[NLA] reading instruction and policy advocacy

[Eileen Eckert]

Art,
You said:
I have great reservations as to allowing "local systems" to develop what 
they think "works".  I believe that's why we have the problem we have now in 
local education.  Additionally, my understanding of the phonics issue is 
that when the local system (read as GA) began using whole language 
exclusively the colleges and universities stopped teaching teachers how to 
teach using phonics, so now there is a large group of "certified" teachers 
and administrators who know very
little about phonics.  I don't say that lightly either.  I know this to be 
absolutely factual for this rural community in particular and adjacent 
communities are quite similar.

Your comment was in response to my statement:
Policymakers should leave the decision about reading instruction to local 
programs, and support further development of local-level expertise to 
evaluate the research and make the best judgment about how to teach.

You seem to be responding to the first clause, but not the second. Along 
with local decision-making comes the need to support continuing development 
of local <capacity> for decision-making (i.e., ability to critically 
evaluate and decide how to apply the research with reference to the learners 
served). Elsewhere in my post, I commented that accountability can take the 
form of asking programs, "How do you know that what you are doing works?" 
rather than, "How have you implemented required teaching methods?" (or 
something like that--I deleted it before I realized I wanted to include it 
in this message).

I recognize that local support for state and federal mandates of "best 
practices" comes from a desire to "fix" situations where students are seen 
to be suffering from misguided practices. I don't think this solves the 
problem, though. Mandates shift resources from local development to higher 
level administration--to form policy, to decide how it should be 
implemented, and to monitor and evaluate its implementation. In addition, 
mandates create a distance of several levels between research and practice. 
Advisory committees read and interpret research, and advise policymakers as 
to what to do. Policymakers interpet the advisory committee's reading of the 
research, and make their decisions. Administrators interpret the policy (at 
least two steps removed from the actual research--they may have read it 
themselves, but do they really have time?--and also at some remove from the 
students who will be impacted). Another level of administrator and/or 
teachers decide what to do in the classroom as a result of policy formed 
several steps away. There's little money for professional development in 
which the teachers would get to read and discuss the actual research and how 
it meets student needs, because it's all been spent on advisory committee 
and policy meetings and developing bureacracies for monitoring and 
evaluating programs. It's like trying to understand a Shakespeare play by 
reading someone's notes from Cliff Notes of Shakespeare instead of actually 
reading the play. Doesn't it make sense to cut out the many middle steps and 
concentrate resources on developing local capacity to make and implement 
decisions on best practices?


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