, which runs three schools in Washington, has produced some of the highest test scores among publicly funded schools in the District and has made significant gains in the math and reading achievement of low-income students in most of its 52 schools across the country.

The announcement, several school improvement experts said, raises the charter school movement to a new level of influence, financial strength and public notice. The number of independently run, taxpayer-supported schools has grown rapidly, to nearly 4,000, since the movement began in 1991. But that counts for only about 5 percent of public schools, and most have been small and overlooked. With the KIPP announcement, experts said, donors will be looking for more ways to expand the most successful models and build large systems, as KIPP plans to do in Houston.

Read the rest here.

What role, if any, are charter schools playing in how English teachers are being prepared where you are? Do you place student teachers in charter schools? Are there particular issues related to working with charter schools?