Big Brother and the National Reading Curriculum: How Ideology Trumped Evidence

by Richard L. Allington

Book Overview

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,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0325005133
• ISBN13: 9780325005133
• Release Date: September 2002
• Publisher: Heinemann Educational Books
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.94 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.2"
• Grade Range: Kindergarten to Grade 5

Customer Reviews

scholarly, research-based, informative.

Those who have read little about literacy education or who have not examined any significant amount of research related to literacy instruction will probably not appreciate this book (see some of the reviews here). However, Richard Allington's voice is important in the field of literacy education because he does not start with an answer and look for data to support his answer. Rather, he starts with a question and looks at ALL the research data to answer his question. The factory paradigm and behavioristic model does not work with human beings who are struggling to become literate. Having read a fairly wide breadth of research related to literacy, and having previewed a majority of literacy education texts currently in use, I can highly recommend this book and others by Allington.

Can you handle the truth?

I believe that one of the reasons that reading professionals are blindly - cattle-like - following the NCLB and other new reading legislation is that the truth might not be something they want to know -- it would just muddy the waters too much. This book clearly walks readers through how we find ourselves in the current mess - botched and sloppy meta research methods by the NRP followed by knee-jerk governmental responses run the risk of us failing to provide exemplary literacy instruction for our nation's children and non-literate adults. This important book will help you make sense of what is going on around us and maybe, just maybe, be able to articulate to our legislators the need for the TRUTH to be discussed in a constructive way. Let's leave a politically-based reading curriculum behind, not our nation's children and non-literate adults.

This is not a "Who Shot JFK Conspiracy" book...to many facts

This is not a "Who Shot JFK Conspiracy" book...too many facts! Is it possible that we are being purposefully misled in the area of early reading? Are publishers so driven by greed?Are politicians so easily led? Are so-called researchers so complacent that they quote and depend on research that they haven't verified and validated?Are educators so shallow, lazy, and insecure that they only read the dummied-down research summaries or worse...just buy the prepackaged, one-size-fits-all programs that will magically teach all children to read?Apparently most of the answers to these questions are the same...yes.Educators- don't spend another dime in early reading curriculum or hire another early reading consultant without reading (and considering) Allington's book.