America is, at present, a world leader in business, science, medicine, and technology. At the same time, children in America's public schools lag well behind children in other industrial countries. Worse, many of the school reforms promoted in America as new and innovative are in fact old and tiredt—often more than a century old. Moreover, there is no evidence that they work to boost student achievement. Essays in this volume identify key failures in modern American education and then show how parents, policymakers, and teachers can make changes that will raise the level of student performance. This book makes the case for content-rich education and explicit teaching. Its topics include
- Roots of current reform ideas—and weaknesses of those ideas
- Is education research scientific?
- Why some children don't read
- How to teach reading successfully
- How to teach spelling successfully
- Current American attitudes toward learning—how they block achievement in math and science
- Testing student achievement—the perils and pitfalls
Copyright 1998.
