From: Patricia Enciso <enciso.4>
Date: Sun, 14 May 2006 13:57:08 -0400

I apologize for entering into the CCBC list with something other than a commentary on literature. I read the list often and enjoy all of the recommendations and insights. Perhaps the following link to an article published in The New Yorker, July 2004, might shed some light on the relationship between Polacco's experience, McGraw-Hill publishing, and high-stakes, directed reading...and... The Pet Goat. Funny how goats figure into all of this! Radosh is misguided in his analysis of large-scale gains in reading correlated with Direct Instruction. The tests are only interested in discrete knowledge of phonics and very limited knowledge of or capacity to interpret or comprehend texts. So, of course, when children use both the textbook and the test, published by the same company, and when the pedagogy itself is strictly policed (as it is in all DI schools), a likely result is an increase in the child's ability to repeat again what was taught in a highly scripted, repeated manner. This doesn't mean, of course, that the child has learned something useful beyond the scope of the test.


http://www.newyorker.com/printables/talk/040726ta_talk_radosh

Pat Enciso, Ohio State University, College of Education
Received on Sun 14 May 2006 12:57:08 PM CDT