Guest Posts

How Much Do You Know About Early Oral Language Development?

The following was written by Susan B. Neuman and Esther Quintero. Neuman is Professor of Early Childhood & Literacy Education, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, & Human Development at New York University.

The topic of oral vocabulary instruction is affected by common myths, which have sometimes gotten in the way of promoting high quality teaching early on. While these myths often contain partial truths, recent evidence has called into question many of these notions.

We've prepared this short quiz  for you -- take it and find out how much you know about this important issue. Read through the following statements and decide if they are myths that have been perpetuated about oral vocabulary development or if they are facts (or key principles) about the characteristics of high quality vocabulary instruction. Download Dispelling Myths and Reinforcing Facts About Early Oral Language Development and Instruction if you prefer to go straight to the answers.

Can Solidarity Rebound?

Our guest author today is Eric Chenoweth, co-director of the Institute for Democracy in Eastern Europe. In 2011, the Republic of Poland awarded him with the Commander Cross of the Order of Merit, one of its highest civilian honors, for his contributions to Poland’s democratic transformation and role in providing support to Solidarity Underground during Martial Law.

In the West, Poland’s Solidarity trade union remains a symbol of the triumph of workers, united in defense of their fundamental rights, against the might of communist dictatorship.

Its remarkable rise in 1980 after nationwide strikes, its nearly ten-year struggle for freedom after the government tried to crush it using  martial law, and its 1989 electoral victory that led to the collapse of communism throughout the region — all of this has become the stuff of historical legend. The story of Solidarity after 1989, however, is less well known. It is the story of how free trade unionism was nearly destroyed by extreme “free market” policies carried out in the name of democratic reform.

Thoughts On Using Value Added, And Picking A Model, To Assess Teacher Performance

Our guest author today is Dan Goldhaber, Director of the Center for Education Data & Research and a Research Professor in Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington Bothell.

Let me begin with a disclosure: I am an advocate of experimenting with using value added, where possible, as part of a more comprehensive system of teacher evaluation. The reasons are pretty simple (though articulated in more detail in a brief, which you can read here). The most important reason is that value-added information about teachers appears to be a better predictor of future success in the classroom than other measures we currently use. This is perhaps not surprising when it comes to test scores, certainly an important measure of what students are getting out of schools, but research also shows that value added predicts very long run outcomes, such as college going and labor market earnings. Shouldn’t we be using valuable information about likely future performance when making high-stakes personnel decisions? 

It almost goes without saying, but it’s still worth emphasizing, that it is impossible to avoid making high-stakes decisions. Policies that explicitly link evaluations to outcomes such as compensation and tenure are new, but even in the absence of such policies that are high-stakes for teachers, the stakes are high for students, because some of them are stuck with ineffective teachers when evaluation systems suggest, as is the case today, that nearly all teachers are effective.

A Path To Diversifying The Teaching Workforce

Our guest author today is Jose Vilson, a math educator, writer, and activist in a New York City public school. You can find more of his writing at http://thejosevilson.com and his book, This Is Not A Test, will be released in the spring of 2014.

Travis Bristol’s article on bringing more black men to the classroom has sparked a plethora of conversation around the roles of educators in our school system. If we look at the national educational landscape, educators are still treated with admiration, but our government has yet to see fit to create conditions in schools that promote truly effective teaching and learning. In fact, successful teaching in otherwise struggling environments happens in spite and not because of the policies of our current school systems.

Even as superintendents see fit to close schools that house large populations of teachers and students of color, we must observe the roles that educators of color play in their schools, whether they consider themselves “loners” or “groupers," as Bristol describes in the aforementioned article. When the Brown vs. Board of Education decision came down in 1954, districts across the nation were determined to keep as many white educators employed as possible. While integration plays a role in assuring equitable conditions for all children and exposes them to other peoples, segregation’s silver lining was that Black educators taught Black children Black history. Racial identification plays a role in self-confidence, and having immediate role models for our children of color matters for achievement to this day.

Egyptians Who Protest Worker Rights Abuses Are Labeled “Terrorists”

Our guest author today is Heba F. El-Shazli.  She has 25 years of experience in the promotion of democracy, independent trade unions, political and economic development. She has worked with institutions and leaders throughout the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) to challenge authoritarian regimes. Currently she is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University's Center for Democracy and Civil Society. The views expressed here are her own.

Amid the political and social chaos that reigns in Egypt today, a semblance of normality persists: People go to work; they buy food; they try to feed their families.  And, as in the past, Egyptians employers, with the active support of the Egyptian government, flagrantly violate fundamental workers rights. Workers are fired for trying to organize unions and they are not paid what they are owed, including legally mandated bonuses, profit-sharing and health care benefits or proper safety equipment.

There is a familiar political dimension to these events. Elements in the police and military are accusing workers who protest employer abuses of being “terrorists” -- which in today’s Egypt means members or supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). In a recent New York Times article, two Egyptian media sources claimed that the workers striking at the Suez Steel company were infiltrated by MB activists attempting to “destabilize” the country.

This is an accusation supported neither by the facts, nor the history of blue collar unions.

On Education Polls And Confirmation Bias

Our guest author today is Morgan Polikoff, Assistant Professor in the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California. 

A few weeks back, education policy wonks were hit with a set of opinion polls about education policy. The two most divergent of these polls were the Phi Delta Kappan/Gallup poll and the Associated Press/NORC poll.

This week a California poll conducted by Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) and the USC Rossier School of Education (where I am an assistant professor) was released. The PACE/USC Rossier poll addresses many of the same issues as those from the PDK and AP, and I believe the three polls together can provide some valuable lessons about the education reform debate, the interpretation of poll results, and the state of popular opinion about key policy issues.

In general, the results as a whole indicate that parents and the public hold rather nuanced views on testing and evaluation.

Calling Black Men To The Blackboard

Our guest author today is Travis Bristol, former high school English teacher in New York City public schools, who is currently a clinical teacher educator with the Boston Teacher Residency program, as well as a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate at Teachers College, Columbia University. His research interests focus on the intersection of gender and race in organizations. Travis is a 2013 National Academy of Education/Spencer Dissertation Fellow.

W.E.B. Du Bois, the preeminent American scholar, suggested that the problem of the twentieth-century is the problem of the color-line. Without question, the problem of the 21st century continues to be the “color-line," which is to say race. And so it is understandable why Cabinet members in the Obama administration continue to address the race question head-on, through policies that attempt to decrease systemic disparities between Latino and Black Americans when compared to White Americans.

Most recently, in August 2013, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced the Justice Department’s decision to reduce federal mandatory drug sentencing regulations.  Holder called “shameful” the fact that “black male offenders have received sentences nearly 20 percent longer than those imposed on white males convicted of similar crimes." Attempts, such as Holder's, to reform the criminal justice system appear to be an acknowledgment that institutionalized racism influences how Blacks and Whites are sentenced.

Richard Parrish And The March On Washington For Jobs And Freedom

Our guest author today is William P. Jones, history professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and author of The March on Washington:  Jobs, Freedom and the Forgotten History of Civil Rights (W.W. Norton & Co., 2013)

If Richard Parrish had his way, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom would have occurred in 1941 rather than 1963.  As President of the Federation of Colored College Students in New York City, the 25-year old student was a key organizer of the mass demonstration that union leader A. Philip Randolph called to protest discrimination in the armed forces and the defense industries during the Second World War.  He was furious, therefore, when Randolph cancelled the march in exchange for an executive order, issued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, prohibiting defense contractors from discriminating against workers on the basis of their race, color religion, or national origin.  Parrish agreed that this was a major victory, but pointed out that it would expire when the war ended and do nothing to address discrimination in the armed forces.  Accusing Randolph of acting without consulting the students and other groups that supported the mobilization, he insisted that the March on Washington be rescheduled immediately.

Randolph refused—accusing Parrish and other young militants of being “more interested in the drama and pyrotechnics of the march than the basic and main issues of putting Negroes to work”—but the disagreement did not prevent the two black radicals from working closely together to build a powerful alliance between the civil rights and labor movements in the postwar decades.  After completing his bachelor’s degree in 1947, Parrish worked as a teacher and union leader until his retirement in 1976.  He also worked closely with Randolph to open jobs and leadership positions for black workers in organized labor.  When Randolph decided to reorganize the March on Washington in 1963, Dick Parrish was one of the first people he turned to for support.

Red Card For Morsi

Our guest author today is Heba F. El-Shazli. Currently a visiting professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Democracy and Civil Society, Prof. El-Shazli  has 25 years of international experience in political and economic development, including democracy promotion programs and  support  for independent trade unions. She has worked with trade unions, political parties, and leaders throughout the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The views expressed here are her own.

Egypt has become a land of stark, astounding contradictions. There is so little stability that political pundits cannot predict or even explain what is happening in the political sphere or society. As it is in politics, it is in daily life. Some examples:

Driving in Cairo has become the art of the detour. Demonstrations and protests can materialize any time of day and anywhere. If a protesting mass of humanity does not impede your way, then one of the new cement block walls will. These walls are erected by the government across major streets to contain demonstrations. Surely the time is right for some inventor to launch a new app -- “Avoid Protests - Egypt” -- to guide drivers and protesters alike.

Times are not tough for everyone. In the affluent areas of Cairo, youngsters still sport the latest fashions, shoppers carry home their purchases, and restaurants brim with high class clientele. New restaurants are opening and one even sells fancy “cupcakes," the craze imported from the US. One would hardly believe that, for the average Egyptian, the country is indeed sinking into a financial abyss. But that is what's happening.

How Important Is Undergraduate Teaching In Public R1 Universities? How Important Should It Be?

Our guest author today is Ian Robinson, Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and in the Residential College's interdisciplinary Social Theory and Practice program at the University of Michigan.

I ended my previous post by arguing that (1) if teaching is at least as valuable as research, and (2) nontenure-track (NTT) faculty teach at least as well as tenure-track (TT) faculty, then the very large pay disparities between the two classes of faculty that characterize American universities today violate a basic principle of workplace fairness: equal pay for equal work. When conditions (1) and (2) are met, then, all an institution can do to defend current practice is plead poverty: we can’t afford to do what we ourselves must acknowledge to be “the right thing."

But what about places like the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, where I work? Is condition (1) met in what are sometimes called “R1” universities like mine? If not, maybe big pay disparities are warranted by the fact that, in such universities, research is a much higher institutional priority than undergraduate teaching. If teaching is a low enough priority, current pay inequalities could be justified by the fact that NTT faculty are not paid to do research and publishing – even though many of them do it – and, conversely, that most TT faculty pay is for their research and publishing, rather than their teaching.