Synopses & Reviews
America is, at present, a world leader in business, science, medicine, and technology. At the same time, children in America's public schools lag well behind children in other industrial countries. Worse, many of the school reforms promoted in America as new and innovative are in fact old and tired—often more than a century old. Moreover, there is no evidence that they work to boost student achievement. Essays in this volume identify key failures in modern American education and then show how parents, policymakers, and teachers can make changes that will raise the level of student performance. This book makes the case for content-rich education and explicit teaching. Its topics include
- Roots of current reform ideas—and weaknesses of those ideas
- Is education research scientific?
- Why some children don't read
- How to teach reading successfully
- How to teach spelling successfully
- Current American attitudes toward learning—how they block achievement in math and science
- Testing student achievement—the perils and pitfalls
Synopsis
These essays identify key failures in modern American education and illuminate some ways in which those in the teaching professionand their studentscan achieve higher levels of performance, making the case for content-rich education and explicit teaching.
About the Author
Williamson M. Evers, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a member of the Institution’s Koret Task Force on K-12 Education, was the US assistant secretary of education for policy from 2007 to 2009. In 2003, Evers served in Iraq as a senior adviser for education to Administrator L. Paul Bremer of the Coalition Provisional Authority. Evers has been a member of National Educational Research Policy and Priorities Board, a commissioner on the California State Academic Standards Commission, a trustee on the Santa Clara County Board of Education, and a president of the board of directors of the East Palo Alto Charter School. He currently serves on former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's California Academic Content Standards Commission.