EducationNews Commentaries and Reports

An Interview with Dr. Marilyn Jager Adams and Janie Feinberg - Applying early education research to middle and high school
By Delia Stafford
Columnist EducationNews.org
One of the challenges facing schools is how to apply research to the classroom effectively. Both of youFeinberg and Adams represent two sides of the same “education” coin—research and application. Over the past several years, there has been a good deal of attention given to the achievement gap in the early grades. More recently, we have seen attention given to student performance at the 8th grade level and in high school. How pervasive are the problems at the middle and high school levels?

NEW TEACHERS: “I WASN'T PREPARED FOR THE CHALLENGES OF TEACHING IN A DIVERSE CLASSROOM.
Public Agenda
Third in Series of Reports on First-Year Teachers Identifies Two Insufficient Areas of Training: Teaching in Diverse Classrooms and Working with Special-Needs Students
Smaller Class Size Would Ameliorate Both Challenges, New Teachers Say

Roll Call of Combatants in the Reading Wars
Dr. Patrick Groff, Professor of Education Emeritus, San Diego State University
The media is prone to dub the current international controversy, over how English-speaking students are best taught to read, as the "reading wars." The point in calling this dispute a "war" obviously is to leave the impression that there must be some reasonable, overlooked means by which this argument can be resolved among educators, so that children learning to read will be the beneficiaries of its termination.

In Defense of Testing Series: Censorship & Braggadocio File
In Defense of Testing Series - ThirdEducationGroup.org
Third Education Group is assembling a Censorship & Braggadocio File that includes examples of education researchers making erroneous claims of "first-ever" studies or declaring an extant research literature nonexistent.

Is Poverty is the Problem for the Lack of Academic Achievement?
The Forum for Education and Democracy
The Forum’s work is that of a ‘reality based’ policy think tank concerned with educational policy that will support strong public schools. We have many friends in that work, and one of them is Mike Rose. In case you haven’t met him, we thought we would introduce you to his work in this week’s newsletter.

Children’s Summer Learning Can Be Even Better Than School
By Dorothy Rich
Columnist EducationNews.org
Mostly, schools still run on a agricultural schedule as if there were plenty of cows for kids to milk and fields to be harvested. In a way, for families it was easier then, even when the work was backbreaking. Kids were kept busy, and the family was around to keep an eye on them. And, everyone in the family felt important and needed to keep life going.

When Diversity Becomes Divisive
by Terry Lawler
Columnist EducationNews.org
The other day I Googled the word “diversity.” As I expected, I was regaled with pages of Internet sites, many touting diversity programs and strategies designed to improve interaction between students . The way to make this improvement, say the experts, is to educate one segment of the student population as to the ways in which another segment differs from them.

Bloom off the Rose
American Spectator
By RiShawn Biddle
NEW YORK -- Michael Bloomberg isn't getting a lot of help these days in securing his legacy as mayor of New York City. The state's otherwise dysfunctional legislature and new Gov. David Paterson dealt a blow to Bloomberg's school reform agenda last month when they essentially banned the use of test scores and other student data in evaluating the performance of new teachers.
NY LEFT BACK IN TOP-SCHOOL RANKING

Stopping Adult Illiteracy at the Source
Tom Sticht
Columnist EducationNews.org
In 2003, the National Assessment of Adult Literacy from the U. S. Department of Education indicated that as many as 5 percent of adults over the age of 16 were non-literate in English (that's 11 million adults), 14 percent (30 million)were below basic in literacy, and another 29 percent (63 million) possessed only basic literacy skills.

Psychiatric Help 5¢
Will Fitzhugh
Columnist EducationNews.org
In Peanuts, when we see Lucy offering Psychiatric Help for a nickel, we know it is a joke: ("The Psychiatrist is IN"), but when English teachers in the schools insist that students write about the most intimate details of their private lives for school assignments, that is not a joke, it is an unwarranted intrusion.

Public School Questions
David W. Kirkpatrick
Columnist EducationNews.org
WHY is certification required for those who teach in the public schools but not for the education professors who teach others to teach in the public schools?WHY does schooling require more certification credentials than any other profession -- to teach at the elementary level, to teach at the secondary level, to be an elementary school principal, to be a secondary school principal, to be a superintendent, ad infinitum?

An Interview with Margie Gillis : The Haskins Literacy Initiative
Michael F. Shaughnessy
Senior Columnist EducationNews.org
Eastern New Mexico University
First of all, what exactly is this Haskins Literacy Initiative? Haskins Literacy Initiative promotes the science of teaching reading in three main ways. First, we provide comprehensive professional development, coaching and classroom support to make teachers masters of effective literacy practices. Teachers, not programs, teach children to read.

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