Guest Posts

Talk, Talk, Talk

Our guest author today is Douglas Yeager, President of the Nancy M. and Douglas M. Yeager Family Foundation, a non-profit established in 2001 focused on programs delivering or supporting childhood development. This focus is based on Nancy Yeager's lifelong interest in and commitment to early childhood education. Her love of teaching inspired her family to establish the Foundation.

Talk, talk, talk – odd as that may sound, a growing body of compelling research shows this to be a very effective strategy to reduce early language gaps among children from different socioeconomic backgrounds. And, fortunately, it doesn’t cost a cent.

If caring parents want their child to be ready for school (and for life after school), they should talk with that child at every opportunity. And, of course, it is also fundamental to listen and to respond appropriately. Conversations, after all, are two-way.

That said, parents need to be the ones initiating the practice, persisting in it, and never giving up. It means so very much to children, and it pays off big-time. As my colleagues at the Shanker Institute like to say: “You don’t need a lot of money to give your child a head start; conversations and ideas cost nothing."

In Opposition To Academic Boycotts

Our guest author today is Rita Freedman, Acting Executive Director of the Jewish Labor Committee, and a recent retiree from the American Federation of Teachers.

There is a growing, worldwide effort to ostracize Israel and to make it into a pariah state. (This despite the fact that Israel is still the only democratic country in the Middle East.)  A key ingredient of this campaign is the call to boycott, divest from and impose sanctions on Israel (known as BDS for boycott, divest, sanction).  Within the world of higher education, this takes the form of calls to boycott all Israeli academic institutions, sometimes including boycotting all Israeli scholars and researchers. The rationale is that this will somehow pressure Israel into an agreement with the Palestinians, one which will improve their lot and lead to an independent Palestinian state that exists adjacent to the State of Israel (although it is worth noting that some in the BDS movement envision a future without the existence of Israel).  

Certainly, the goals of improving life for the Palestinian people, building their economy and supporting their democratic institutions – not to mention supporting the creation of an independent Palestine that is thriving and getting along peacefully with its Israeli neighbor – are entirely worthy. 

More Effective, Less Expensive, Still Controversial: Maximizing Vocabulary Growth In Early Childhood

Our guest author today is Lisa Hansel, communications director for the Core Knowledge Foundation. Previously, she was the editor of American Educator, the magazine published by the American Federation of Teachers.

With all the chatter in 2013 (thanks in part to President Obama) about expanding access to high-quality early childhood education, I have high hopes for America’s children finally getting the strong foundation of knowledge and vocabulary they need to do well in—and enjoy—school.

When children arrive in kindergarten with a broad vocabulary and a love of books, both of which come from being engaged in conversations with caregivers daily and being read to frequently, they are well prepared for learning to read and write. Just as important, their language comprehension makes learning through teacher read-alouds and conversations relatively easy. The narrower the children’s vocabulary and the fewer experiences they’ve had with books, the tougher the climb to come. Sadly, far too many children don’t make the climb; they mentally dropout in middle school, and are physically adrift soon thereafter.

How Much Do You Know About Early Oral Language Development?

The following was written by Susan B. Neuman and Esther Quintero. Neuman is Professor of Early Childhood & Literacy Education, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, & Human Development at New York University.

The topic of oral vocabulary instruction is affected by common myths, which have sometimes gotten in the way of promoting high quality teaching early on. While these myths often contain partial truths, recent evidence has called into question many of these notions.

We've prepared this short quiz  for you -- take it and find out how much you know about this important issue. Read through the following statements and decide if they are myths that have been perpetuated about oral vocabulary development or if they are facts (or key principles) about the characteristics of high quality vocabulary instruction. Download Dispelling Myths and Reinforcing Facts About Early Oral Language Development and Instruction if you prefer to go straight to the answers.

Can Solidarity Rebound?

Our guest author today is Eric Chenoweth, co-director of the Institute for Democracy in Eastern Europe. In 2011, the Republic of Poland awarded him with the Commander Cross of the Order of Merit, one of its highest civilian honors, for his contributions to Poland’s democratic transformation and role in providing support to Solidarity Underground during Martial Law.

In the West, Poland’s Solidarity trade union remains a symbol of the triumph of workers, united in defense of their fundamental rights, against the might of communist dictatorship.

Its remarkable rise in 1980 after nationwide strikes, its nearly ten-year struggle for freedom after the government tried to crush it using  martial law, and its 1989 electoral victory that led to the collapse of communism throughout the region — all of this has become the stuff of historical legend. The story of Solidarity after 1989, however, is less well known. It is the story of how free trade unionism was nearly destroyed by extreme “free market” policies carried out in the name of democratic reform.

Thoughts On Using Value Added, And Picking A Model, To Assess Teacher Performance

Our guest author today is Dan Goldhaber, Director of the Center for Education Data & Research and a Research Professor in Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington Bothell.

Let me begin with a disclosure: I am an advocate of experimenting with using value added, where possible, as part of a more comprehensive system of teacher evaluation. The reasons are pretty simple (though articulated in more detail in a brief, which you can read here). The most important reason is that value-added information about teachers appears to be a better predictor of future success in the classroom than other measures we currently use. This is perhaps not surprising when it comes to test scores, certainly an important measure of what students are getting out of schools, but research also shows that value added predicts very long run outcomes, such as college going and labor market earnings. Shouldn’t we be using valuable information about likely future performance when making high-stakes personnel decisions? 

It almost goes without saying, but it’s still worth emphasizing, that it is impossible to avoid making high-stakes decisions. Policies that explicitly link evaluations to outcomes such as compensation and tenure are new, but even in the absence of such policies that are high-stakes for teachers, the stakes are high for students, because some of them are stuck with ineffective teachers when evaluation systems suggest, as is the case today, that nearly all teachers are effective.

A Path To Diversifying The Teaching Workforce

Our guest author today is Jose Vilson, a math educator, writer, and activist in a New York City public school. You can find more of his writing at http://thejosevilson.com and his book, This Is Not A Test, will be released in the spring of 2014.

Travis Bristol’s article on bringing more black men to the classroom has sparked a plethora of conversation around the roles of educators in our school system. If we look at the national educational landscape, educators are still treated with admiration, but our government has yet to see fit to create conditions in schools that promote truly effective teaching and learning. In fact, successful teaching in otherwise struggling environments happens in spite and not because of the policies of our current school systems.

Even as superintendents see fit to close schools that house large populations of teachers and students of color, we must observe the roles that educators of color play in their schools, whether they consider themselves “loners” or “groupers," as Bristol describes in the aforementioned article. When the Brown vs. Board of Education decision came down in 1954, districts across the nation were determined to keep as many white educators employed as possible. While integration plays a role in assuring equitable conditions for all children and exposes them to other peoples, segregation’s silver lining was that Black educators taught Black children Black history. Racial identification plays a role in self-confidence, and having immediate role models for our children of color matters for achievement to this day.

Egyptians Who Protest Worker Rights Abuses Are Labeled “Terrorists”

Our guest author today is Heba F. El-Shazli.  She has 25 years of experience in the promotion of democracy, independent trade unions, political and economic development. She has worked with institutions and leaders throughout the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) to challenge authoritarian regimes. Currently she is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University's Center for Democracy and Civil Society. The views expressed here are her own.

Amid the political and social chaos that reigns in Egypt today, a semblance of normality persists: People go to work; they buy food; they try to feed their families.  And, as in the past, Egyptians employers, with the active support of the Egyptian government, flagrantly violate fundamental workers rights. Workers are fired for trying to organize unions and they are not paid what they are owed, including legally mandated bonuses, profit-sharing and health care benefits or proper safety equipment.

There is a familiar political dimension to these events. Elements in the police and military are accusing workers who protest employer abuses of being “terrorists” -- which in today’s Egypt means members or supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). In a recent New York Times article, two Egyptian media sources claimed that the workers striking at the Suez Steel company were infiltrated by MB activists attempting to “destabilize” the country.

This is an accusation supported neither by the facts, nor the history of blue collar unions.

On Education Polls And Confirmation Bias

Our guest author today is Morgan Polikoff, Assistant Professor in the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California. 

A few weeks back, education policy wonks were hit with a set of opinion polls about education policy. The two most divergent of these polls were the Phi Delta Kappan/Gallup poll and the Associated Press/NORC poll.

This week a California poll conducted by Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) and the USC Rossier School of Education (where I am an assistant professor) was released. The PACE/USC Rossier poll addresses many of the same issues as those from the PDK and AP, and I believe the three polls together can provide some valuable lessons about the education reform debate, the interpretation of poll results, and the state of popular opinion about key policy issues.

In general, the results as a whole indicate that parents and the public hold rather nuanced views on testing and evaluation.

Calling Black Men To The Blackboard

Our guest author today is Travis Bristol, former high school English teacher in New York City public schools, who is currently a clinical teacher educator with the Boston Teacher Residency program, as well as a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate at Teachers College, Columbia University. His research interests focus on the intersection of gender and race in organizations. Travis is a 2013 National Academy of Education/Spencer Dissertation Fellow.

W.E.B. Du Bois, the preeminent American scholar, suggested that the problem of the twentieth-century is the problem of the color-line. Without question, the problem of the 21st century continues to be the “color-line," which is to say race. And so it is understandable why Cabinet members in the Obama administration continue to address the race question head-on, through policies that attempt to decrease systemic disparities between Latino and Black Americans when compared to White Americans.

Most recently, in August 2013, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced the Justice Department’s decision to reduce federal mandatory drug sentencing regulations.  Holder called “shameful” the fact that “black male offenders have received sentences nearly 20 percent longer than those imposed on white males convicted of similar crimes." Attempts, such as Holder's, to reform the criminal justice system appear to be an acknowledgment that institutionalized racism influences how Blacks and Whites are sentenced.