USA links with England: Joel Klein and the reading debate

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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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USA links with England: Joel Klein and the reading debate

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

The various threads on the IFERI message forum demonstrate, plainly, that there is a battle-ground not only to ensure that systematic synthetic phonics is provided for teaching children to read and write in the English language (regardless of country) but that the phonics provision is rigorous, high-quality and maintained.

In England, where systematic synthetic phonics is now statutory in the National Curriculum for English in primary schools, the critics abound. The critics sort of concede to the 'usefulness' of 'some phonics' but then persist in protesting vociferously about 'government imposition' of systematic synthetic phonics and the statutory 'Year One Phonics Screening Check'. Critics in England describe the government as 'obsessive' and official surveys (NFER, 2013, 2014, 2015) highlight that multi-cueing reading strategies look as if they still prevail contrary to official guidance for teachers.

This article below is yet another example of the difficulty of ensuring rigorous systematic synthetic phonics provision, despite the research evidence, based on the 'chance' of who happens to be in charge. Sol Stern's article is dated 2008, but this scenario is typically still going on around the world in the name of 'Balanced Literacy'.

Read here yet another story about the reading instruction travesty:

http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_3_reading.html
SOL STERN

A Marshall Plan for Reading

How New York schools can close the racial achievement gap


Summer 2008
But in a tragically mistaken policy decision, Klein went in the opposite direction on reading, franchising out most instructional decisions to a group of progressive educators who regarded it as a crime to teach children how to read through scripted phonics programs. Under the influence of his deputy chancellor for teaching and learning, Diana Lam, Klein chose an approach called Balanced Literacy for the system’s core reading program starting in September 2003. The city’s version of Balanced Literacy was crafted by Teachers College education professor and progressive-ed guru Lucy Calkins and included only a small phonics component, Month by Month Phonics. The rest of the program assumed, based on no real evidence, that children can intuit the meaning of printed words through context clues and through such activities as “shared reading” and “read alouds.” Champions of this approach believe that children can learn to read simply by reading—by immersing themselves in print. The city imposed the new program on virtually every elementary school in the city, even shutting down the special Chancellors’ District set up by one of Joel Klein’s predecessors, Rudy Crew, in which about 35 high-poverty schools were using a research-based reading program called Success for All and almost uniformly achieving higher reading scores.

I was one of a handful of local education writers who sounded an alarm about the city’s failure to choose a reading program that had at least a chance of mitigating the black-white achievement gap (see “Tragedy Looms for Gotham’s School Reform,” Autumn 2003). Admittedly, none of us was a professional reading specialist. But Klein was getting the same warnings privately from a group of six or seven internationally recognized reading researchers, including several members of the National Reading Panel. He remained unmoved. The reading controversy, he observed, was like the “ ‘less filling / tastes great’ debate” about light beer—that is, it wasn’t all that important.

The city’s wrong turn left thousands of poor black children struggling to learn the phonetic code of the written English language. This made it virtually impossible to reduce the black-white achievement gap in reading in the early grades—a judgment confirmed by the 2007 federal NAEP tests (recognized as the gold standard in education testing), which assessed New York City’s fourth- and eighth-graders and showed that from 2003 to 2007, neither grade achieved a statistically significant improvement in reading. African-American kids remained as far behind as ever. (Mayor Bloomberg has periodically celebrated the city’s gains on the state’s reading tests, but the ever-widening gap between those tests and the NAEP has undermined their credibility. This year, the average reading score in the third through eighth grades rose 6.8 percentage points, but scores were up by similar margins in every corner of the state—suggesting that the quality of the tests, not the city’s reforms, was the proximate cause.)
The relevance to this for England in particular is that Joel Klein's name is being circulated via English networks as a possible candidate for England's Chief Inspector. Read on....
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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Re: USA: How New York schools can close the racial achievement gap

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

Worryingly, this 'Local Schools Network' site raises the possibility of Klein being invited to be England's Chief Inspector!

Really??? Oh my goodness!

http://www.localschoolsnetwork.org.uk/2 ... -telegraph
Joel Klein, who ‘took on the teaching unions’ when chancellor of New York Schools. He later joined Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation as leader of News Corp’s growing education division. Klein was invited by Michael Gove to attend the first (and only) Free School Conference in 2011. Gove was later grilled over his relationship with Murdoch and Klein at the Leveson Inquiry.

Klein was head of Amplify, a News Corp subsidiary linked with Wireless Generation to introduce tablet technology into USA schools. Amplify employed Rachel Wolf, first director of the New Schools Network, the tax-payer funded charity which supports free schools. Amplify performed poorly and was sold in Autumn 2015 to its management team. Klein stepped down as CEO but is still on Amplify’s board.

Two days ago, the New York Times reported that Klein was leaving education to join Oscar, a New York health insurance start-up. It’s unlikely, then, that Klein will have sufficient free time to become Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Schools. Meanwhile, Wolf has returned to the UK and joined the team of advisers at Number 10 on £80,000 (pro-rata) – rather more than your average
So, how many of the Americans that Nicky Morgan may be considering for our highest appointment in the inspectorate are actually phonics-friendly?

Or should I say, 'pay attention to the research-findings on reading instruction'?

:(
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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Re: USA links with England: Joel Klein and the reading debate

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

I tweeted about this topic, and in response I was alerted to this piece about Joel Klein:

http://prospect.org/article/joel-kleins ... obiography
Joel Klein's Misleading Autobiography

RICHARD ROTHSTEIN OCTOBER 11, 2012

What the former chancellor of New York City schools' sleight of hand tells us about education reform
Dick Schutz

Re: USA links with England: Joel Klein and the reading debate

Post by Dick Schutz »

So, how many of the Americans that Nicky Morgan may be considering for our highest appointment in the inspectorate are actually phonics-friendly?

That Nicky Morgan would appoint anyone from the US to head the inspectorate is mind boggling. That Joel Klein would be considered is beyond-boggling. To get some sense of the baggage the Brits would be buying, try reading a recent speech by Gene Glass http://www.gvglass.info/papers/Horace-Mann.pdf I don't share Gene's enthusiasm for Twitter, but appointing any US "Educational Reformer" to head Ofsted would be a big step backward for the UK and for schooling internationally.
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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Re: USA links with England: Joel Klein and the reading debate

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

Hi Dick,

I think you'll find that folk from England share the same sentiment as you.

See this 'hot off the press' commentary here about developments re 'who will become the next Ofsted chief inspector?'.....

http://schoolsimprovement.net/two-us-re ... ign=buffer
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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Re: USA links with England: Joel Klein and the reading debate

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

Just as an aside - here is notification of the vacancy for Her Majesty's Chief Inspector!

https://publicappointments.cabinetoffic ... es-skills/
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