A weekly roundup of the week’s most important news, information and blog posts about curriculum, teaching, education policy and other items of interest to the Core Knowledge community.
Core Knowledge
No Effect on Comprehension Seen From ‘Reading First’
Education Week
The $6 billion Reading First helped more students “crack the code” to identify letters and words, but it has not had an impact on reading comprehension among 1st, 2nd, and 3rd graders in participating schools, according to one of the largest and most rigorous studies ever undertaken by the U.S. Department of Education.
Americans Don’t Know Civics
USA Today
From high-school dropouts to college graduates to elected officials, Americans are “alarmingly uninformed” about the USA’s history, founding principles and economy — knowledge needed to participate wisely in civic life.
Teaching and Curriculum
Title 2.0: Revamping the Federal Role in Education Human Capital
Education Sector
“From recruitment and training to compensation, low- and high-performing teachers are treated much the same, and poor and minority students are less likely to get the most effective teachers,” notes Andy Rotherham. “While American society and what’s expected of public schools has changed a great deal, our approaches to human capital in education have not.”
Playtime Valuable—and Under Siege, Experts Warn
Education Week
Early-childhood experts are urging policymakers to arrest what they see as the loss of free, unstructured playtime for children both in and out of school.
Bill Gates and His Magic Bullet
Forbes.com
“The Gates Foundation, with its vast resources, has pledged to devote its attention to what happens in the classroom,” writes Diane Ravitch. “If it targets its dollars wisely, exercises a measure of humility, and continues to evaluate its efforts rigorously, it can make a positive difference.”
Education Policy
Even in an economic slump, Obama can’t afford to ignore education
Houston Chronicle
Obama should call for one national test, and internationally-based achievement standards, to consistently measure how well public schools are preparing each American child. He also should seize NCLB as a tool to study and foster innovation.
What Happens When States Have Genuine Alternative Certification?
Education Next
Students attending schools in states with genuine alternative certification gained more on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) between 2003 and 2007 than did students in the other states. Also, minorities are represented in the teaching force to a greater extent in states with genuine alternative certification than in other states.
Could ‘Open Source’ Testing Help Resolve the Testing Impasse?
Education Week
One way to address the concerns of both the national-test and local-assessment proponents, writes Charles Barone, a former House Education and Labor Committee staffer, is to create a national databank of “locally” developed test items, an “open source” testing system.
Homeschooling and Parenting
Home Schooling Goes Mainstream
Education Next
Survey research has revealed a heterogeneous population of home schoolers and higher rates of minority home schooling than expected. Home schoolers whose motivations are primarily religious have certainly not gone away, but they are now joined by those whose reasons range from concerns about special education to bad experiences with teachers or school bullies to time-consuming outside activities to worries over peanut allergies.
Et Alia
Teenagers’ Internet Socializing Not a Bad Thing
The New York Times
Good news for worried parents: All those hours their teenagers spend socializing on the Internet are not a bad thing, according to a new study by the MacArthur Foundation.
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