I'm published

I'm not opposed to a little shameless self-promotion, and until I get a PR rep, who's going to do it? Anyway, it's my first real publication. Hopefully not the last. For folks outside of education, it may be a better sleep aid than read. But the issues we discuss in here indirectly impact anyone with kids in public school...

A Critical Policy Analysis and Response to the Report of the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ)

by Curt Dudley-Marling, Lisa Patel Stevens, and Alexander Gurn, Boston College

While education has long been a political touchstone in the United States, current federal and state legislation and funding initiatives have raised the political stakes to unforeseen levels. The reach of the federal No Child Left Behind Act and accompanying Reading First program is unparalleled, affecting the form and content of instruction in classrooms across the United States. As debates rage about intended and unintended effects of these policies, we take the stance that, at a minimum, educational policies, including position papers and reports, must be closely examined for their representations of education, particularly how educational policies position teachers and students relative to theories of learning and wider political contexts. It is in this spirit that we offer a critique of a recent report on the preparation of teachers of reading produced by the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) which concludes that schools of education are not teaching future teachers about the “science of reading” (Walsh, Glaser, & Wilcox, 2006, p. 48). Specifically, we pose questions about the historical relevance of the NCTQ report and explicit and implicit definitions of reading proficiency embedded in the report. We also suggest how informed educational professionals—like NCTE members—can and should engage with policy documents that shape their daily work. We begin by situating the NCTQ report in a broader historical and political context. MORE...