The New York Times debates reading methods

Diane Ravitch / January 24, 2002

A careful reader of The New York Times would by now be very confused about the state of reading research. In the past few weeks, three different writers in the newspaper have offered differing interpretations of the issue. Only one of them, in my view, is correct.

If you read the articles from Washington by reporter Diana Jean Schemo, you would conclude that the teaching of phonics is an untried and risky approach that excludes good literature and is under heavy fire by leading reading researchers. In January 2002, Schemo wrote two articles - one about the $900 million reading program in the recently enacted federal education legislation (January 9, 2002) - and the other about Reid Lyon, the Bush administration's key reading expert (January 19, 2002). Both Schemo articles insist that there is a sharp dichotomy between "drilling children in phonics" and the "whole language" method, which she defines as synonymous with teaching good literature. Schemo presents Lyon, chief of the Child Development and Behavior Branch at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, as the Dr. Strangelove of reading instruction, a man whose critics call him "Dr. Lyin'." She clearly prefers the critics who are skeptical of the value of phonics and who claim that the NICHD research is wrong. 

Richard Rothstein, the newspaper's regular weekly columnist on education, who ordinarily uses words carefully, defines whole language as "exposure to literature," in contrast to phonics, which (he

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The New York Times debates reading methods

Better teachers in NYC: recruiting outsiders and retraining veterans

January 24, 2002

A New York Times article last week described how a young teacher in Brooklyn helped her students achieve test score improvements large enough to help get the school off the state's "registration review" list of failing schools. What's special about the teacher, Melanie Brown, is that she is a history and economics major who made her way into teaching through New York City's special recruiting and fast-track training program for talented career-changers, not through a traditional pre-service teacher-preparation program.  The article, by Anemona Hartocollis, describes the tremendous efforts of teachers like Brown and her mentor, Aissatou Diop, who met on Friday and Saturday nights throughout the year to plan for the coming week.  While Hartocollis portrays Brown as someone whose greatest strength may have been her mastery of the material she taught, particularly in math, the New York Post reported this week that NYC Schools Chancellor Harold Levy has proposed spending $9 million over three years to send city math teachers back to school to learn math, which is one of the recommendations of a commission he established last year. Critics of the proposal say that the money will be wasted if teacher training includes the "fuzzy math" of the new standards set by the state Board of Regents and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. Read more in "How Troubled P.S. 307 Climbed Off the Bottom," by Anemona Hartocollis, The New York Times, January 16, 2002, (abstract

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Better teachers in NYC: recruiting outsiders and retraining veterans

Districts to abandon reduced class sizes in California

January 24, 2002

Until this year, virtually all school districts in California participated in the state's class size reduction program, with the state footing most of the cost. This year, a number of school districts have indicated that they will be dropping the program, which caps class size at 20 in grades one through three, because of money shortages.  Districts found themselves shouldering more of the program's costs as teachers advanced up the pay scale faster than state funding increased, and the state's faltering budget will give districts less discretionary funding to cover the difference this year. Faced with the choice of raising class sizes or eliminating art, music and science teachers for elementary schools, some districts (and parents) are opting for larger classes. For details see "Class Size Reform Eroding," by Jessica Garrison, Los Angeles Times, January 21, 2002.

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Districts to abandon reduced class sizes in California

Milwaukee public schools respond to competition

January 24, 2002

"Years of vouchers and competition-based reforms mean it's no longer a novelty to see MPS [Milwaukee Public Schools] promoting schools the way Procter & Gamble sells Tide," writes Sam Schulhofer-Wohl in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, but "the public school system's promotional efforts are reaching newly feverish heights this winter" with free chili dinners at MPS open houses, radio ads, and MPS's weekly TV show promoted on paper placemats at McDonald's. A $60,000 marketing campaign last winter brought an estimated 850 to 1200 students into MPS; this time around, the district is spending $95,000 and taking advantage of thousands of dollars worth of donated TV and radio airtime and billboard space. The district is also seeing positive results from its policy of requiring students to pass proficiency tests before leaving eighth grade, reports the newspaper's Alan Borsuk. The percentage of ninth-graders who graduated to tenth grade at the end of the year last June increased significantly, with grade point averages and attendance for ninth graders also increasing. For more see "MPS marketing gets an 'E' for everywhere," by Sam Schulhofer-Wohl, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, January 18, 2002, and "More MPS  students go on to 10^th grade," by Alan Borsuk, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, January 17, 2002.

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Milwaukee public schools respond to competition

Building Civic Capacity: The Politics of Reforming Urban Schools

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / January 24, 2002

Clarence Stone, Jeffrey Henig, Bryan Jones and Carol Pierannunzi, 2001

In this book from the University Press of Kansas, a quartet of political scientists develops the concept of "civic capacity" as a way - the best way - to bring about true education reform. It's not just an education policy book, however. Though its guts are based on the authors' NSF-funded study of education change in eleven cities (including some 500 interviews), the book's real purpose is to develop a new theory of political change, one that centers on the creation and use of civic capacity in a community. It partakes of Coleman's and Putnam's work on "social capital" but faults that work for being too taken with private relationships and organizations and insufficiently attentive to the role of government. It also draws on, and praises, Paul Hill's work ("It Takes a City....") but suggests that Hill and colleagues also exaggerate the roles of non-governmental entities and forces. These authors harbor no doubt that "Government is not simply one among many equal social entities. It is the unit best suited to generate a collective sense of purpose when one is missing, to coordinate or coerce action when interests remain disparate, and to provide a vehicle for democratic control." They emphasize that it's the general-purpose government (i.e. mayor, city council, etc.) that they place this confidence in, not the separate governance system that characterizes public education in most American communities. So they

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Building Civic Capacity: The Politics of Reforming Urban Schools

Enhancing Teacher Quality through Knowledge- and Skills-based Pay

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / January 24, 2002

Allan Odden, Carolyn Kelley, Herbert Heneman, and Anthony Milanowski, Consortium for Policy Research in Education, November 2001

Allan Odden and several associates at the Consortium for Policy Research in Education recently published this review of the theory and practice of financially rewarding teachers "for acquiring and demonstrating specific knowledge and skills needed to meet educational goals." Note that this isn't what's commonly referred to as "merit pay" as it's not keyed to teachers' effectiveness in boosting their students' achievement. Rather, it's based on attributes of the teachers themselves, what they know and are able to show that they can do. The authors also take pains to distinguish it from "career ladders" which, at least as they characterize them, tend to pull the best teachers out of the classroom into administrative roles. They found seven programs in K-12 education that satisfy their criteria. Based on what they learned from those programs, they identify a set of key design issues; draw eleven lessons (most of them pretty obvious) from "the pioneers"; and briefly discuss policy implications for states. It's fairly general, but perhaps that's all that can be expected from a twelve-page "policy brief." If you'd like to see it, call 215-573-0700 or find a PDF version on the web at http://www.cpre.org/Publications/rb34.pdf.

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Enhancing Teacher Quality through Knowledge- and Skills-based Pay

Evaluating the Accelerated Schools Approach: A Look at Early Implementation and Impacts on Student Achievement in Eight Elementary Schools

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / January 24, 2002

Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation, December 2001

Accelerated Schools is a well-known schoolwide reform model developed by Henry Levin and now used in some 700 elementary and middle schools. But does it work? Until now, there hasn't been any persuasive outside evidence. Now the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC), funded by the Ford Foundation, has closely examined the implementation and impact of Accelerated Schools in eight elementary schools over 8 years. The bottom line, says this study, is that when the program is faithfully executed over several years, third grade test scores begin to rise and, by the fifth year, exceed "predicted" levels in reading and math by a "statistically significant amount." How significant? About as much as is claimed for the celebrated Tennessee class-size reduction program. Program supporters assert that these Accelerated School findings may understate the program's impact because the scores that were compared include all children found in third grade when the tests were given, not just those who were in the schools long enough to be affected by the program's impact. They also say that program improvements during the 90's mean that Accelerated Schools works better and faster today than in the years studied by MDRC. But the study also has some serious limitations. It involves just 8 schools. There's no control group, which means score gains are compared with predicted test scores based on what third graders in those schools were scoring before the program arrived. It's

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Evaluating the Accelerated Schools Approach: A Look at Early Implementation and Impacts on Student Achievement in Eight Elementary Schools

Fifty Modern Thinkers on Education: From Piaget to the Present

Terry Ryan / January 24, 2002

edited by Joy A. Palmer, 2001

Ideas matter and nowhere is this truer than in education. Since at least the time of the ancient Greeks, people have argued over how children learn and how education should be structured to facilitate their learning. In Plato's view, the disciplined study of formal knowledge is central to the development of a strong and rational mind. Children need to learn what society values and cares deeply about, and it is the job of the teacher to get those ideas across. This was the dominant view of education until the 18^th century, when Jean Jacques Rousseau argued in Emile that education is largely an internal process that should be driven by the individual interests of children. For Rousseau, a good teacher allows the natural inclinations of the human individual to unfold and endure through personal discovery and experience. Today, when educators argue about a content-driven model of education versus a student-centered model of education, they are reviving a debate from centuries long ago. Unfortunately for readers of Fifty Modern Thinkers on Education, this volume only presents half of the debate. Fifty Modern Thinkers is the second volume of a two-part collection (by the British publishing firm Routledge) that purports to cover the works of those educational thinkers who have influenced educational thought and practice from the earliest times to the present day. (The first volume covered thinkers from Confucius to Dewey.) The book is a collection

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Fifty Modern Thinkers on Education: From Piaget to the Present

From TAAS To TAKS: A Progress Report on New Assessment for Texas Public Schools

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / January 24, 2002

Chris Patterson, Texas Public Policy Foundation, January 2002

It's no secret that the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) has long had big differences with the main thrust of education reform in the Lone Star State. This 64-page report, written by TPPF education research director Chris Patterson, continues in that vein. It seeks to predict whether Texas's new statewide assessments (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, or TAKS), which are to be pilot-tested in the next few months, are "on course to meet requirements and expectations." In TPPF's view, they probably aren't because, charges Ms. Patterson, they aren't all that different from the TAAS tests that they're to replace. She says "There is little evidence that TAKS tests will be sufficiently different from previous state assessments...to measure more meaningful academic expectations, set high standards for proficiency, increase test accuracy, and produce more useful information about student performance." She urges various steps to correct the problem. At their core is the highly charged political recommendation that the State Board of Education be placed in charge of the assessment system. Today the lead responsibility rests with the state commissioner of education and the Texas Education Agency that he heads - and that TPPF has had problems with for as long as I can remember. Politics aside, this report raises some non-trivial questions about the tests themselves, questions that state policymakers will surely want to consider as they move forward. You can find a PDF

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From TAAS To TAKS: A Progress Report on New Assessment for Texas Public Schools

Tuition Tax Credits: A Model for School Choice

Katherine Somerville / January 24, 2002

Lisa Graham Keegan, National Center for Policy Analysis, December 18, 2001

In a brief for the National Center for Policy Analysis, Lisa Graham Keegan, CEO of the Education Leaders Council and former Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction, makes the case for tuition tax credits, which were found constitutional by the Arizona Supreme Court in 1999.  She explains the logistics of the credits, which have since been adopted in Florida and Pennsylvania and are gaining in popularity. In Arizona, taxpayers make a voluntary donation to a school tuition organization (STO) of their choice and in turn, their tax payment is reduced by the amount of the donation.  The STO, working as a nonprofit organization, turns the money into tuition scholarships for students to attend private schools.  Since its inception in 1998, the Arizona program has grown enormously.  Donations have jumped from $2 million in 1998 to $17.2 million in 2000, with 70 to 80 percent of its scholarships going to low-income families.  The Pennsylvania model is similar to that of Arizona, but differs in that it authorizes tax credits to businesses instead of individual taxpayers, and that it is 75 cents on the dollar rather than dollar-for-dollar. Keegan attributes the success of tuition tax credit programs both to their simplicity and to the incentive they provide for taxpayers and businesses to support educational opportunities.  Her concise analysis can be accessed on the web at http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba/ba384/ or by contacting Joan Kirby at

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Tuition Tax Credits: A Model for School Choice