Tuesday, May 13, 2008

"The Surge Against First Graders"

Gary Stager at The Huffington Post draws similarities between Iraq and Bush's Reading First.

He outlines "Faulty Intelligence, Profiteering, Enemies Everywhere, The Surge..."
Underlying Reading First is one of the religious right's favorite issues, phonics instruction. Educators have long understood that some students need help sounding out words while learning to read. However, the "reading wars" is an offensive by neoconservatives and religious fundamentalists convinced that every child learns to read in exactly the same way by being taught 43 phonemic sounds in a lockstep sequence. Some suspect that the promotion of "highly structured, systematic sequential explicit phonics" instruction is a Trojan horse for public school privatization while others suggest that phonics is embraced by religious fundamentalists happy to reduce reading to the literal interpretation of text. Either way, Reading First is the federal government's program for mandating uniform phonics instruction. Any parent who has watched a child spontaneously learn to read must question mechanistic theories of human development that oversimplify complex issues.

Check out The Reading First Study: Interim Report. Summary of outcomes:
  • "Reading First did not improve students' reading comprehension.
  • "Reading First increased total class time spent on the five essential components of reading instruction promoted by the program.
  • "Reading First increased highly explicit instruction in grades one and two and increased high quality student practice in grade two.
  • "Reading First had mixed effects on student engagement with print."

It doesn't really work, but at least we got our teachers to spend time on it!

Student Produced Documentaries on Civil Rights

The Digital Legacy Project at Facing History and Ourselves worked with Boston students to create documentaries about Boston's civil rights history by interviewing leaders in their communities.
What was so meaningful about this experience was...being able to meet... I don't want to call them our ancestors but...being able to meet somebody who pretty much changed our lives today, so that we don't live- we wouldn't live the same lives they did in the 60s...."
My favorite: The Struggle for a Good Education with Jean McGuire, Executive Director of the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity, Inc. (METCO). (Only 5 minutes long.)



More on what you'll hear about in the video:

Teacher Says Goodbye, Thanks to NCLB




In this School Library Journal Op-Ed, Jordan Sonnenblick, an urban teacher, shares why he left the classroom.



An exerpt:
If you’re a teacher, thanks for being braver than I am. Thanks for riding it out when I’m just, well, riding out. And if you’re a parent, please fight for your child. Ask to see your school’s test-materials budget and its library budget. Ask to visit the classroom on a random day, unannounced. Ask whether your kid is getting more or less art than she would have had five years ago. Ask why band practice is at 7 a.m. when it used to be part of the school day. And while you’re mourning the loss of art, music, language, or history, ask the one most damning question of all: What took its place? If you get really riled up by the answer, please consider running for a spot on the school board.

As for me, I’m out. And I’m sorry.

Keep Arts in Schools Webinar: May 29

Keep Arts in Schools will be hosting a webinar featuring Varissa McMickens of The DC Arts and Humanities Education Collobarative and Erin Offord of the Dallas Arts Learning Initiative.

The focus of the conversation will be "Igniting Community Action for Arts Learning."

Immigrations Raids Scare CA Parents

Aggressive immigration agents were spotted near an elementary school in East Oakland, CA. Parents fear that students will be targeted.

Listen to the NPR report here.