Promising results found with core knowledge reading method
A new way of teaching reading that has been tested on about 1,000 city schoolchildren has shown promising results. Children at 10 schools who were taught reading using a curriculum designed by the education theorist E.D. Hirsch Jr.’s Core Knowledge Foundation have significantly outperformed students taught at other schools under a variety of other methods, most of which fell under the definition of “balanced literacy,” an approach that was promoted citywide by the former schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein, beginning in 2003. In a news conference scheduled for Monday, Core Knowledge officials will announce that second graders who were taught using their method scored significantly higher on reading comprehension tests than those in the other schools, and also showed big gains in social studies and science knowledge. The study found that for each of the three years, students in the Core Knowledge program had greater one-year gains on a brief reading test than their peers in the comparison schools. The difference was most pronounced in kindergarten, when the scores of children following Dr. Hirsch’s method showed increases that were five times those of their peers. By the third year, they were still posting higher scores, but the differences were not as wide. Between the fall and spring of last year, their scores rose 2.5 scale score points, compared with an average gain of 0.9 points in the comparison group. The scale score is based on the number of questions answered correctly, combined with the degree of difficulty of those questions. On the TerraNova standardized tests on social studies and science, the Core Knowledge students outperformed the comparison group, but on a test of oral reading comprehension and vocabulary their scores were not significantly different. Some proponents of the balanced literacy method, which encourages children to develop a love of reading by choosing books that are of interest to them, said the study was too small to draw meaningful conclusions.
Teach knowledge, not work-life skills
Recently, the UK Lib-Con coalition government took the decision to axe 3,100 vocational qualifications from school league tables. Its reasoning for this, underlined by Alison Wolf’s review of vocational education, was that these qualifications were not rigorous enough and were failing to lead young people into jobs. It has also been suggested that schools are offering these sub-standard qualifications to boost their position in league tables. It is certainly a good thing that many of these qualifications have been downgraded, and it is a scandal that so many schools have encouraged students to take them. No matter how incentivised schools may have been to improve results, it is a sign of immense weakness and downright dereliction of educational duty on the part of school leaders that they put so many young people through such time- and talent-wasting courses. It is a further disgrace that the school standards watchdog, OFSTED, and successive governments, have encouraged this practice. The last Labour government should be particularly ashamed; for all its talk of equality, it was encouraging a policy that has had a particularly detrimental impact on working-class children. There can be little doubt that schools have been increasingly pushing such courses. The fact is that the numbers of students taking vocational courses has exploded in recent years – from 15,000 in 2004 to 575,000 in 2010, according to the Department for Education. However, having previously worked in two schools that pursued this approach, I believe that government has got the right policy now, but for the wrong reasons. This is not about league tables but about low academic expectations of working-class children.
The role of higher education in creating sustainable leaders
Business issues are rarely simple – if they were, they would have already been solved elsewhere. And there are fewer issues more complex than creating sustainable futures for organisations. It’s easy to point the finger for irresponsible business practices at the door of higher education institutions – after all, they produced the leaders of the 1980s, the era of “greed is good” and no real environmental concern. In contrast, for us, the aim is to produce graduates who understand that they have a responsibility as future leaders within the organisations they will work for, as members of societies, on the collective level, but also as responsible individuals. We aim to cultivate the potential of each individual to be involved and concerned with the wider community. From incorporating the elements of corporate social responsibility into undergraduate core modules to creating executive education programmes dedicated to responsible leadership, future leaders should be encouraged to think further than their own ambition and to understand how the actions of an individual impact on the whole. It is not their role to micromanage but to lead, guide and inspire others to a sustainable future. To comprehend this lesson fully, leaders need to see organisations as complete systems. They consist of many parts. How the parts behave affects the performance of the whole because they are all linked and interdependent. The performance of the whole is more than just the sum of the parts. Studying each part individually is counterproductive and presents a very limited view of any issues.
Americans are now more educated than ever
Amid all the chatter recently about whether President Barack Obama is a “snob” for wanting Americans to be educated or Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorumis anti-education for critizing Obama, many may have missed an important milestone. The Census Bureau reported that a record 30 percent of Americans ages 25 and older have at least a bachelor’s degree. The data, from March 2011, marks first time ever that such high a proportion of Americans have had at least a four-year degree, and it follows decades of gradually improving higher education rates. In the long term, experts say, that’s good news for the U.S. economy. After all, the majority of the U.S. economy is service-oriented, and that means many Americans who want to get ahead need to find ways to succeed in white-collar settings. Many also believe a highly educated, innovative workforce is one of several key ingredients succeeding against global competitors. “The future of the U.S. economy is not assembling the computer. The future of the U.S. economy is coming up with a novel design for a semiconductor that gets into a computer, that will then be assembled in some emerging economy,” said Adolfo Laurenti, deputy chief economist with Mesirow Financial. And yet, such long-term thinking may not feel so great to the many Americans out there who have a degree but either don’t have the job they want – or don’t have a job at all. The unemployment rate for college graduates, which stood at 4.2 percent in February, is half the unemployment rate for high school grads but still high by historical norms. Also, although a college degree also generally leads to much higher lifelong earnings, many young grads in particular are feeling squeezed these days by low starting salaries.