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Articles by Sandra Stotsky
A Friend's Critical Eye: Reviewing Richard Phelps's 'The Malfunction of US Education Policy' — Minding The Campus
zero comment An old professional friend, Richard Phelps, asked me in late April to write a review of his latest book. I agreed to write a full-length review without a deadline or remuneration. The book is accurately described in the 2023 Choice Review excerpt reprinted online, although one might quibble about 2001, the year given for the events noted.
Common Core Standards’ Devastating Impact on Literary Study and Analytical Thinking
December 11, 2012 4 min read Download Report Sandra Stotsky ... Since coming to office, the Obama Administration has been intent on standardizing what is taught at each grade level in all of the nation’s schools. It has used its flagship “Race to the Top” competitive grant program to entice states to adopt the K–12 standards developed by a joint project of the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO).
America Needs Better Teachers
Here's how to get them.
America Needs Better Teachers — The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal
It’s a sad fact that many of our teachers are weak. They’re weak on knowledge of their subjects and weak on teaching technique. Unfortunately, we know little about effective professional-development programs. The major reason lies in the research on professional development itself.
Sandra Stotsky - NewBostonPost | Massachusetts Conservative News
Should Elementary Teachers Learn How To Teach Reading or Just Wing It? Reading instruction is one of the very few areas where it is not the case that "more research is needed."…
Elementary Teacher Education Is Broken and Needs to Be Reinvented. Here's a Guide for Reform
Special long-read weekend essay: a School Reform News exclusive Many of us assume that the guiding principle of education reform is increased student learning. But it logically follows that education reform is unlikely to succeed if elementary and middle school teachers do not have sufficient academic preparation to teach to the standards their states or their students’ parents want students to achieve.
The Looming Nightmare
According to the Burbio school tracker, 53 percent of schools nationwide are now fully open for business. With the new CDC guidelines having determined that three feet is a safe distance for students, one would think the other 47 percent would embrace the chance to follow suit. But teacher union leaders, including Randi “Follow the Science” Weingarten aren’t having any of that. The leader of the American Federation of Teachers is “not convinced” by the new guidance.
What School Shutdowns Have Wrought
Though Covid-related restrictions are easing across the country, fewer than half of America’s students are back in school full-time, according to Burbio, a website tracking school reopenings. A look at the national map shows that the most populous state, California, is also the most locked down, while the third-most populous, Florida, is almost completely back to normal.
California’s Draft Ethnic Studies Curriculum Still Isn’t Right
On March 5th, the California Department of Education released a fourth draft of its Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum. Not surprisingly, letters opposing Critical Race Theory and Critical Ethnic Studies comprised the #1 concern about the ESMC. And yet, more than half of those letters were not counted by the CDE, and more than 100 pages of suggested edits were likewise completely ignored.
Why Johnny Isn’t Learning Real History Anymore In Massachusetts
March 10, 2021 Where once American history courses focused on our country’s founding principles, soon such courses started to emphasize political activism and the grievances of various subgroups in American society. Parents may have noticed a change in the history and social studies curriculum at their children’s schools after 2018.
Spirit Murder, Lizard Brains and the Abolition of Whiteness
In December it was revealed that the San Diego Unified School District had hired Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo, two brazen race hustlers posing as “trainers” to jam their radical racial separatist agenda down the throats of the city’s public school teachers. As reported by Christopher Rufo in City Journal, “The training begins with a ‘land acknowledgement,’ in which the teachers are asked to accept that they are colonizers living on stolen Native American land.
Sophist’s Choice
The latest anti-school choice rant comes to us courtesy of Diane Ravitch, “a historian of education,” who is the Arthur Clarke of her field. When she writes, the reader is treated to science fiction dosed with a substantive amount of snake oil for good measure. In the current New York Review of Books, Ravitch’s “The Dark History of School Choice” is laden with cherry-picked half-truths and a level of fearmongering guaranteed to put a satisfied smirk on the face of every teacher union leader.
Teachable Union Moments
Lesson plans are a teacher’s daily guide for what students need to learn and how it will be taught. Because educators are always looking for new and interesting ways to engage kids, I have a few ideas that can be used to further student knowledge. In November, the National Education Association released its annual Department of Labor financial disclosure statement. As Mike Antonucci reports, the union took in $375 million during the 2019-20 school year, all of it tax-free.
Should “performance-based” tests be mandated?*
December 15, 2020 Many educators who think they are “reformers” would like performance-based tests Parents are being told that the first big issue for a new Secretary of Education in the Biden administration is deciding whether schools should test or not test students in 2020.
How To Clean Up the Common Core Mess in Massachusetts | NewBostonPost
By Sandra Stotsky | August 12, 2020, 14:44 EDT Printed from: https://newbostonpost.com/2020/08/12/how-to-clean-up-the-common-core-mess-in-massachusetts/ With the onset of Common Core, Massachusetts’s education standards for public schools have declined. How can the state regain lost ground? It’s actually not that hard. Solid standards already exist. What’s needed is the will to implement them.
Texas Takes Control of Houston Public Schools
January 21, 2020 Teachers unions and members of the HISD Board of Trustees, who were locally elected, oppose the state takeover, but the Texas Education Agency (TEA) is appointing a new superintendent and community board for the district. Management of the Houston Independent School District (HISD) is now in state hands after a special accreditation investigation found district officials had violated a state open meeting law and had neglected academic achievement.
One in Four New York State Teachers Outside NYC Get Six-Figure Salaries
January 14, 2020 Empire Center Posts Data on Teachers' Compensation at SeeThroughNY.net A quarter of the public-school teachers in New York State outside of New York City received more than $100,000 in pay over the 2018-2019 school year, a new report states. The highest pay went to four staffers at Central Islip Union Free Schools, on Long Island, who received around $500,000 each.
How Common Core-Aligned Tests Are Turning College Students Into High School Students
January 14, 2020 What, then, can college readiness test scores in mathematics and reading tell us? State-mandated tests must by state law be based on a state’s official standards. That is why the tests currently given in the Bay State (aka MCAS 2.0) are aligned to Common Core.
National Association of Scholars -
The Lost History of Western Civilization NAS November 18, 2019 23:56 January 10, 2020 22:25 Join the National Association of Scholars and the Pepperdine School of Public Policy on January 24th for a half-day conference on “The Lost History of Western Civilization” and the launch of a new report by Stanley Kurtz. Leveling America NAS October 24, 2019 22:55 January 10, 2020 22:25 Should colleges elevate social justice activism over education? We think not.
Here Is a Way Strike-Stricken Parents Could Find Reliable Education Providers
June 13, 2019 It is about time someone in authority spoke up for parents and children who are the victim of teachers showcasing their demands by shirking their duties. Just before May Day, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster and state schools chief Molly Spearman had some consoling words for working parents who would soon need to deal with the effects of thousands of South Carolina teachers deserting their classrooms on May 1 in the pursuit of more cash provided by taxpayers.
New Hampshire Education Tax Credits Survive Legislative Challenges
June 5, 2019 Program serves low-income New Hampshire students. Both Houses of the New Hampshire General Court, the state’s legislature, have tabled bills that would have spiked the state’s Education Tax Credit (ETC) program. The ETC allows businesses to take a credit against their state taxes for donations to a fund that provides scholarships to private schools for low-income students.
Teacher Incompetence or Lack of Adequate Training?
June 5, 2019 The research is mixed. Some reviews (of the many studies on retention or promotion) have shown little benefit for retention in grade 3 compared with social promotion to grade 4. The research is mixed. Some reviews (of the many studies on retention or promotion) have shown little benefit for retention in grade 3 compared with social promotion to grade 4. For example, a 2017 review looked at the results of Florida’s “A+ plan,” begun by Jeb Bush when he was governor.
Charter Haters’ Train is Temporarily Derailed in CA
June 5, 2019 Two bills that would have deeply wounded the popular schools of choice are dead…for now. Last week, two seemingly sure-shot bills were deep-sixed in the California legislature. AB 1506 would have placed a ceiling on the number of charter schools allowed in the state – the magic number being those in existence at the end of this year. A new school could open only if another had closed.
How Common Core-Aligned Tests Are Turning College Students Into High School Students
By Sandra Stotsky | March 22, 2019, 8:13 EDT Printed from: https://newbostonpost.com/2019/03/22/how-common-core-aligned-tests-are-turning-college-students-into-high-school-students/ State-mandated tests must by state law be based on a state’s official standards. That is why the tests currently given in the Bay State (aka MCAS 2.0) are aligned to Common Core.
Common Core Is Dead, Long Live Common Core
We live in a remarkable age. Even when Florence Foster Jenkins sang in a packed Carnegie Hall decades ago, music critics were able to say that she did not have the voice of an authentic opera singer. Few in the musical world really cared how Jenkins spent her own money.
Historians Want to Put Events in Context. Common Core Doesn’t. That’s a Problem. | History News Network
Sandra Stotsky is professor of education reform emerita at the University of Arkansas and holds the Twenty-First Century Chair in Teacher Quality. She served as editor of “Research in the Teaching of English” in the 1990s and has taught at the elementary, secondary, undergraduate, and graduate level. She is the author of The Death and Resurrection of a Coherent Literature Curriculum (Rowman & Littlefield, 2012).
Did Teachers Really Used To Make Kids Memorize Without Understanding?
Common Core supporters have been asserting that before Common Core’s emphasis on skills, all our teachers did for 50 years was ask kids to memorize facts. So implies Alfie Kohn in The Schools Our Children Deserve, in arguing that students didn’t understand what they used to be taught in arithmetic: “Drill does not develop meanings.
Are Education Achievement Gaps Based on Poverty?
Are “achievement gaps” caused by K-12 schools and the teachers in them? Many policymakers, including those at the U.S. Department of Education, seem to think so, because Race to the Top federal grant applications in 2010 wanted states to hold teachers accountable for student test scores. Indeed, the purpose of the four-year State Plan in education, submitted in 2017 without legislative or public approval by a state’s department of education or public instruction, is to close these gaps. Why?
'Diversity': The Major Obstacle in Strengthening Teacher Quality
As Dan Goldhaber noted in his article in the Spring 2016 issue of Education Next: “Of the characteristics [of teacher quality] that were measured in the still-revered 1966 Coleman report titled Equality of Educational Opportunity, those that bear the highest relationship to pupil achievement are first, the teacher’s score on the verbal skills test, and then his educational background.” Why then, all parents might ask, shouldn’t all teachers be expected to have high verbal skills on tests of...
Want the Feds To Run Local Public Schools? Make 'Em Get A Permission Slip from Parents
As the dean of a prominent graduate school of education noted in an article published several years ago: “Schools are not the major cause of the achievement gap.” He also noted how ineffective most education reforms have been and how little improvement we have seen. It is understandable that as the head of an education school, he didn’t want to see reform efforts transferred to other institutions. He still thought it was worthwhile to try to reform schools.
Dumbing Down What Students Read Didn't Make Them Any Smarter
Yesterday as today, what we call reading skills heavily influence academic achievement. They further influence the development of writing skills beyond the early years of schooling when writing is almost a transcription of a child’s speech patterns. The development of reading skills, especially a reading vocabulary, and then writing skills depends largely on willing practice in reading. There are no silver bullets for a large reading vocabulary.
Why Spend Billions on Professional Development for Teachers?
Despite the billions that have been spent on professional development for K-12 teachers in the United States, we actually know extremely little about the characteristics of effective professional development programs. The major reason lies in deficiencies in the research on professional development.
The Negative Influence of Education Schools on the K-12 Curriculum
[The National Association of Scholars originally published Dr. Stotsky's article "The Negative Influence of Education Schools on the K-12 Curriculum" on June 30, 2008. It's been one of our most popular articles over the years--education schools keep making our K-12 curriculum worse, and people on the web keep reading "Negative Influence" and linking to it, because Dr. Stotsky's article is an incisive and powerful examination of the damage the education schools do.
Professor: Some education steps that Oklahoma should follow
The U.S. Department of Education has given states flexibility in their application for Title I funds in the Every Student Succeeds Act so they can make choices that best suit the needs of their citizens. However, few states seem to be taking advantage of this flexibility to address the expressed concerns of its parents and teachers. Gov.
Why parents are concerned about Trump’s appointment for USED
Many of the parents who have been active in combating Common Core and its many tentacles in the past six years are expressing amazement at the appointment of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education. One such parent, Jenni White, Education Director of Reclaim Oklahoma Parent Empowerment (ROPE), posted a long blog on Thursday, November 24, 2016, in which she listed several major concerns. They can be summarized as follows: DeVos has no direct public education experience.
The next education frontier: Classroom choice
Little birds are flying around everywhere these days, tweeting “school choice” as the last hope for education reform. We find it praised on the editorial pages of Education Next, in a book by DC-based self-styled education policy expert Chester Finn, and by Donald J. Trump, the next president of the United States. “Choice” was the slogan for a question on the November ballot in Massachusetts asking voters to loosen the cap on charter schools in the state. (It went down in flames).
Who reviews new ELA and math textbooks?
Because most states adopted Common Core’s standards, most school systems are investing in new textbooks for ELA and Math. And Education Week reporters are dutifully alerting their readers to reviews of these textbooks in ELA and math—mainly from a new organization called edreports.org. Reviews of math textbooks were reported in March 2015 and May 2016. An earlier blog dealt with the process itself.
A rose by any other name ...
In the 19th century, cattle rustlers rebranded cattle to hide the fact that certain cows actually belonged to someone else. Today “rebranding” is a widely used marketing strategy in which a new name or logo design is created for an established product in order to create a better image of the product in the minds of consumers. It is usually an attempt to fool the public into thinking that something old is actually something new or different.
School choice: Fig leaf of the pro-Common Core Right
A recent report by the conservative Heritage Foundation suggests that the best way to fight the controversial Common Core educational standards is to oppose the “centralization of education.” The report tells dissident parents that the best way to fight Common Core and improve schools is to promote “school choice.” But the truth is that mediocre standards, a poor curriculum based on them, and academically underqualified teachers are the biggest problems facing our schools – and they are...
'Cold' Reading, Common Core Limit Students' Literacy Gains
Where is the national conversation on what should be taught in the secondary English class and how? How was one person, David Coleman—known as the chief architect of the common-core standards—able to turn the entire school curriculum upside down, with nothing to support his bizarre ideas on doing "cold," i.e., noncontextual, readings of historical documents and reducing literary study to less than 50 percent of reading instructional time, all in the name of leveling the playing field?
Dr. Sandra Stotsky
One of the major problems that the adoption of Common Core’s standards has led to is excessive testing—at all grade levels from kindergarten on—sometimes more than one test per grade level. by Dr. Sandra Stotsky5 Feb 2015, 8:39 PM PST0 Many governors are drawing from a large bag of tricks to confuse and deceive parents worried about the Common Core standards, their implementation, and the tests based on them.
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