Teach Effectively!

If you want to read a success story, and who doesn’t as the winter doldrums approach, take a look at Jennifer Dubin’s article entitled “Reading Richmond” from the fall 2008 issue of American Edcuator. Ms. Dubin recounts the story of how the Richmond (VA, US) schools improved the quality of reading instruction—using a combination of new curricula, assessments, and professional development—and helped many young children to become successful readers. Link to Ms. Dubin’s article in American Edcuator.

In “Pre-K Can Work: Needy kids could benefit, but only if we use proven pedagogy and hold programs accountable,” Shepard Barbash of the City Journal describes the conditions he sees as required if pre-kindergarten programs are to benefit the US. Actually, he devotes several paragraphs to describing what’s wrong with pre-k education. Noting that many children from relatively less-advantaged home environments come to pre-k with substantially lower verbal repertoires than their more-advantaged peers, Mr. Barbash indicts the perspective of many early childhood educators about these deficits:

Central to the typical early-childhood educator’s worldview are three ideas: that it’s better for young children to learn through play than through work; that children learn best and are happiest when they can help direct the pace and content of their own learning; and that a child’s mental abilities develop at a natural pace that adults cannot do much to accelerate. If a child fails to learn something, it’s not because the teaching is faulty, in this view; it’s because the child is either “learning disabled” or not yet “developmentally ready” to learn it—a notion derived from the theories of Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget, who believed that mental abilities developed in age-determined phases.

From these premises flow a host of others. Pre-K teachers learn that it’s not “developmentally appropriate practice” to seat children at desks; to give them worksheets; to make them work to master the alphabet, letter sounds, and math; to assess their academic skills (medical, dental, and nutrition assessments are okay); and to group them by skill level for instruction (because all children should receive equal treatment and because children learn as much from one another as they do from adults). Many things that parents would call common sense are, for the preschool professional, high-risk activities.

The alternative, Mr. Barbash proposes, is to provide Direct Instruction. He illustrates with anecdotes from his own observations of pre-k lessons. And he goes further, arguing in favor of consistent, systematic assessment of children’s competence during the pre-k years.

Read Mr. Barbash’s article at the City Journal.

Writing in the New York (US) Times on 19 November 2008, Sandra Tsing Loh calls for parents to mount a bottom-up revolution in public education. Although it’s short on specific proposals—and, of course, I hope the central feature would be a focus on teaching effectively—and long on criticism of politicians sending children to “toney private schools,” Ms. Loh’s concern about improving public education is well placed.

And yet, against all apparent odds, as a public school mother in the trenches, I’m extremely optimistic about this brave new era. The time is perfect for an American renaissance revivifying this most Jeffersonian of ideals — quality public education, available for all — where an educated citizenry is the heart of a thriving democracy.

I hope Ms. Loh’s call for a political renaissance aimed at improving the quality of public education is heeded. We in the US—and elsewhere on the planet—need not just a few well-educated elite children for the future but a mass of well-educated children. Going forward, as the pop phrase has it, out progress as a society as well as a species will depend on having lots of savvy workers, managers, innovators, and leaders.

I recommend Ms. Loh’s editorial. Here’s a link to it. For more about Ms. Loh’s thoughts regardinh parents taking a strong role in their children’s schooling, make sure that you read her sensible remarks cunningly disguised as notes about Jonathan Kozol’s views on education, see “Tales out of School.” The multi-talented Ms. Loh, who has a pretty solid educational pedigree (e.g., physics graduate of Cal Tech), has plenty of other interesting comments about education that merit perusal by parents and educators; browse her Web site at http://SandraTsingLoh.com/. I plan to read her book, Mother on Fire.

I have finally gotten around to reading Jean Stockard’s rejoinder to the August 2008 analysis from the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC), which reported that the WWC failed to find sufficient evidence meeting its standards to merit identifying Reading Master, the Direct Instruction early literacy program. Professor Stockard’s analysis is instructive, both for what it says about Reading Master (and Direct Instruction) and what it says about the WWC.
Continue reading ‘WWC and RM’

In the chat section of Education Week there is a transcript of a discussion of the implications of response to intervention (or instruction; RtI) for classrooms. Although the questions they answer cover much broader scope than classroom instruction (e.g., roles of administrators, counselors, and psychologists), Judy Elliot and Doug Fuchs provide responses to many instructional matters in the transcript.
Continue reading ‘RtI implications’