Greetings Andrea, Nora, Tom, and all,

Firstly, I am very grateful that this discussion is being allowed to continue on the LD list. 

The following posts serve as the immediate backdrop to my own in which I expressed a series of wishes (see below).

Nora Chabazi's post on November 4, in which she concluded,

Who does one believe?   In the meantime [my summary: in face of all the seemingly conflicting claims about literacy development made by "experts"], the numbers of poor/non readers of every age continue to e[s]acalate.  How do those on this list deal with this?!
 
and  Tom Sticht comment in his post on November 2,

It seems the "experts" know what adults need without asking them, even if teachers don't.
 
as well as  a submission to Ed Week by Walt Gardner (at UCLA) that was forwarded by Steven Krashen at (USC) on November 3:

"Accept No Substitutes for Real Decentralization"
 
Submitted for publication to Ed Week
By Walt Gardner
 
Here we go again, allowing those who have never taught a day in public schools to hold themselves out as experts about school reform ("Accept No Substitute for Real Decentralization," Commentary, Nov. 4).  In case readers didn't notice at the end of his piece, William G. Ouchi's [see http://www.williamouchi.com/] specialization is corporate renewal. Not surprisingly, he wants us to believe that schools should be run like businesses. As evidence of his assertion, he recites the results of two studies that he and his staff conducted where principals were empowered to make decisions about budgeting, staffing, curriculum and scheduling.

If Ouchi's views are permitted to go unchallenged, then professors in schools of education should be given the same forum in business school journals on how to turn around AIGand other corporations being kept alive only by the infusion of billions of taxpayer dollars.  After all,  since these corporations have a defined structure and are run by managers overseeing subordinates, there are principles of leadership from public education that apply. We all know, however, that no study or series of studies conducted by these professors, no matter how prestigious, would be shown proper respect.

Ouchi needs to restrict himself to the field in which he is an acknowledged expert and leave public education to those who know it best.  There is little more demeaning to teachers than to have to listen to outsiders about how schools can be improved. They are largely theoreticians who use their marquee reputations as justification to promote their views.  Yet they continue to be given the limelight when others far more worthy are denied.  As one wag put it: "The beatings will continue until morale improves."
 
What has precipitated my wishes (a fantasy also by virtue of the virtual impossibility of congregating the universe of learners and those who guide them, for better or worse) is that blatant disconnect between those who teach in the classrooms on the one hand, and those who legislate systemic educational policy on the other. If we could truly behold the wealth of interactions between learners and teachers, observe how they do on assessments (with multiple pre-testing due to the regression to the mean issues), and how the assessments and instruction inform one another, we would have much to learn. 
 
The most ludicrous federal legislation that I can think of to date is NCLB.  The very notion that all children will be performing at "grade-level" by the end of the 2013-14 school year is an insult to the field of education and the numerous scholars and practitioners in the field who can demonstrate theoretical knowledge and practice what we might call "genuine evidence."  Further, nothing exhibits the total disconnect between policy-setters and practioners more clearly than NCLB, in my opinion.  What's even more insulting is that the intent of NCLB is not to make sure no child is "left behind" (whatever that may mean), but to impose a corporate model of education onto our schools so as to facilitate the "cherry picking" of those most molded and willing to participate in that model.
 
As for the United States, its public education system is known to lag substantially behind some other countries.  I attribute this in large measure to one characteristic of this country that I so dearly charish: the incredible sociocultural diversity displayed among its inhabitants. Not only are we faced with "learning disabilities" (oh how I cannot subscribe to this deficit-based term), but also with a student population in many places that many (most?) teachers have difficulty accommodating.  One reason has to do with the disparate common underlying proficiency levels of students learning together, the other with a widespread lack of cross-cultural awareness among educators.  In other words, the guiding principles of our system do not incorporate or reflect the incredible diversity to be found in our student population.
 
Finally, I am very concerned about the current drive for national standards in education.  With the current iteration of NCLB, all states needed to do was lower the bar to help schools look good.  Premised on what I consider to be flawed national education policy, raising the bar and holding states accountable for attaining them (at whatever prescribed levels), is tantamount to adding insult to injury.
 
Let's get back to the trenches and see what's really going on first.   And those who set policy should be the first ones to get out of their ivory towers and smell the flowers and also stench of "reality."  Yes, we do need to rebuild our schools.  Let's start at the bottom this time, and give schools the chance and wherewithal to expect and also attain the best performance commensurate with the characteristics of highly localized settings.
 
Michael

Michael A. Gyori 
Maui International Language School 
www.mauilanguage.com




________________________________
From: "andreawilder at comcast.net" <andreawilder at comcast.net>
To: The Learning Disabilities Discussion List <learningdisabilities at nifl.gov>
Sent: Wed, November 4, 2009 10:36:54 AM
Subject: [LearningDisabilities 4254] Re: What have we learned?


Michael,  we have a huge country and mostly local control of schools.  Teachers are not paid enough and are educated poorly.  But schools accept all (student) comers, speaking many different languages. We have only vague ideas of how learning skill develops--what paths learners take.  Three paths in reading I know of have been identified. 
Other countries do it differently, other countries ARE different.
-We are just beginning to talk about national standards, some way of pulling us all together. Other countries have already done this.  We simply have to keep moving with any skills we have.

Andrea

---- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Gyori" <tesolmichael at yahoo.com>
To: "The Learning Disabilities Discussion List" <learningdisabilities at nifl.gov>
Sent: Wednesday, November 4, 2009 2:30:48 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: [LearningDisabilities 4252]  What have we learned?


Greetings everyone,

I wish we could congregate the universe of learners who struggle (for whatever reason and speculative cause).  I also wish we could congregrate the universe of teachers, tutors, counselors, parents, supportive community members, and, perhaps, neuroscientists, too.  

Once they are all congregated, I wish we could create baseline measures of everyone's skills and (affective) dispositions.  If we were able to do so in an indisputably valid manner (a scientific impossibility), the debates among scholars would be silenced.

Then, I wish we could create interim measures of both the learners and those who work with them in a longitudinal fashion, and perhaps administer a "final" measure say five or ten years later.

It would be a marvel to behold what will have become of that universe.

In the meantime, despite all the research, and despite how much of it may have had an impact on practice, I fail to discern any gains in overall literacy (and how shall we define that term in today's world?). On the contrary, some would have it that 95 million adults in the U.S. are not "functionally literate" (whatever that means).  Have we risen to the 30-40% mark? How can other countries claim 99% literacy levels?

Michael


Michael A. Gyori 
Maui International Language School 
www.mauilanguage.com



      
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