Sherman Dorn

Summer syllabus finalized

In between bits and pieces of other things, I've finalized the syllabus for the class I start teaching in June. This is a topics course on education reform (history and social-science perspectives on), and I probably didn't take many risks in setting up the summer course. We'll just see how it goes. Four books in common, one independently chosen and read... I'm fairly happy with how I'm using the gap between the fourth and fifth class sessions, but that's before we get into the course. There are a few other ways I'm trying to manage the time (all-day class sessions), and I hope it keeps student interest and motivation high.

And I'm trying an avatar before the course. (If you can't see the Flash avatar box below, you'll have to click through to the entry on my webpage to see it.) We'll see how it goes...



(Voki)

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Posted in Teaching at 03:17 PM (Permalink) | |

Reading First analysis, the Boring Version

I've got to stop being even slightly witty, or I'll continue to be quoted slightly out of context, but in this case, it's entirely my fault for being all "meta" on Mike Petrilli's defense of the Fordham Foundation's defense of Reading First.

So let me try to address the substantive policy issues. No Child Left Behind created a large program (Reading First) to give money to states that promised to adopt early-reading programs with significant research support. This came on the heels of a National Reading Panel report that emphasized the importance of phonemic awareness and phonics instruction to early reading, among the focused questions it addressed.

For now, let me skip the question of the NRP report, since I'm not a reading research specialist (see completely ambiguous disclosure at the end of this entry). Instead of looking at the reading research base, I'm going to make the point that at least the implementation was bollixed up. The Department of Education's appointees to various pieces tied to Reading First were often tied to people at or from one institution (the University of Oregon), and the Inspector General's report was concerned about both conflicts of interest and also the way that many states felt pressured to adopt a specific curriculum/reading program.

I don't have much experience reading program audit reports, but from the few I have, there's an understated quality to most of the language, and it's not clear from the outside whether the muted tones necessarily mean, "Well, someone complained, and there are minor problems," or whether they mean, "I'm going to be very polite, but at least one person screwed up massively, and the only reason why no one's being prosecuted here is because there's no covering statute or the threshold for conviction is pretty high--but since I'm an auditor and not a prosecutor, I'm staying well out of that territory." I'm on the outside, so I have no clue which is which with the Reading First report, though I looks like it shaded into at least minimal corruption.

So it's possible that the Congressional bristling at appropriating funds for Reading First may reflect some informal briefings about the extent of problems. But it's not that simple, either, since Reading First appropriations may also be the way that Congressional Democrats can exercise limited authority over the Bush administration scandals: it may be possible that since Democrats can't punish the DoD or key administration figures over Halliburton the way they'd like, they're going to Make Damn Sure that other shenanigans are shut down (or programs they perceive to be shenanigans). Whether that shades into partisan battles probably depends on your partisan leanings.

... or it may be the standard legislative Scandal Fatigue: "We're not sure exactly what the problem is, but something's wrong, the program evaluation doesn't appear to look good, and maybe just wiping the slate clean is best."

... and wiping the slate clean may be best, both for state officials who want funding for reading programs and also for children. There will probably be a new reading program, with several new statutory requirements to prevent a repeat of what the IG found (or what Congressional leaders think the IG found or are concerned about because of the report or what their staffers think is a good idea in response to the audit report or...).

Whatever federal program comes out of the ashes of Reading First may be as closely related to phonemic awareness and phonics as Reading First, but it may not. The evaluation cracks open the debate over teaching reading that the NRP never really closed. I'm not sure it's that controversial that fluency is important but not sufficient to guarantee comprehension. But Big Bucks are involved, so everything gets magnified. The corruption in Reading First hasn't helped that, either.

(And now the disclosure: My experiences are firmly on the side of phonemic awareness's importance: I was a postdoc with a fellow postdoc who was a firm advocate of Direct Instruction (with capital letters), and I've seen similar stuff work with struggling young readers. And one of my children clearly learned to read relying first on phonics and classic blending instruction (together with individualized picture mnemonics to learn the ball-and-stem letters' sounds). But my DI friend's roommate was a comprehension researcher who teased her friend, "So after your kids learn to sound out words fluently, they need to come to me to learn what the stuff means!" The struggling readers I mentioned earlier also had the benefit of engaging text. And my other child clearly was a print-convention person whose learning of reading didn't appear to need phonics instruction, as far as I can recall. Go figure, but if you can find an ax I'm grinding here, you're pretty creative.)

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Posted in Education policy at 07:38 PM (Permalink) | |

Agreements with Fordham

Lest readers assume I disagree with Mike Petrilli and Fordham colleagues on everything, let me give them full credit for standing on the right side of science education in Florida, where they were ahead of the curve several years ago in criticizing the state Department of Education's cowardice on science standards, supported the new standards, and criticized Florida Senator Ronda Storms's efforts to couch religious and political intrusions into science education under the misleading term of academic freedom. I'm a supporter of academic freedom, but Fordham and I agree that many Florida legislators need a bit more education on the concept and on what science is.

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Posted in Education policy at 09:35 PM (Permalink) | |

Extra credit assignment for grad students

2 extra points, a gold star, and a free hall pass to beginning scholars who can spot the flaws in Mike Petrilli's defense of Reading First. It's clear that the Reading First program administration was corrupted, and reading Petrilli's blog entry looks like it's really a knee-jerk defense of Fordham's previous defense of Reading First and about as credible as Hillary Clinton's defense of her 2002 vote to authorize the Iraq war.

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Posted in Education policy at 09:32 PM (Permalink) | |

Desegregation history

Eduwonkette made me wince a few weeks ago with her entry, Did School Integration Really Do Much Good? She quoted a relatively new economic study using Louisiana, but there's a fairly sizable literature on this already, including classic works by Roz Mickelson and Jennifer Hochschild, among many many others. Yes, there is evidence of cognitive (achievement) effects of desegregation that are not attributable to better funding. Not everyone agrees with those evidentiary claims, but one of the consequences of NCLB on research is that accountability has sucked the air out of all sorts of questions, including the consequences of ending effective desegregation in dozens of our large metropolitan areas.

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Posted in Education policy at 09:12 PM (Permalink) | |

A thoughtful debate on curriculum

One of the greatest sins of the Joel Klein administration is engaging in Stupid Ed Tricks that distract Deborah Meier and Diane Ravitch from thoughtful debate on Bridging Differences, such as the discussion they have been engaged in recently on curriculum:

• What Should Happen in Our Houses of Learning? (Ravitch)


• A Marshall Plan for Teaching (Meier)


• Is Finland the Answer? (Ravitch)


• Let Schools and Districts Defend Their Solutions (Meier)

Here we see two articulate educators defend very different views of the Good Education--not philosophical questions but the policy question of whether a centralized curriculum is appropriate for a state or country. Ravitch favors a centralized curriculum that is less prone to what she sees as the weaknesses of localism. Meier favors local choices that can reap commitments greater than central control.

I think we can take the strengths of each position for granted: Meier has run several schools with very local missions, and she has done so remarkably well. Ravitch points to situations where a centralized curriculum has strengths (such as Finland).

What neither addresses very well are the weaknesses of their own positions. I think Ravitch has a point with the weaknesses of localism: while Meier and many other educators can and have constructed unique curricula that serve students and the community well, there are plenty of cases where localism led to low expectations or just nutty ideas (my phrase, not Ravitch's). And Meier and other critiques of a centralized curriculum have a point: there are plenty of centralized curricula that fetishize knowledge and discourage in-depth probing of key questions.

But those same weaknesses are also often true of each advocate's preferred choice: institutional inertia can easily turn centralized curricula into whatever was gong on in the status quo ante, and local curricula can fetishize factoids as easily as a centralized curriculum.(And don't tell me that a national test will do much to discourage either problem: no test does more than lightly sample any curriculum, and the most easily testable parts of that curriculum.)

What Ravitch and Meier show is that the debate over the curriculum is not just over the stuff but also the how and who and all sorts of meta-issues that focus on control: should a state or country's political leadership (or bureaucratic leadership) decide what children learn, or should teachers and communities (the local bureaucratic and political leadership)?

If you're wincing at that expression, I've made my point: this is the wrong debate to have. Yes, control is important, but whatever level of government/institutions make curriculum decisions, there needs to be regular discussions about what children should be doing and learning. To be honest, neither world-class standards nor community needs cut the mustard with me, because they're shortcut jargon. Here's a challenge: start with a single student's work and go from there. Since history is my discipline, we can use an essay by any student in middle or high school and ask the question: Is this what students should be learning about history and doing in a history class?

Then get a batch of student work with ranges in skills and purposes (of the assignments). What looks "right" to you? Are most students at that point, and what would be necessary to get more students there?

Then look at the discipline more broadly: how much of the thousands of books written in U.S. history in the past few decades is enough stuff to learn in secondary school? What would be embarrassing for students to graduate without knowing? Then, a second look: how many winces can we stand on that point, because adolescents are remarkably forgetful about history?

Then a third look: how would the teaching of history have to change to get the minimum number of winces? How would professional development look? Can the state or country pay for that? Can we afford not to pay for it?

In history, I don't believe anyone's gone through this type of iterative process for K-12. Some parts of it, certainly, but not all of it, except for higher ed. And with due respect for one of my national affiliates I'm embarrassed that the AFT gave Virginia's standards a "100%" for its standards. (That curricular micromanagement is an embarrassment to the discipline.)

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Posted in at 09:04 PM (Permalink) | |

Interstices

The semester has ended, the graduation I attended is over, the legislative session has finished, and the Crazy May events (multiple birthdays, recitals, concerts, etc.) have not yet begun. I had some bureaucratic stuff to do over the weekend that would have been Very Nice to have done a week earlier, so I celebrated the end of the legislative session by doing morning stuff just for myself (yard work, two exercise classes), and then heading into the office to finish up the Late Bureaucratic Stuff.

I am tempted to comment on a bunch of items in the news, and I may in the next few hours, as relaxation, distraction, and celebration. I also need to work on the next English EPAA article, write a few disposition e-mails, herd a few cats (reviewers), finalize the summer class I'm teaching in June and July, schedule a talk with a coauthor, decide if I'll write the book prospectus I was speaking with a series editor about in the last month, write a note to a research group I'm facilitating, Do Union Stuff,... and have a life.

But today is a bit of an in-between moment, with some shepherding of my children to events and small stuff. Too bad blood donation rooms are closed on Sunday, because I haven't given in a while. (I'm eligible, and I have veins the size of superhighways, relatively speaking.)

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Posted in The academic life at 07:40 PM (Permalink) | |