[Reading-hall-of-fame] Revised statement

[Ken Goodman]

Some of you got a somewhat garbled form of this . Here it s in PDF
A statement from members of the Reading Hall of Fame on the report of the
National Council on Teacher Quality*
As elected members of the Reading Hall of Fame with broad and diverse
perspectives on reading and reading instruction we want to raise strong
objections to key aspects of the NCTQ report on teacher preparation
programs.
1. NCTQ was founded by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundationi to “provide an
alternative national voice to existing teacher organizations and to build
the case for a comprehensive reform agenda that would challenge the current
structure and regulation of the profession.” NCTQ would control the
education of teachers by asserting its authority to rate teacher
education.ii Teacher education programs are now regulated by state
certification and state education agencies and by their university
administrators. They also comply with standards of their professional
associations. NCTQ seeks to insert itself above these authorities.
 2. To achieve that end they frame “existing teacher organizations” as
vested interests opposed to reform.
3. This attempt to control teacher education follows the attempt to control
schools through NCLB and Reading First. Reading first, a major part of NCLB
mandated a narrow direct instruction phonics curriculum and method. And it
banned whole language. That has been the law since 2001 and it has not
improved reading comprehension and it has certainly not improved
schools.iii .(Gamse, et al., 2008),
4. NCTQ, with the advice or Reid Lyon and Lousia Moats, key players in
Reading First, asserts that the National Reading Panel provided the answers
to, “many fundamental educational questions” establishing a single
scientific reading method.
5. So with one stroke NCTQ limits the teaching of reading to teaching the
“scientific “ reading program, the same one which failed for 13 years in
NCLB and it limits teacher education programs to training teachers in this
one true method.
And who needs reading research if the fundamental questions are already
answered?
6. NCTQ has rated teacher education programs through rating their courses
in teaching beginning reading repeating the tactic used in NCLB’s Reading
First mandates that there are two approaches to teaching reading: the
scientific approach (direct instruction phonics) and whole language.
7. NCTQ’S assertion that “teacher educators choose to train candidates in
“whole language” methods rather than scientifically-based reading
instruction” indicates that NCTQ’s evaluators had so broad a definition of
whole language that it is
anything other than what NCTQ would mandate. After thirteen years they are
still claiming that schools are failing because of whole language.
8. NCTQ would deskill teachers: they would be “trained” as technicians with
limited knowledge and authority by teacher educators constrained to a
single “scientific” method of reading instruction.
9. The texts authored by over 60 members of the Reading Hall of Fame were
listed as unacceptable by NCTQ. Few were rated acceptable. The issue is not
our texts. It is that anyone or any group can impose their judgment and
become arbiters of books or methods.
10. NCTQ ridicules the view that prospective teachers should confront their
attitudes toward “race, class, language and culture” in their teacher
education programs. This is but one example of the NCTQ view that reading
is an autonomous skill that can be taught out of context without regard for
who the learners are and what they are asked to read.
11. NCTQ sees “Academic Freedom run amok” in teacher education. Yet the
concept was created to protect teachers and other academics from just the
sort of political interference in their teaching and research NCTQ is
attempting.
*This statement represents those members signed below and should not be
construed as an official position of the Reading Hall of Fame
Please respond to Kgoodman at .arizona.edu by August 7, 2013.
Members signing this statement (Affiliation for identification only)
Kenneth S Goodman Professor emeritus University of Arizona
James Hoffman Professor University of Texas
Jane Hanson Professor Emerita University of Virginia, Team member, Central
Virginia Writing Project
Richard Vacca Professor Emeritus Kent State University
Richard Allington Professor University of Tennessee
Yetta M Goodman Regents Professor emerita University of Arizona
Brian Cambourne Professor Wollongong University Austrailia
David Olson University Professor Emeritua OISE/University of Toronto
Dorothy Watson Professor Emeriita University of Missouri , Columbia
Carl Braun Professor emeritus University of Calgary, Alberta Canada
Denny Taylor Professor Emerita, Hofstra University
I Ravich, Diane says: “NCTQ was created by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation
in 2000. I was on the board of TBF at the time. Conservatives, and I was
one, did not like teacher training institutions. We thought they were too
touchy-feely, too concerned about self-esteem and social justice and not
concerned enough with basic skills and academics. In 1997… TBF established
NCTQ as a new entity to promote alternative certification and to break the
power of the hated ed schools.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/ravitch-what-is-nctq-and-why-you-should-know/2012/05/23/gJQAg7CrlU_blog.html
ii Teacher Prep Review (2003)P 93
iii Calfee,R (In press)Knowledge, Evidence, and Faith: How the Federal
Government Used Science to Take Over Public Schools in Goodman,K, R.Calfee
and Y Goodman Whose Knowledge Counts in Government Literacy Policies
(Routledge 2014)
-- 
Ken Goodman
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