Sandra Stotsky is Professor Emerita of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas.
An old professional friend, Richard Phelps, asked me in late April to write a review of his latest book. I agreed to write a full-length review without a deadline or remuneration. The book is accurately described in the 2023 Choice Review excerpt reprinted online, although one might quibble about 2001, the year given for the […]
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Education Views We know that average American students today are not ready for college from two different sources: (1) Renaissance Learning’s latest report on the average reading level of what students in 9-12 choose to read or are assigned to read, and (2) the average reading level of what colleges assign incoming freshmen to read. From […]
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Despite the billions of dollars showered on our schools, American public education is poor to mediocre and likely to remain so. Only 7% of our grade 8 students reach the Advanced level in mathematics, suggesting why little advanced coursework in mathematics and science can be taught in our high schools. In contrast, from 27 to […]
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The Common Core has many flaws, but its writing standards stand out as an intellectual impossibility for average middle grade students. Their architects didn’t link them to appropriate reading benchmarks. Last November I saw the results of NYC teachers’ attempts to address these writing standards. Their students had clearly tried to figure out how to […]
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Jay Mathews is one of the few education reporters who gets it. He understands that the heavy diet of informational reading Common Core mandates at every single grade level for the language arts or English class may decrease, not increase, “critical” or analytical thinking. But how are teachers and parents to know that black is […]
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J.M. Anderson has offered an increasingly common defense of Common Core’s standards for English language arts and mathematics. They can help us to achieve any utopian educational goals one could wish for. The only fly in the ointment is the quality of our teaching corps. In actuality, 46 states have bought some very expensive snake […]
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Books above a sixth-grade reading level, for sure. According to Renaissance Learning’s 2012 report on the books read by almost 400,000 students in grades 9-12 in 2010-2011, the average reading level of the top 40 books is a little above fifth grade (5.3 to be exact). While 27 of the 40 books are UG (upper […]
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In 1970, less than 10% of Finland’s students graduated from high school. Now most students do, and Finland is one of the highest-scoring countries on the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) tests for l5-year-olds in mathematics, science and reading.
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A mesmerizing phrase regularly rolls off the tongues of education experts these days. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan used it in a recent speech to the National Conference of State Legislators, saying that Common Core’s new standards will try to make certain that high school graduates are truly “college- and career-ready.” Sounds impressive, but he […]
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