Literacy Blogs

I was recently reading a draft of a doctoral dissertation. I was eager to read it because it was written by a smart student who I know to be a good teacher, and who has focused on important issues in literacy education. But, I was disappointed.   The study looked at how students thought about and reasoned about the complex information that they were asked to read. The scholar had challenged the kids with a collection of complex texts and videos.   The reason for my chagrin was not the design or results of the study, but the reaction of the researcher. The kids ...

Recently, Diane Ravitch had an article in the New York Times. One of the things that she said was that, “If every child arrived in school well-nourished, healthy and ready to learn, from a family with a stable home and a steady income, many of our educational problems would be solved.” This is a familiar echo of an earlier David Berliner article, “Our Impoverished View of Educational Reform,” in which he emphasized the educational importance of poverty and its horrifying off-shoots: ill nourishment, lead-paint poisoning, psychiatric disorders, drug/alcohol abuse, inadequate housing, and so on.   And who can disagree? Poverty is horrible, ...

Recently, the American Educator republished a chapter of Marilyn Adams. I have featured Marilyn’s input here before (thank you, thank you), but this recent pub is a must read as far as I’m concerned (and so I have included a link to it at the end of this blog).   The good Dr. Adams documents how American textbooks have grown simpler over time. I’ve long believed that the measurement of text difficulty was a great scientific advance, but as useful as that tool can be, it has been a weapon of mass destruction when it comes to supporting students’ reading achievement. You ...

Blast from the Past:  Originally published Feb 4, 2011; re-posted Oct 12, 2017. This week I read a paper by my friend Sam Wineburg and his colleague Sarah McGrew http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/column-students-cant-google-way-truth/. They are trying to figure out what the best way to make sense of the reliability and veracity of websites so that we can teach readers to be appropriately critical. Past reading studies--like the one discussed here--have promoted strategies that don't help very much. The Wineburg & McGrew approach is more promising. Are American kids such poor readers that they'll believe anything they read? I don't think so, but a recent news ...

Just before the holidays, I wrote about the misuse of international comparisons. I decried the notion that we should emulate Finland’s educational approach, though I covet their educational outcomes. My point was that the Finnish context differs too much from that of the U.S. for us to successfully follow such advice, and that, frankly, people are cherry-picking the features of other countries that they like best. So, if you don’t like accountability testing, find a country that is doing better than us but that isn’t testing much. While that may be rhetorically powerful it isn’t very helpful for reforming schools.   Since ...

Like many who are interested in U.S. educational reform, I rely upon the international comparison data provided by PISA. But, as much as such statistics concern me, I’m always circumspect in their use, since there are real problems with such comparisons. For example, I trust the data on kids up to about 13-14 years of age, but not so much the secondary school data (since kids often get shifted around at those older age levels and they don’t all make it into the comparisons).   Many anti-accountability types, like the teachers’ unions, for instance, have been touting Finland as a model of ...