Tuesday, December 07, 2004

Too many graduates not ready for work or college: "Elementary and secondary schools in the U.S. are failing to equip many high school graduates with the skills necessary to succeed in college-level coursework or workforce training, concludes a new report from ACT. To prepare students properly for college and the workplace, the report urges strengthening the high school core curriculum and ensuring K-8 students have mastered foundational skills in reading, writing, and math before entering high school. Since the publication of A Nation At Risk in 1983, ACT has advocated a 'core' curriculum of required courses, consisting of four years of English and three years each of math, natural sciences, and social sciences."





A testing time for teachers as panel examines literacy policy

Phonics coming back in Australia?

The way teachers instruct and the way they are trained will come under the microscope in the Federal Government's national literacy review. International reading research and the various methods used to test the reading skills of primary school students will also be investigated under the review's terms of reference released yesterday by the federal Minister for Education, Brendan Nelson.

Dr Ken Rowe, a research director with the Australian Council for Educational Research who will chair the inquiry, said its most important aspect would be gathering and analysing national and international research on the teaching of reading to ensure government decisions were based on best practice. He also said that when it came to international literacy standings, Australia was "right up there" with Finland, New Zealand and Canada, and was performing better than Britain and the United States. "But there is still a concern that because we're living in an information society which demands an increasingly high level of verbal and written communication skills, some children are not getting on to a growth trajectory as early as they should in terms of literacy," he said.

The review was announced by Dr Nelson last month after he was lobbied by a small group of psychologists, linguists and speech therapists, collectively known as The Developmental Disorders of Language and Literacy network. When interviewed by the Herald two weeks ago - and before his new appointment - Dr Rowe described the actions of the network and its spokesman, Kevin Wheldall, as "a form of attention-seeking behaviour", and said that while there was an element of truth in Professor Wheldall's criticisms of the widely used Reading Recovery program for students struggling in literacy, it was not the whole truth. "To claim [Reading Recovery] is not effective is absurd," he said, adding that teachers were "not that stupid" to believe that one teaching method, and one teaching method only, would succeed in equipping all students with competent reading skills.

Dr Rowe will now chair a committee comprising a number of education academics, including the president of the Australian Council of Deans of Education, Professor Terry Lovat, the chair of the National Institute for Quality Teaching and School Leadership, Dr Gregor Ramsey, and Professor Alan Rice, the interim dean of Macquarie University's Australian Centre for Educational Studies. Other committee members include a teacher, a school principal, the mother of a child with learning difficulties, and the Herald and Sun-Herald columnist Miranda Devine.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

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