Saturday, June 07, 2014

Authentic reforms from Dr. Krashen. Address poverty, and ensure access to books to preempt summer learning loss!

Providing more access to interesting reading material by investing in public libraries and librarians is an excellent way to deal with summer learning loss. — Dr. Stephen D. Krashen

Yesterday morning at teacher sent me a Dr. Edward Haertel paper discussing the unreliability of Value Added Measures. I saw an interesting figure in the paper regarding "summer learning loss" that started me working on an infographic. After creating the graphic and posting the corresponding tweet, I noticed that Dr. Paul Thomas had tweeted a new post by Professor Krashen on essentially the same topic entitled: Arne Duncan suggests year-round school as a solution to the summer slide. I disagree. That post appears here on Schools Matter as Arne and the summer slide.

Krashen's Solutions Work!

Professor Stephen Krashen and colleagues have repeatedly proven that both access to books, and ameliorating the effects of poverty are critical in addressing so-called achievement gaps. Neoliberal corporate education reform's wrongheaded assertion that we need to lengthen the school year ignores these indisputable facts, as emphatically illustrated by differences in the table (Haertel 17) above:

References
Haertel, Edward. "Reliability and Validity of Inferences About Teachers Based on Student Test Scores." Educational Testing Service, 2013. Web. 6 June 2014 <http://j.mp/1kQw5kw>
Krashen, Stephen D. "Protecting Students against the Effects of Poverty: Libraries." New England Reading Association Journal. 46.2 (2011): 17-22. Web. 6 June 2014 <http://j.mp/1kIlgFV>
—————. The Power of Reading: Insights from the Research. Westport, Conn: Libraries Unlimited, 2004. Print.
Shin, Fay H, and Stephen D. Krashen. Summer Reading: Program and Evidence. Boston: Pearson/Allyn and Bacon, 2008. Print.
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