Tag Archive for 'Literacy'

E.D. Hirsch, Jr.’s “Modest Proposal” to Fix State Standards

Published by Robert Pondiscio on March 18, 2008 in Assessment and Testing, Curriculum and Educational Policy. 9 Comments

American Educator If low performance on reading tests is a function of poor content knowledge, and if broad swaths of the school day are wasted practicing reading strategies on content-free reading, why not solve both problems with reading tests that cover explicit content standards? That’s the “modest proposal” put forth by Core Knowledge founder E.D. Hirsch, Jr. in the new issue of American Educator (PDF).

Hirsch has long argued that content knowledge is the key to reading comprehension, and describes the long periods devoted to language arts, the de rigueur reading block, as a “cognitive wasteland.” Instead he proposes language arts standards that specify literary works and techniques, and directly correspond to the content standards in other subjects—especially science and social studies. Why? Because some of those non-literary topics are going to show up in passages on the reading tests.

“So my modest proposal is that reading tests should contain passages about specific topics taught not just in literature, but in all other subjects taught in that grade, except for math,” writes Hirsch. “For instance, if third-grade language arts standards specify Alice in Wonderland, third-grade science standards call for studying the speed of light, and third-grade social studies standards include the Vikings’ explorations of North America, then passages on the third-grade reading test should cover those same topics. We would then have true curriculum-based reading tests instead of the mysterious tests we now have. This cunning device would make tests fairer and pedagogically more useful, and boost our students’ abilities.”

As long as reading is viewed as a discrete set of skills that can be transferred from text to text, practiced and perfected, schools will continue to spend a disproportionate amount of time on test prep. Hirsch’s proposal is a nifty piece of intellectual jujitsu, which would make test prep make sense.

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We Like Mike!

Published by Robert Pondiscio on March 14, 2008 in Curriculum and Educational Policy. 0 Comments

New York TimesI could kiss Michael Petrilli on the mouth.

A perennial, frustrating blind spot among ed reformers, with their monomaniacal focus on systems, structures and accountability, is curriculum. Trying to build good schools without looking at curriculum is like trying to build a winning baseball team by focusing on the parking lot, the stadium and the vendors and assuming the “baseball people” are the experts on the game. My new hero Mr. Petrilli gets this. Read his take in the Fordham Foundation’s Gadfly on the NY Times piece How Many Billionaires Does It Take to Fix a School System?

“In a 5,000 word forum on education, these words did not appear once: instruction, curriculum, reading, math, history, literature,” sayeth Mr. Petrilli, with the clarity of the child pointing out the Emperor is naked. “This ‘incentivist’ thinking is a fair reflection of the state of the ‘new’ education philanthropy. Staffed mostly by smart MBAs and obsessed with structures and systems and processes, their ignorance about the stuff of education leads to agnosticism. And, predictably, to trouble. (See Joel Klein’s embrace of Diana Lam and Lucy Calkins as Exhibits 1 and 2.).” As Petrilli sees it, to remain agnostic on curriculum and pedagogy is “like sending in nation-builders who can’t speak Arabic and never studied Iraqi history.”

He wraps up with a thought exercise. What if a billionaire wants to focus his philanthropy on smart instructionist investments? Petrilli offers three: Support the development of national standards and tests; create a voluntary national curriculum; and fund thousands of high-quality summer workshops.

Not a bad start. Bravo, sir! Discuss among yourselves, billionaires.

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How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blog

Published by Robert Pondiscio on March 11, 2008 in Opinion. 0 Comments

Before I blundered in to education some years ago, I did many years of service in Big Media. I acquired many of the habits of mind, I confess, that are still found in their halls. So for years I ignored blogs. I found myself taking in more and more of my news online, but blogs? A bunch of wannabes copping an attitude. Ho-hum.

Education has taught me what I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, see. If you really care passionately about something, blogs (the best of them, anyway) are now the medium of first and last resort. Case in point, last week’s scathing Reading First report by Sol Stern for the Fordham Foundation. Go over to Google right now and key in “Sol Stern and Reading First” and be sure to choose “News” not “Web” on Google. Go ahead, try it. I’ll wait.

As I write this, there’s one print media result, from Ed Week. There’s also a great piece by Sara Mead if you’re just catching up to this story. Now, look again at Google. See that little link in the lower left that says “Blogs”? Click it.

There’s eduwonk, Joanne Jacobs, Ken DeRosa, Dean Millot, eduflack and a host of others. If you’re not following the blogs, you don’t know about it. This is happening more and more. Remember the last time Sol Stern set a match to powder with his heretical City Journal piece on vouchers? The blogs had picked the bones clean and left them bleaching in the sun when the New York Times finally got around to it a month later.

I suppose it’s the frustration of the major media not picking up on Stern’s Reading First smackdown that prompted the Fordham Foundation today to issue a statement calling for an investigation “into scandalous efforts by the executive and legislative branches to sabotage the Reading First program.” That call got just as much play as the original report, from the dead-tree traffickers.  All I can say to Checker & Co. is fear not, gentlemen. The Times and the rest will be by eventually. Keep a light on for them.

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Hang ‘Em High

Published by Robert Pondiscio on March 7, 2008 in Assessment and Testing and Teaching. 0 Comments

I’ve been meaning to get to Sol Stern’s eyebrow-raising exegesis of the rise and fall of Reading First. But whether you’ve read it or not, read this blistering response, which imagines a conversation between a smug reading teacher and a fourth-grader who can’t read. It may peel off your wallpaper. Tip ‘o the hat to Ken DeRosa of D-Ed Reckoning for posting this.

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Multiple Literacies

Published by Robert Pondiscio on February 17, 2008 in Education Theory. 0 Comments

The Washington PostHoward Gardner, who has made a lucrative career labeling skills and talents like musical ability and athleticism “intelligences,” is now doing the same for literacy. In an essay in the Washington Post, the Harvard professor is untroubled by dire reports of declining literacy because — what else? — “an ensemble of literacies — will continue to thrive, but in forms and formats we can’t yet envision.”

Thankfully, Gardner observes that “even in the new digital media, it’s essential to be able to read and write fluently and, if you want to capture people’s attention, to write well.” He doesn’t foresee books disappearing, although the printed word bound up at length between covers may lose its most-favored format status.

“But whatever our digital future brings, we need to overcome the perils of dualistic thinking, the notion that what lies ahead is either a utopia or a dystopia,” Gardner concludes. “If we’re going to make sense of what’s happening with literacy in our culture, we need to be able to triangulate: to bear in mind our needs and desires, the media as they once were and currently are, and the media as they’re continually transforming. It’s not easy to do. But maybe there’s a technology, just waiting to be invented, that will help us acquire this invaluable cognitive power.”

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The Knowledge Connection

Published by E. D. Hirsch, Jr. on February 16, 2008 in Core Knowledge and Educational Policy. 0 Comments

Why has the No Child Left Behind law left so many children behind? According to the latest scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the reading achievement of eighth-graders has declined since the law was passed in 2001, and the large reading gap between advantaged and disadvantaged children — “the achievement gap” — has stayed where it was. Today’s eighth-graders had recorded gains in fourth grade, but these have not led to improvements in later grades — when reading scores actually count for a student’s future.

Those in Congress in charge of crafting revisions should understand that the law’s disappointing results owe less to defects in the law than to the methods and ideas schools use in their attempts to fulfill the “adequate yearly progress” mandate for all groups of students; this causes schools, as many complain, to teach to reading tests rather than educate children. But intensive test preparation by schools has resulted in lower reading test scores in later grades. “Teaching to the test” does not effectively teach to the test after all.

Studies of reading comprehension show that knowing something of the topic you’re reading about is the most important variable in comprehension. After a child learns to sound out words, comprehension is mostly knowledge. Many technical studies support the assertion that after students can fluently sound out words, relevant knowledge is the crucial difference between students who are good or poor readers. In light of the relevant science, an analysis of the textbooks and methods used to teach reading and language arts — for three hours a day in many places — indicates some of the reasons for the disappointing later results. These test-prep materials are constructed on the mistaken view that reading comprehension is a skill that can be perfected by practice, as typing can be. This how-to conception of reading has caused schools to spend a lot of unproductive time on trivial content and on drills such as “finding the main idea” and less time on history, science and the arts.

Continue reading ‘The Knowledge Connection’

$1B Reading First Funding Proposed

Published by Robert Pondiscio on February 2, 2008 in Educational Policy. 0 Comments

As first reported by Ed Week’s David J. Hof, President Bush will ask for $1 billion to fund the Reading First program in his FY 2009 budget. Education Secretary confirmed it Friday, and the Associated Press has a copy of the $60 billion White House education budget request, which will be sent to Congress Monday.

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Reading Blockheads

Published by Robert Pondiscio on January 31, 2008 in Education Practice. 0 Comments

Britannica BlogAt the suggestion of today’s ASCD “Smart Brief” I clicked over to the Britannica Blog to check out its education section. Good suggestion. While there, I stumbled upon a terrific Karin Chenoweth piece that escaped my notice when it was posted late last year. What Exactly are Kids Reading in those “Reading Blocks”? Go. Read. Discuss.

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The Children Aren’t Above Average

Published by Robert Pondiscio on January 31, 2008 in Education Practice, Education Theory and Opinion. 0 Comments

SalonIf you missed Garrison Keillor’s lament about the state of education on Salon yesterday (thanks A. Russo) take a look. Stick around to scroll through the responses, many of which can be summarized as “I love Prarie Home Companion, but…”

“This is a bleak picture for an old Democrat,” writes Keillor. “Face it, the schools are not run by Republican oligarchs in top hats and spats but by perfectly nice, caring, sharing people, with a smattering of yoga/raga/tofu/mojo/mantra folks like my old confreres. Nice people are failing these kids, but when they are called on it, they get very huffy. When the grand poobah Ph.D.s of education stand up and blow, they speak with great confidence about theories of teaching, and considering the test results, the bums ought to be thrown out.”

Lots of nice people getting very huffy in the comments section.

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To Read, Perchance to Skim

Published by Robert Pondiscio on January 10, 2008 in Education Practice and Teaching. 4 Comments

New York TimesIs it better to have read and learned, than never to have read at all? The question is posed by Chicago school teacher Will Okun on the New York Times website. His essay is titled “None,” the response he gets when he asks his high school juniors and seniors, many low-income and minority, to list their favorite books. They literally sleep through “The Great Gatsby” and “The Scarlet Letter,” but come alive when the book being discussed is “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” or “The Color Purple.”

Dutifully reflective, Okun blames himself for his failure to get his students interested in the classics. But he’s not exactly beating himself up. “Why should we continue to mandate the teaching of British literature (for instance) if teachers such as I are unable to provoke such little student thought, reflection or learning in the classroom?” he asks. “All the benefits of studying and learning the classics are irrelevant if few students are actually reading or engaged in the material.” I’m not about to be dismissive of how hard it is to get students interested in classic literature, but no teacher can do so if he’s not excited by his subject, and Okun makes it clear he was just as indifferent as a student, calling his high school literature classes “tiresome, uninteresting and irrelevant.”

The real treat is reading the passionate responses to Okun’s post. which is playing to mixed reviews, with some agreeing, but many raising the roof. “Perhaps the classics should be scaled back, but can Toni Morrison really replace Homer? Can Raisin in the Sun replace the Oresteia?” writes one. “It would be a shame if schoolchildren in Germany read Shakespeare, in English, and children in the United States were unable or unwilling.”

Left undiscussed: Is it enough to be familiar with the classics or must they be read cover to cover? If someone describes a relationship as a real life Romeo and Juliet story, and you don’t know the play, you might say “how nice!” If you’ve seen West Side Story and learned it’s based on Romeo and Juliet, you’d say “how sad!” Just knowing that the play is about star-crossed lovers in the middle of a family feud is what allows you to appreciate the allusion. If someone describes her new boss as Lady Macbeth, you might think she’s regal and elegant. If you’re even passingly familiar with the play, you’d offer to help write her resume.

Breadth and depth are ideal, but if I had to choose one or the other for my students, I’d choose breadth.

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