Please pay attention to the LEARN Act

Posted on the NCTE Connected Community, May 24

The NCTE Inbox (May 24) confirmed NCTE's official support for the LEARN Act and urged members to pitch in and call their Senator to support the Act. I posted my letter opposing the LEARN Act, which was published in the Seattle Times. Today (May 24), Valerie Strauss in her Answer Sheet blog in the Washington Post carried an expanded version of my critique of the LEARN Act. Please check it out at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/the-learn-act-an-expensive-mistake/2011/05/23/AFG4569G_blog.html

This is a big one, colleagues. As NCTE points out, LEARN is a “comprehensive literacy policy sustains investment in literacy learning and instruction from birth through grade 12" and will be very hard to reverse. It will dominate language arts instruction for years, is filled with direct instruction and testing, is very expensive, and has, in my opinion, zero empirical support. For my full analysis (long), please write me at skrashen@yahoo.com.

Stephen Krashen

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