Big Brother and the National Reading Curriculum by Rl Allington

Big Brother and the National Reading Curriculum by Rl Allington

New legislation will transform American public education. Basic to the No Child Left Behind Act and the Put Reading First program is a new and substantial federal intrusion into local curriculum control and teacher autonomy. This intrusion is masked in the legislative mandate for "evidence-based", or "scientific", reading instruction. Beyond the distortions of the findings of the National Reading Panel Report that undergird the new federal initiatives, there are other federal mandates, past and current, that have also impeded improving reading instruction--and worse, the public education system--through privatization, teacher disempowerment, and a systemic business model.

In this timely and important book, nationally-recognized reading researcher Richard Allington tracks and questions the 30-year campaign that has focused on testing, accountability, and federalization of education. He and other educators, including Jim Cunningham, Michael Pressley, Elaine Garan, and Patrick Shannon, have contributed articles that provide an overview of past and recent federal education policies, including the NRP Report and associated legislation and policy making, with analyses of the premises of the new national reading plan. By showing how these premises are manufactured--that is, not reliably supported by the research--they explain why this plan is an unwarranted federal encroachment into local educational decision making.

Allington has served as president of both the International Reading Association and the National Reading Conference in the past. Since his classic Reading Teacher essay, Fluency: The Neglected Reading Goal, in 1983, Dick Allington has been investigating and writing about fluency. He is the author of more than 100 studies and reports on reading challenges, as well as several books, including What Really Matters for Struggling Readers (Allyn & Bacon) and Big Brother and the National Reading Curriculum: How Ideology Overtook Evidence (Heinemann). Schools that Work, Classrooms that Work (both Allyn & Bacon), and Reading to Learn: Lessons from Outstanding 4th Grade Classrooms (The Guildford Press) are among his coauthorships. Dick has worked as a classroom teacher, reading specialist, and head of federal programs.