This page links you to documents, powerpoint presentations, and other websites.
The arrogant, self-anointing, intellectually negligible, duplicitous, cowardly gas bags in progressive-dominated schools of education (or progressive-dominated departments), district central offices, state and federal departments of instruction, and curriculum organizations, turned reading instruction (which had been a rather simple and straightforward process) into a nightmare of mumbo-jumbo "theory" and deranged "practices" (which nonetheless appealed to the legions of gullible "teachers" certified by ed schools and states)---leaving us a nation in which less than 40-50% of fourth graders (and therefore also ANY higher graders) are proficient at reading.
"The achievement gap between children from high- and low-income families is roughly 30 to 40 percent larger among children born in 2001 than among those born twenty-five years earlier. In fact, it appears that the income achievement gap has been growing for at least fifty years..."
(The Widening Academic Achievement Gap Between the Rich and the Poor: New Evidence and Possible Explanations (Chapter 5). Sean F. Reardon. Stanford University. July 2011. Forthcoming in
Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children’s Life Chances. Russell Sage Foundation, 2011)
Do you think there is any connection between radically changing reading instruction from teacher-directed, systematic phonics (50years ago) and student-led unsystematic "guess what words say using cues on the page," starting in the 60's (when any sort of order was considered to be oppressive by student radicals who became ed perfessers)?
