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APPENDIX

NOTES

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INDEX

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Appendix: The Critical Importance of an Adequate Theory of Reading

This appendix on the role of adequate scientific theory in reading and in education generally is included for those who wish to study more closely the research foundations and policy implications of this book. It attempts to explain why it is essential to go beyond the latest breathless reports from on-site studies, which are, even at their best, inconclusive. Good policy is made on the basis of theories that are most firmly grounded in the whole range of relevant empirical studies.

One of the most disdainful remarks in the hard sciences is that a piece of work is "atheoretical," meaning that it fails to relate the relevance of its factual findings to large complexes of phenomena and to more general scientific theories. Wolfgang Pauli once remarked about a scientific paper that "it is not even wrong."¹ Scientists regard the formulation of theories about deep causal factors to be the motive of scientific progress—a view that has rightly replaced an earlier just-the-facts conception of scientific advance.

What takes the place of scientific theory in much educational discourse is educational philosophy, which tends to be either liberal or conservative. As Private Willis explained in Act II of Iolanthe, "Every boy and every gal / That's born into the world alive / Is either a little liberal / Or else a little conservative." This partly explains the pattern of educational debates. Conservative "traditionalism" is often set against liberal "child-centered" education. Conservatives tend to think of human nature as something that needs to be molded. Liberals tend to think that the innate character of the child needs to be sympathetically nurtured and allowed to develop. Liberal and conservative theories of this sort are not lacking in American educational discourse. But that is not the kind of theory I mean in this appendix. Rather, I take the word in its scientific connotation, as a projection and generalization from what has been reliably learned in research.

Taking the word in that sense, there is too little theory in American education, especially with regard to ways of achieving agreed-upon goals, such as attaining proficiency in mathematics, reading, and writing. These goals themselves are not subjects of debate. Disagreements about how best to achieve them are, in principle, scientific debates. Yet there is a notable shortage of thoughtful scientific theory within educational discourse. That may be partly because educational research data tend to be uncertain. The uncontrolled variables in real classrooms—the social interactions of the class, the teacher's talents, the prior knowledge of the individual students—have made causal conclusions difficult to determine with confidence. Such difficulties were among the reasons given in a recent report of the National Research Council as to why no program or methods of teaching mathematics had been scientifically determined to be superior to any other.²

In reaction to such past defects of educational research, the Institute of Educational Sciences has recently instituted rigorous standards for data gathering, including an insistence on random assignments of students to experimental and control groups, on the pattern of good medical research. These are admirable advances. The more reliable the data we obtain are, the more reliable our theories will be. But good theory is not to be confused with good data-gathering techniques alone. The need for a deep general analysis is not obviated by even the best data-gathering techniques. The random assignment of students into control groups and experimental groups is an admirable method for gaining higher confidence in statistical results but cannot by itself explain the underlying reasons for the statistical results nor by itself allow confident predictions that they will be repeated in new circumstances.

Good data gathering does not by itself support the inference that what has worked in one place will work in another. It won't do to regard research results as a black box from which it can be directly argued, for instance, that since smaller class size led to better results in Tennessee, smaller classes will also lead to better results in California. The famous and expensive Tennessee STAR study (Student Achievement Teacher Ratio) was exemplary in its data-gathering techniques, using large numbers of students randomly assigned into control and experimental groups. Since the data gathering was so well conducted, policymakers in California reasoned that the results would apply to California and put that line of reasoning into effect at an estimated cost of $5 billion extra—without significant results. To infer reliably that carefully gathered results are replicable, one cannot treat them atheoretically. Data about what works in schools cannot necessarily simply be gathered from schools and then applied directly to improve different schools without the benefit of deep analysis and general predictive theory. To apply results elsewhere, one needs to understand in detail the causal factors that would allow confident predictions. What are the generalizable factors that make smaller class size more effective for earlier grades than for later ones? What are the replicable causes of student gain through smaller classes?

One important theoretical consideration too often neglected in educational research is that of opportunity cost. The multimilliondollar Tennessee class-size study, while admirable for its random assignments and statistical punctiliousness, did not adequately address theoretical questions concerning unanalyzed opportunity costs. Could there be alternative, more reliable, and more cost-effective ways of achieving similar or higher gains? If, for example, an important advantage of smaller class size is more interaction time between student and teacher, are there alternative, less expensive policies for achieving more interaction time and still greater student gains? In other words, the Tennessee STAR study did not hazard a clear and detailed theoretical interpretation and generalization of its own findings. If it had, the state of California, basing its policy on the STAR study, might not have spent $5 billion in an unsuccessful effort to improve achievement simply through smaller class size.

Theory must always outrun data to provide a context for interpreting data and to justify predictions. Since educational data are often conflicted and uncertain, educational theories are too often simply ideological stances in disguise. It is against this backdrop that I proffer the following proposition: at any given time, it is our duty to work out the most probable theoretical analysis of a practical educational problem in the light of all the relevant research from all relevant areas, and to resist being distracted on the one side by the latest research bulletins and on the other side by people who say skeptically that educational data are too complex so we'll stick to our educational philosophy.

An adequate theory of reading will recognize that reading comprehension is a subcategory of language comprehension, and that language comprehension must entail attributes that often remain unmentioned in discussions of reading, especially the idea of the speech community. For communication to occur by means of language, the two sides (call them either speaker/listener or author/ reader) have to learn and share the same language rules. For instance, a child learns that when a speaker says you to the child, it means the child, and when the speaker says I, it means the speaker. But when the child speaks, I means the child and you means the person being spoken to. The words take on different meanings—refer to different people—depending on the speaker, and this is a language rule that any comprehender must learn. A whole host of such tacit agreements are necessary to communication. The British philosopher H. P. Grice made a considerable reputation by explaining in a few pages the structure of many of these unspoken agreements.³ The group of people who share these agreements is a speech community. Sharing the unsaid makes it possible for them to comprehend the said. It is the very thing that makes them a speech community.⁴ Poor readers who can decode adequately but cannot comprehend well are usually readers who lack knowledge of a whole array of unspoken information being taken for granted by insiders in the speech community. To supply students with this unspoken, taken-for-granted knowledge as efficiently as possible should be the goal of a good reading program.

Scientific theories, explicit or implicit, have enormous practical ramifications. It was theory and not decisive data that caused current reading programs to include trivial, disconnected reading materials and to allot too much time and effort to the teaching of formal comprehension strategies. Proponents of the strategies could point to data that showed some improvements after a few weeks of strategy instruction. (Most educational interventions can supply positive data.) But these improvements were not large.⁵ And long-term data regarding strategy instruction are even less impressive. If the long-term data favoring these practices had been decisive, we would not be having a nationwide reading comprehension problem. As I have suggested, the existing research on this issue better supports a contrary theory which is far more consistent with findings of cognitive science. This countertheory holds that extensive comprehension strategy instruction, while showing brief initial results for easily adduced reasons, is not a productive use of instructional time. This theory is well based on data and on a broad range of studies concerning the nature of language comprehension. Which theory is to be preferred?

A useful example of how to resolve conflict among empirical educational theories—until clearly decisive empirical results arrive — comes from physics, a field in which there have been uncertainties just as great as those found in education. As recently as 1900 the existence of atoms was a matter of active dispute among scientists. The knotty theoretical problem of the existence of atoms goaded young Albert Einstein into his earliest work, from his doctoral dissertation of 1905 through several great articles on Avogadro's number (N) in 1905 and 1906. Einstein approached the question of N (the number of molecules in a given amount of matter) from a lot of different angles — blackbody radiation, the flow of solutions, Brownian motion, and the blue of the sky. He showed that all of these independent methods of determining N yielded a very similar number. Since each of these sources of computation was quite independent of the others, this independent convergence made it very hard to doubt the atomic theory. In framing theories that will guide fateful policy decisions about educating our children, this pattern of independent data convergence should be our goal.

In teaching children to become good readers, we need to ask hard questions about the relative efficiencies of conflicting instructional methods, several of which, like the STAR experiment, have an apparently good basis in research. The fact that a method has been shown to yield positive effects on reading comprehension or vocabulary gain doesn't mean that it meets the more stringent theoretical requirement of attaining these positive effects efficiently. These are the kinds of issues that a teacher, school administrator, or policymaker needs to have addressed, and it is the duty of the researcher who is familiar with both the data and the relevant literature to ponder and try to answer these theoretical questions about opportunity cost, quite apart from ideology and educational philosophy.

Coming back, then, to our example of strategy instruction, the theory supporting spending a lot of time in teaching reading comprehension strategies is a good example of nonconvergence. It is in conflict with much that has been learned about the gaining of expertise and the workings of the mind. The reading strategy theory initially took note of a narrow range of data: expert readers tend to monitor their own performances. Then the theory took an unwarranted leap: if that is what expert readers do, we will take a big shortcut by teaching novices how to monitor their performances. While some of the subsequent data did appear to support this approach, other data suggested that conscious self-monitoring is not the path that experts actually take to become experts. Studies of expertise have consistently shown a very slow development of high skill (ten years is close to the minimum time). Still other data indicate that active self-monitoring can be done effectively only after the person has become an expert—for reasons having to do with the limitations of channel capacity in the human mind. This evidence argues against burdening the novice's mind with self-conscious strategizing. Still another theoretical shortcoming of the strategy idea was its unspoken but incorrect assumption that these "metacognitive" comprehension strategies are formal, transferable activities that can be deployed independently of content knowledge. A better theory that accounted for a larger range of evidence would have avoided these scientific shortcomings and a tragic waste of classroom time.

Stressing the importance of theory might be considered a sign of indifference to educational data. But of course the contrary is the real case. Careful attention to achieving the most probable theory is the best way to take account of the greatest possible amount of relevant data. It's the best way of not being diverted from sound educational policy by some fresh bulletin from the schools that may or may not truly show what it claims to show. Suppose somebody comes up with a claim for a program that, according to research, can bring a child from low language comprehension to proficient language comprehension in one school year. This is not, perhaps, an absolute impossibility, but on strong theoretical grounds having to do with the gradual nature of knowledge and vocabulary acquisition, we need to be especially wary of claims to quick fixes in reading proficiency. There is a lot of evidence that although language development can be accelerated, it can never be really fast. We know this because we are beginning to have a deeper understanding of the way vocabulary and its accompanying knowledge is built up. This theoretical understanding can enable us to speed up progress in near-optimal fashion even as it repudiates the notion that Seabiscuit-style progress is possible in reading comprehension.

A theoretical understanding of the slow gradualism of gains in reading is an important consideration in taking practical steps toward implementing the practical recommendations of this book. Important test data on reading gains might not become available until a few years after these recommendations are put into practice. After three to five years, however, the gains predicted from theory (and from existing data) will be dramatic. Moreover, until a better theory of optimal reading instruction comes along, these reading gains should be considered the fastest gains that a school program can achieve. In general, as schooling proceeds on its slow, cumulative way, we continually need to rely on good theory—not on isolated pieces of data but rather on the largest possible array of data, which is what good theory by definition embraces.

The two ideologies or philosophies that dominate in the American educational world, which tend to corrupt scientific inferences, are naturalism and formalism. Naturalism is the notion that learning can and should be natural and that any unnatural or artificial approach to school learning should be rejected or deemphasized. This point of view favors many of the methods that are currently most praised and admired in early schooling—"hands-on learning," "developmentally appropriate practice," and the natural, whole-language method of learning to read. By contrast, methods that are unnatural are usually deplored, including "drill," "rote learning," and the analytical, phonics approach to teaching early reading. We call such naturalism an ideology rather than a theory because it is more a value system (based historically on the European Romantic movement) than an empirically based idea. If we adopt this ideology, we know in advance that the natural is good and the artificial is bad. We don't need analysis and evidence; we are certain, quite apart from evidence, that children's education will be more productive if it is more natural. If the data do not show this, it is because we are using the wrong kinds of data, such as scores on standardized tests. That is naturalism.

Formalism is the ideology that what counts in education is not the learning of things but rather learning how to learn. What counts is not gaining mere facts but gaining formal skills. Along with naturalism, it shares an antipathy to mere facts and to the piling up of information. The facts, it says, are always changing. Children need to learn how to understand and interpret any new facts that come along. The skills that children need to learn in school are not how to follow mindless procedures but rather how to understand what lies behind the procedures so they can apply them to new situations. In reading, instead of learning a lot of factual subject matter, which is potentially infinite, the child needs to learn strategies for dealing with any texts, such as "questioning the author," "classifying," and other "critical thinking" skills.

Both naturalism and formalism are powerful because they are attractive and, rightly understood, contain much truth. We would all be better off if they were entirely true, in which case American schools would be making a far better showing on international comparisons. But insofar as they function as empirical theories, they are in their unqualified forms very inadequate and are at odds with what is known in relevant scientific fields.

Naturalism is at least partly wrong in all those cases where the things to be learned (like alphabetic decoding) are historically late, artificial products of civilization. There is no natural, innate alphabetic learning faculty in children's minds comparable to their innate oral language faculty. Naturalism is mainly right about first-language learning and, as we observed in Chapter 4, about vocabulary acquisition, but it is in error in trying to conflate oral language learning and alphabetic phonics. Similarly, the base-ten number system, like the alphabet, is a nonnatural system, and there are no good empirical grounds for thinking that a naturalistic approach to learning the operations of the base-ten system will work very well, as in fact it does not. However, it is also very unlikely that a harsh, unnatural, drill-and-kill approach to either the alphabet or the base-ten system will work best with young children. Consideration of the defects and strengths of naturalism, embracing what psychology knows about these issues, is best described not as part of a fight-to-the-death, liberal-vs.-conservative ideology but simply as a sounder empirical theory.

The same qualifications need to be made about the ideology of formalism. In some respects the learning-to-learn idea is correct. It is true, for example, that the child needs to be able to learn new things through reading. It would therefore appear necessary that learning how to learn is a more important educational goal than learning mere facts and subject matter. But we have already alluded to the firm empirical finding that in order to understand a text, the child has to have prior knowledge about its domain. That would argue for the theory that teaching the child a lot of domains is itself a necessary element in learning to learn. This suggests a theoretical middle ground between formalism and antiformalism. The antiformalists are right to stress that general reading ability must necessarily be founded upon general knowledge—on a lot of "mere information." The formalists are right to insist that the goal of such an education is not primarily to possess this information in itself but to possess it as a means of learning to learn. Externally, therefore, the formalist goal is one that can be accepted. What good empirical theory has to offer is the complicating insight that the only way to achieve the goal of learning to learn is through something that the formalist ideologue disdains—a lot of diverse information.

In short, a new watchword in education needs to be not only "random assignment" but also "convergence," which is a criterion that will require a lot of scientific knowledge and thought.⁶ The young Einstein gave a memorable explanation of the principle of convergence from multiple domains when he was still a patent clerk. He received a report from an eminent experimenter that was inconsistent with his theory that the mass of an electron increases with its velocity by a certain amount. The experimenter's work had been done very carefully, and Einstein's friend and mentor H. A. Lorentz was ready to give up the theory in view of the unfavorable data. But young Einstein was aware that experimental setups are subject to uncontrolled variables, and in a published review of the subject had this to say in 1907:

It will be possible to decide whether the foundations of the theory correspond with the facts only if a great variety of observations is at hand ... In my opinion, both [the alternative theories of Abraham and Bucherer] have rather slight probability, because their fundamental assumptions concerning the mass of moving electrons are not explainable in terms of theoretical systems which embrace a greater complex of phenomena.⁷

The key phrases are "great variety of observations" and "embrace a greater complex of phenomena." Ultimately Einstein was shown to be correct, and the overhasty inferences from rigorous but narrow data gathering were wrong. Einstein understood the critical importance of accepting for the time being only those conceptions that converge independently from the widest complexes of phenomena.

This is a point that Steven Weinberg makes very amusingly. Using the example of medical research, which is similar to educational research in many respects, he cautions that mere experimental and statistical methods can be highly dubious without the explanatory support of fundamental science.

Medical research deals with problems that are so urgent and difficult that proposals of new cures often must be based on medical statistics without understanding how the cure works, but even if a new cure were suggested by experience with many patients, it would probably be met with skepticism if one could not see how it could possibly be explained reductively, in terms of sciences like biochemistry and cell biology. Suppose that a medical journal carried two articles reporting two different cures for scrofula: one by ingestion of chicken soup and the other by a king's touch. Even if the statistical evidence presented for these two cures had equal weight, I think the medical community (and everyone else) would have very different reactions to the two articles. Regarding chicken soup I think that most people would keep an open mind, reserving judgment until the cure could be confirmed by independent tests. Chicken soup is a complicated mixture of good things, and who knows what effect its contents might have on the mycobacteria that cause scrofula? On the other hand, whatever statistical evidence were offered to show that a king's touch helps to cure scrofula, readers would tend to be very skeptical because they would see no way that such a cure could ever be explained reductively ... How could it matter to a mycobacterium whether the person touching its host was properly crowned and anointed or the eldest son of the previous monarch?⁸

Without greater theoretical sophistication, we are unlikely to achieve better practical results in education. With greater theoretical sophistication, educational research might begin to earn the prestige that it currently lacks but, given its potential importance, could some day justify. The place to begin is with reading.

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Notes

1. WHY DO WE HAVE A KNOWLEDGE DEFICIT?

1. International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement, Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) (Chestnut Hill, Mass.: PIRLS International Study Center, 2001); Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), Measuring Student Knowledge and Skills (Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2000); Mariann Lemke...[et al.]; National Center for Education Statistics Educational Resources Information, Outcomes of learning results from the 2000 Program for International Student Assessment of 15-year-olds in reading, mathematics, and science literacy (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Dept. of Education, 2001; Laurence T. Ogle et al., International comparisons in fourth-grade reading literacy: Findings from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) of 2001 (Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics, 2003).

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2. Anne E. Cunningham and Keith E. Stanovich, "Early Reading Acquisition and Its Relation to Reading Experience and Ability 10 Years Later," Developmental Psychology 33, 6 (Nov. 1997): 934–45.

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3. William R. Johnson and Derek Neal, "Basic Skills and the Black-White Earnings Gap," in Christopher Jencks and Meredith Phillips, eds., The Black-White Test Score Gap (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1998), pp. 480–97.

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4. National Center for Education Statistics Educational Resources Information, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), Reading Assessments (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Dept. of Education, 1998 and 2002). I've just received the welcome news of an improvement by nine-year-olds, both in overall reading proficiency and in narrowing the gap between groups, but there has been no improvement in the later grades, when reading comprehension rather than decoding becomes the more important element. This is the usual pattern. Needless to say, the real result of our education—how well our middle school and high school graduates comprehend what they read—is the critical test of our schooling. See http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/ltt/results2004/ and Nick Anderson, "Schools Shift Approach as Adolescent Readers Fail to Improve," Washington Post, Aug. 1, 2005, p. Bi.

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5. E. D. Hirsch, The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them (New York: Doubleday, 1996), p. 43.

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6. Vernon Louis Parrington, Main Currents in American Thought: An Interpretation of American Literature from the Beginnings to 1920 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1927–31).

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7. "Natural men's prudence and care to preserve their own lives, or the care of others to preserve them, do not secure them a moment." Jonathan Edwards, 1741.

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8. Horace Mann, Seventh Annual Report, 1843, in Report Together with the Report of the Secretary of the Board, 1st-12th (Boston: Dalton, 1838–1849).

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9. That is not to say that the word development has no proper place at all in our thinking about education. In the very early years, when the brain is still maturing physiologically, there is a nearly universal sequence of learning. Perhaps the best recent book about the appropriate limits of the development idea in early childhood learning is Robert Siegler, Emerging Minds: The Process of Change in Children's Thinking (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998). See also R. Siegler and M. W. Alibali, Children's Thinking (New York: Prentice-Hall, 2005).

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10. For the half that is true, see Siegler, Emerging Minds, and Siegler and Alibali, Children's Thinking.

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11. Eric T. Bell, The Development of Mathematics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1940) and David M. Burton, The History of Mathematics: An Introduction (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1985).

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12. John Noble Wilford, "Who Began Writing? Many Theories, Few Answers," New York Times, Apr. 6, 1999, and David Sacks, Letter Perfect: The Marvelous History of Our Alphabet from AtoZ (New York: Broadway, 2004).

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13. Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (New York: Vintage Books, 1963).

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14. Adrienne Koch and William Peden, eds., The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson (New York: Modern Library, 1944).

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15. "Next to make them expert in the usefullest points of Grammar, and with all to season them, and win them early to the love of vertue and true labour, ere any flattering seducement, or vain principle seise them wandering, some easie and delightful Book of Education would be read to them; whereof the Greeks have store, as Cebes, Plutarch, and other Socratic discourses. But in Latin we have none of classic authority extant, except the two or three first Books of Quintilian, and some select pieces elsewhere. But here the main skill and groundwork will be, to temper them such Lectures and Explanations upon every opportunity, as may lead and draw them in willing obedience, enflam'd with the study of Learning, and the admiration of Vertue;... At the same time, some other hour of the day, might be taught them the rules of Arithmetick, and soon after the Elements of Geometry even playing, as the old manner was. After evening repast, till bed-time their thoughts will be best taken up in the easie grounds of Religion, and the story of Scripture. The next step would be to the Authors of Agriculture, Cato, Varro, and Columella, for the matter is most easie, and if the language be difficult, so much the better, it is not a difficulty above their years." John Milton, "Of Education" 1644.

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16. Emerson Journals, entry for September 14, 1839, in The Heart of Emerson's Journals, eds. Bliss and Perry (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1937).

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17. Jeanne S. Chall, Vicki A. Jacobs, Luke E. Baldwin, The Reading Crisis: Why Poor Children Fall Behind (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990).

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18. Cunningham and Stanovich, Early Reading Acquisition.

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19. Here is a characteristic summary from a present-day inheritor of these ideas: "Critical thinking is the use of those cognitive skills or strategies that increase the probability of a desirable outcome. It is used to describe thinking that is purposeful, reasoned and goal directed—the kind of thinking involved in solving problems, formulating inferences, calculating likelihoods, and making decisions when the thinker is using skills that are thoughtful and effective for the particular context and type of thinking task. Critical thinking also involves evaluating the thinking process—the reasoning that went into the conclusion we've arrived at the kinds of factors considered in making a decision. Critical thinking is sometimes called directed thinking because it focuses on a desired outcome." Diane F. Halpern, Thought and Knowledge: An Introduction to Critical Thinking (Mahwah, N.J.: Erlbaum, 1996).

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20. For reviews of the scientific literature on these subjects, see E. D. Hirsch, Cultural Literacy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), Hirsch, The Schools We Need, W. Schneider, J. Korkel, and F. E. Weinert, "Expert Knowledge, General Abilities, and Text Processing," in W. Schneider and F. E. Weinert, eds., Interactions Among Aptitudes, Strategies, and Knowledge in Cognitive Performance (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1990).

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21. Linda Perlstein, "School Pushes Reading, Writing Reform; Sciences Shelved to Boost Students to 'No Child' Standard," Washington Post, May 31, 2004, p. A1.

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22. Max Planck, Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers, Frank Gaynor, trans. (London: Williams & Norgate, 1950): "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."

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23. Hideki Hiroishi, Akio Iwasaki, and Masahiko Oe, Comparative Study of Cross-Cultural Understanding: Japan and the United States: Cultural Traits and Curriculum as Crucial Agents, http://www.cck.dendai.ac.jp/~hiroishi/Report/en01.html: "We found a significant difference in the length of time students spend watching television. While the most American students watch TV 'one-two hours a day,' their Japanese counterparts responded that they watch TV 'more than three hours a day.' This tendency is more conspicuous among high schoolers. Whereas three quarters of Japanese high school students spend more than two hours a day watching TV, the largest high school viewing population was found among those students who watch TV thirty minutes to an hour a day in the U.S."

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24. Richard Rothstein, Class and Schools: Using Social, Economic, and Educational Reform to Close the Black-White Achievement Gap (Washington, D.C.: Economic Policy Institute, c2004).

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25. Among the many research reports on this subject, the following are notable: A. Garnham and J. Oakhill, "The Mental Models Theory of Language Comprehension," in B. K. Britton and A. C. Graesser, eds., Models of Understanding Text (Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum, 1996); Arthur C. Graesser and Rolf A. Zwaan, "Inference Generation and the Construction of Situation Models," in Charles A. Weaver III, Suzanne Mannes, and Charles R. Fletcher, eds., Discourse Comprehension: Essays in Honor of Walter Kintsch (Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum, 1995), pp. 117–39; Walter Kintsch, Comprehension: A Paradigm for Cognition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998); H. van Oostendorp and S. R. Goldman, eds., The Construction of Mental Representations During Reading (Mahwah, N.J.: Erlbaum, 1999); Rolf A. Zwaan, and Gabriel A. Radvansky, "Situation Models in Language Comprehension and Memory," Psychological Bulletin 123, 2 (Mar. 1998): 162–85.

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26. Geraldine J. Clifford and James W. Guthrie, Ed School: A Brieffor Professional Education (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988); Diane Ravitch, Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000); Hirsch, The Schools We Need.

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2. SOUNDING OUT: JUST THE BEGINNING OF READING

1. Marilyn Jager Adams, Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning About Print (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990); Jeanne Chall, Learning to Read: The Great Debate (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967).

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2. This evidence is summarized in National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching Children to Read (Washington, D.C.: National Institutes of Health, 2000).

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3. "Marion Joseph Steps Down," Education Week Jan. 29, 2003, p. 16.

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4. See, for example, Steven A. Stahl, Vocabulary Development (Cambridge, Mass.: Brookline, 1999).

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5. Stephanie Caillies, Guy Denhiere, and Walter Kintsch, "The Effect of Prior Knowledge on Understanding from Text: Evidence from Primed Recognition," European Journal of Cognitive Psychology 14, 2 (Apr. 2002): 267–86.

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6. Keith E. Stanovich, "Matthew Effects in Reading: Some Consequences of Individual Differences in the Acquisition of Literacy," Reading Research Quarterly 21, 4 (Fall 1986):360–407.

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7. Betty Hart, and Todd R. Risley, Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children (Baltimore: Peter Brookes, 1995).

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8. Kate Walsh, "Basal Readers: The Lost Opportunity to Build the Knowledge that Propels Comprehension," American Educator 27, 1 (Spring 2003): 24–27.

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9. Alan D. Baddeley, Human Memory: Theory and Practice (Needham Heights, Mass.: Allyn & Bacon, 1998).

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10. Thomas G. Sticht et al., Auding and Reading: A Developmental Model (Alexandria, Va: Human Resources Research Organization, July 1974), U.S. AFHRL Technical Report. No. 74–36, 116.

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11. This may not be so in cases of severe dyslexia, of course. See S. Shaywitz, Overcoming Dyslexia: A New and Complete Science-Based Program for Reading Problems at Any Level (New York: Knopf, 2004).

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12. E. D. Hirsch, Cultural Literacy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987).

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13. From Morning Edition, July 5, 2004, National Public Radio. Quoted with permission.

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14. Meeting in the Oval Office, Mar. 23, 1971, from transcripts held at U.S. Archives, available at http://www.archives.gov/nixon/tapes/transcripts/connally_exhibit_1.pdf.

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15. E. D. Hirsch, Jr., The Philosophy of Composition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), pp. 51–72.

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16. T. M. Griffin, L. Hemphill, L. Camp, and D. P. Wolf, "Oral Discourse in the Preschool Years and Later Literacy Skills," First Language 24, 2 (June 2004): 123–47.

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17. C. Juel, "Learning to Read and Write: A Longitudinal Study of 54 Children from First to Fourth Grade," Journal of Educational Psychology 80, 4 (1988): 437–47. See also D. J. Francis, S. E. Shaywitz, K. K. Steubing, B. A. Shaywitz, and J. M. Fletcher, "Developmental Lag Versus Deficit Models of Reading Disability: A Longitudinal Individual Growth Curves Analysis," Journal of Educational Psychology 88, 1 (1996): 3–17.

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18. Donna R. Recht and Lauren Leslie, "Effect of Prior Knowledge on Good and Poor Readers' Memory of Text," Journal of Educational Psychology 80, 1 (Mar. 1988): 16–20.

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19. W. Schneider and J. Korkel, "The Knowledge Base and Text Recall: Evidence from a Short-Term Longitudinal Study," Contemporary Educational Psychology 14 (1989): 382–93: "Performance was more a function of soccer knowledge than of aptitude level."

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20. M. Singer, R. Revlin, and M. Halldorson, "Bridging-Inferences and Enthymemes," in A. C. Graesser and G. H. Bower, eds., Inferences and Text Comprehension (San Diego: Academic, 1990), pp. 35–52.

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21. Arthur C. Graesser, Murray Singer, and Tom Trabasso, "Constructing Inferences During Narrative Text Comprehension," Psychological Review 101, 3 (July 1994): 371–95, and Arthur C. Graesser and Rolf A. Zwaan, "Inference Generation and the Construction of Situation Models," in Charles A. Weaver III, Suzanne Mannes, et al., eds., Discourse Comprehension: Essays in Honor of Walter Kintsch (Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum, 1995), pp. 117–39.

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22. There is a large literature on the decline of verbal SAT scores in the 1960s and 1970s, and on NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) scores when these began to be collected in the 1970s. The self-gratulatory claim that these large declines can be attributed to a broader test-taking population (that is, Hispanics and blacks did not take them before) is refuted by the significant decline in the absolute numbers of students scoring in the top categories. The increase in minority test-takers did not induce a decline in the absolute numbers of white test-takers; hence, an absolute decline in the number of high scorers could not have been caused by democratization of the test-taking population. A summary of these issues with full bibliographical references can be found in Hirsch, Cultural Literacy, pp. 1–10, and The Schools We Need, pp. 39–42, 176–79.

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23. The best discussion of this issue is still that of Christopher Jencks: "What's Behind the Drop in Test Scores?" Working Papers. Department of Sociology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., July-Aug. 1978.

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24. www.bankstreet.edu/literacy guide/back.html, July 15, 2004.

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25. W. Kintsch, "The Role of Knowledge in Discourse Comprehension: A Construction Integration Model," Psychological Review 95 (1988): 16382; P. Karen Murphy and Patricia A. Alexander, "What Counts? The Predictive Powers of Subject-Matter Knowledge, Strategic Processing, and Interest in Domain-Specific Performance," Journal of Experimental Education 70, 3 (Spring 2002): 197–214; Rolf A. Zwaan and Gabriel A. Radvansky, "Situation Models in Language Comprehension and Memory," Psychological Bulletin 123, 2 (Mar. 1998): 162–85.

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26. The earliest technical use of the term "situation model" that I have found is in Teun A. van Dijk and Walter Kintsch, Strategies of Discourse Comprehension (New York: Academic, 1983).

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27. Mcculloch v. Maryland, 1819.

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28. Robert M. Krauss and Sam Glucksberg, "Social and Nonsocial Speech," Scientific American 236, 2 (Feb. 1977): 100–105; Andrew Radford, Martin Atkinson, David Britain, Harald Clahsen, and Andrew Spencer, Linguistics: An Introduction (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

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29. Walsh, "Basal Readers."

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30. Scott Foresman Reading, Grade One, Volume 6, Surprise Me (Glenview, Ill.: Addison-Wesley, 2000).

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31. See Malcolm Gladwell, "The Art Of Failure," The New Yorker, Aug. 2000: "These two learning systems are quite separate, based in different parts of the brain. Willingham says that when you are first taught something—say, how to hit a backhand or an overhead forehand—you think it through in a very deliberate, mechanical manner. But as you get better the implicit system takes over: you start to hit a backhand fluidly, without thinking ... Under conditions of stress, however, the explicit system sometimes takes over. That's what it means to choke. When Jana Novotna faltered at Wimbledon, it was because she began thinking about her shots again. She lost her fluidity, her touch. She double-faulted on her serves and mis-hit her overheads, the shots that demand the greatest sensitivity in force and timing. She seemed like a different person—playing with the slow, cautious deliberation of a beginner—because, in a sense, she was a beginner again: she was relying on a learning system that she hadn't used to hit serves and overhead forehands and volleys since she was first taught tennis, as a child."

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32. Barak Rosenshine and Carla Meister, "Reciprocal Teaching: A Review of the Research," Review of Educational Research 64, 4 (Winter 1994) 479–530.

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33. M. Pressley, "What Should Comprehension Instruction Be the Instruction of?" In Michael L. Kamil, Peter B. Mosenthal, David Pearson, and Rebecca Barr, eds., Handbook of Reading Research, Vol. 3 (Mahwah, N.J.: Erlbaum, 2000).

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34. Rosenshine and Meister, "Reciprocal Teaching."

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35. T. Trabasso and S. Suh, "Understanding Text: Achieving Explanatory Coherence Through On-line Inferences and Mental Operations in Working Memory," Discourse Processes 16 (1993): 3–34.

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36. Shelly Dews et al., "Children's Understanding of the Meaning and Functions of Verbal Irony," Child Development 67, 6 (Dec. 1996): 3071–85; Kina D. Leitner, "Children's Recognition of Double Meanings," Dissertation Abstracts International 53, 3-B (Sept. 1992): 1623.

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3. KNOWLEDGE OF LANGUAGE

1. See, for example, W. F. Leopold, "The Decline of German Dialects," in J. A. Fishman, ed., Readings in the Sociology of Language (The Hague, 1968).

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2. O. Jespersen, Progress in Language with Special Reference to English (London, 1894); Language, Its Nature, Development, and Origin (London, 1922); Efficiency in Language Change (Copenhagen, 1941).

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3. Some versions of Black American English contain both the standard forms and the be forms, and the be forms can be described as habitual aspect markers that do not exist in Standard American English.

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4. M. M. Guxman, "Some General Regularities in the Formation and Development of National Languages," in Fishman, ed., Readings in the Sociology of Language, pp. 773–76.

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5. These date back to a position statement put out by the National Council of Teachers of English called "Students' Right to Their Own Language," College Composition and Communication 25 (Fall 1974). This statement was reaffirmed by the NCTE in 2003. See http://www.ncte.org/about/over/positions/category/div/114918.htm.
The resolution is as follows:
Resolved, that the National Council of Teachers of English affirm the students' right to their own language—to the dialect that expresses their family and community identity, the idiolect that expresses their unique personal identity; that NCTE affirm the responsibility of all teachers of English to assist all students in the development of their ability to speak and write better whatever their dialects; that NCTE affirm the responsibility of all teachers to provide opportunities for clear and cogent expression of ideas in writing, and to provide the opportunity for students to learn the conventions of what has been called written edited American English; and that NCTE affirm strongly that teachers must have the experiences and training that will enable them to understand and respect diversity of dialects. Be it further Resolved, that, to this end, the NCTE make available to other professional organizations this resolution as well as suggestions for ways of dealing with linguistic variety, as expressed in the CCCC background statement on students' right to their own language; and that NCTE promote classroom practices to expose students to the variety of dialects that comprise our multiregional, multiethnic, and multicultural society, so that they too will understand the nature of American English and come to respect all its dialects.

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6. For a discussion of these early controversies that have persisted, see E. D. Hirsch, Jr., "The Normative Character of Written Speech," in The Philosophy of Composition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977).

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7. W. Wolfram, C. T. Adger, and Donna Christian, Dialects in Schools and Communities (Mahwah, N.J.: Erlbaum, 1999).

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8. See, for instance, Hanni U. Taylor, Standard English, Black English, and Bidialectalism: A Controversy (New York: Peter Lang, 1989).

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9. B. Bernstein, "Social Class, Language, and Socialization," in P. P. Giglioli, ed., Language and Social Context (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1972).

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10. Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley, Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children (Baltimore: Peter Brookes, 1995).

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11. W. Labov, "The Logic of Nonstandard English," in Giglioli, Language and Social Context.

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12. Bernstein, "Social Class, Language, and Socialization," pp. 167–68.

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13. Charles Darwin, The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms with Observations on Their Habits (Ontario, Calif.: Bookworm, 1976).

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14. Steven Pinker, Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language (New York: Basic, 1999).

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15. Joan P. Gipe and Richard D. Arnold, "Teaching Vocabulary Through Familiar Associations and Contexts," Journal of Reading Behavior 11, 3 (Fall 1979); 281–85; Diana Christine Pulido, "The Impact of Topic Familiarity, L2 Reading Proficiency, and L2 Passage Sight Vocabulary on Incidental Vocabulary Gain Through Reading for Adult Learners of Spanish as a Foreign Language," Dissertation Abstracts International, Vol. 61(10-A), May 2001, 3892.

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16. Thomas K. Landauer and Susan'T. Dumais, "A Solution to Plato's Problem: The Latent Semantic Analysis Theory of Acquisition, Induction, and Representation of Knowledge," Psychological Review 104, 2 (Apr. 1997): 211–40.

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17. I. S. P. Nation, Teaching and Learning Vocabulary (New York: Newbury House, 1990); S. A. Stahl, Vocabulary Development (Cambridge, Mass.: Brookline Books, 1999).

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18. Anne E. Cunningham and Keith E. Stanovich, "Early Reading Acquisition and Its Relation to Reading Experience and Ability 10 Years Later," Developmental Psychology 33, 6 (Nov. 1997): 934–45.

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19. Anne E. Cunningham and Keith E. Stanovich, "What Reading Does for the Mind," American Educator (Spring/Summer 1998): 2–3; D. P. Hayes and M. Ahrens, "Speaking and Writing: Distinct Patterns of Word Choice," Journal of Memory and Language 27 (1988): 572–85; Chafe and Danielewicz, "Properties of Spoken and Written Language," in Horowitz and Samuels, eds., Comprehending Oral and Written Language (San Diego: Academic, 1987), pp. 83–113.

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20. Andrew Biemiller and Naomi Slonim, "Estimating Root Word Vocabulary Growth in Normative and Advantaged Populations: Evidence for a Common Sequence of Vocabulary Acquisition," Journal of Educational Psychology 93, 3 (Sept. 2001): 498–520; Andrew Biemiller, "Vocabulary: Needed If More Children Are to Read Well," Reading Psychology 24, 3–4 (July-Sept. 2003): 323–35; Isabel L. Beck, Margaret G. McKeown, and Richard C. Omanson, "The Effects and Uses of Diverse Vocabulary Instructional Techniques," in Margaret G. McKeown and Mary E. Curtis, eds., The Nature of Vocabulary Acquisition (Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum, 1987), pp. 147–63; Richard C. Omanson, Isabel L. Beck, Margaret G. McKeown, and Charles A. Perfetti, "Comprehension of Texts with Unfamiliar Versus Recently Taught Words: Assessment of Alternative Models," Journal of Educational Psychology 76, 6 (Dec. 1984): 1253–68; Richard C. Anderson and William E. Nagy, "Word Meanings," in Rebecca Barr et al., eds., Handbook of Reading Research, Vol. 2 (Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum, 1991) pp. 690–724; William E. Nagy, Richard C. Anderson, and Patricia A. Herman, "Learning Word Meanings from Context During Normal Reading," American Educational Research Journal 24, 2 (Summer 1987): 237–70. George A. Miller, "On Knowing a Word," Annual Review of Psychology 50 (1999): 1–19; Thomas K. Landauer and Susan'T. Dumais, "A Solution to Plato's Problem: The Latent Semantic Analysis Theory of Acquisition, Induction, and Representation of Knowledge," Psychological Review 104, 2 (Apr. 1997): 211–40.

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21. For a contrary view, see A. Biemiller and N. Slomin, "Estimating Root Word Vocabulary Growth in Normative and Advantaged Populations: Evidence for a Common Sequence of Vocabulary Acquisition," Journal of Educational Psychology 93 (2001): 498–520; E. B. Zechmeister, A. M. Chronis, et al., "Growth of a Functionally Important Lexicon," Journal of Reading Behavior 27 (1995): 201–12.

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22. Isabel L. Beck, Margaret G. McKeown, and Linda Kucan, Bringing Words to Life: Robust Vocabulary Instruction (New York: Guilford, 2002).

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23. Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye, eds., Roy Harris, trans. (London: Duckworth, 1983).

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24. Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct (New York: Morrow, 1994).

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25. National Reading Panel, Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching Children to Read (Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health, 2000).

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26. To be precise, the naturalists are wrong to assume that a big vocabulary develops naturally through contact with everyday spoken language. A basic vocabulary does develop that way, but in order to insure that all children develop a rich vocabulary adequate for reading comprehension, we need to create artificial contexts—contexts in which children are exposed to print, first by listening to reading and later by reading on their own. The natural word-learning mechanism only works well if exposure to new words is carefully contextualized through parent or teacher artifice.

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27. Landauer and Dumais, "A Solution to Plato's Problem."

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28. Miller, "On Knowing a Word."

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29. Nagy, Anderson, and Herman, "Learning Word Meanings from Context During Normal Reading."

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30. Hayes and Ahrens, "Speaking and Writing: Distinct Patterns of Word Choice"; Cunningham and Stanovich, "What Reading Does for the Mind," pp. 2–3; Keith E. Stanovich, "Does Reading Make You Smarter? Literacy and the Development of Verbal Intelligence," in Hayne W. Reese, ed., Advances in Child Development and Behavior, Vol. 24 (San Diego: Academic, 1993) pp. xii, 317.

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31. Stanovich, "Does Reading Make You Smarter?"

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32. See M. Duthoit, "L'enfant et l'école: Aspects synthetiques du suivi d'un echantillon de vingt mille élèves des écoles, Education et Formations 16 (1988): 3–13. Some of the relevant French research has been translated and can be found at http://www.coreknowledge.org/CKproto2/Preschool/FrenchEquity.htm.

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4. KNOWLEDGE OF THINGS

1. Carlo M. Cipolla, Literacy and Development in the West (Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin, 1969); E. D. Hirsch, The Philosophy of Composition (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1977).

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2. Teun A. van Dijk and Walter Kintsch, Strategies of Discourse Comprehension (New York: Academic, 1983).

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3. Bengt Altenberg and Sylviane Granger, eds., Lexis in Contrast: Corpus-Based Approaches (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2002); R. Piotrowski, "Psycholinguistic Basis of the Linguistic Automaton," International Journal of Psycholinguistics 10, 1 (1994): 15–32.

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4. Letter to Colonel Edward Carrington, Jan. 16, 1787, taken from The Life and Writings of Thomas Jefferson, eds. A. Koch and W. Peden (New York: Random House, 1944), pp. 411–12.

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5. Roger Shattuck, "The Shame of the Schools," New York Review of Books 52, 6 (April 2005).

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6. W. N. Francis and H. Kucera, Frequency Analysis of English Usage: Lexicon and Grammar (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1982).

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7. John Willinsky, "The Vocabulary of Cultural Literacy in a Newspaper of Substance," ERIC, ED 302836 EDRS.

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8. E. D. Hirsch, Cultural Literacy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987).

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9. The Core Knowledge Sequence is available from the nonprofit Core Knowledge Foundation, 801 East High Street, Charlottesville, VA 22902, or on the Internet at www.coreknowledge.org.

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5. USING SCHOOL TIME PRODUCTIVELY

1. E. D. Hirsch, Jr., "Reading Comprehension Requires Knowledge—of Words and the World," American Educator 27, 1 (Spring 2003): 10ff.

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2. U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Educational Statistics, Pursuing Excellence: Comparisons of International Eighth-Grade Mathematics and Science Achievement from a U.S. Perspective, 1995 and 1999, http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/2002/section2/tables/t13_3.asp.

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3. International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement, Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), 2001; Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), 2000. See also Mariann Lemke...[et al.], U.S. Dept. of Education, Outcomes of Learning Re suits from the 2000 Program for International Student Assessment of 15-Year-Olds in Reading, Mathematics, and Science Literacy (Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics Educational Resources Information, 2001); Laurence T. Ogle et al., International Comparisons in Fourth-Grade Reading Literacy: Findings from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) of 2001 (Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Dept. of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, 2003).

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4. Harold W. Stevenson and James W. Stigler, The Learning Gap: Why Our Schools Are Failing and What We Can Learn from Japanese and Chinese Education (New York: Summit, 1992).

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5. E. D. Hirsch, The Schools We Need (New York: Doubleday, 1996), pp. 38–41; Centre for Educational Research and Innovation, Immigrant's Children at School (Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 1987). For France in particular, see also S. Boulot and D. Boyden-Fradet, Les Immigrés et l'école: une course d'obstacles (Paris, 1988); M. Duthoit, "L'enfant et l'école: Aspects synthetiques du suivi d'un échantillon de vingt mille élèves des écoles," Education et Formations 16 (1988): 3–13.

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6. Hirsch, The Schools We Need, pp. 22–26.

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7. Sometimes the teacher, not knowing that dinosaurs and seeds were taught in the previous grade, teaches them again in the new grade—a different source of inefficiency.

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8. Geraldine J. Clifford and James W. Guthrie, Ed School: A Brief for Professional Education (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988); Diane Ravitch, Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000).

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9. Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley, Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children (Baltimore: Peter Brookes, 1995), p. 58.

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10. J. S. Coleman, Equality and Achievement in Education (San Francisco: Westview, 1990), pp. 29, 68, 163, 299.

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11. Ibid., pp. 67–165.

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12. Freddie D. Smith, "The Impact of the Core Knowledge Curriculum, A Comprehensive School Reform Model, On Achievement," Ph.D. dissertation, University of Virginia, 2003; "Summary of Research on the Effectiveness of Core Knowledge," http://www.coreknowledge.org/CKproto2/about/eval.htm.

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13. See www.coreknowledge.org.

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14. This research is translated and summarized on the Core Knowledge Web site: http://www.coreknowledge.org/CKproto2/Preschool/preschool_frenchequity_frames.htm.

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15. See J. S. Coleman, Equality of Educational Opportunity (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1966).

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16. Smith, "The Impact of the Core Knowledge Curriculum."

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17. C. Schatschneider, J. Torgesen, et al., A Multivariate Study of Individual Differences in Performance on the Reading Portion of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test: A Preliminary Report, 2004, Florida Center for Reading Research, www.fcrr.org/TechnicalReports/Multi_variate_Study_december2004.pdf.

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18. If the very early tests were designed to measure students' oral comprehension of language, it is likely that the most critical factors in reading comprehension both early and late (given adequate decoding skill) would turn out to be students' word and world knowledge. This prediction is supported by Sticht's finding that early listening skill reliably predicts later reading skill. See Thomas G. Sticht et al., Auding and Reading: A Developmental Model (Alexandria, Va.: Human Resources Research Organization, July 1974), Technical Report. No. 74–36, p. 116.

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6. USING TESTS PRODUCTIVELY

1. Donna R. Recht and Lauren Leslie, "Effect of Prior Knowledge on Good and Poor Readers' Memory of Text," Journal of Educational Psychology 80, 1 (Mar. 1988): 16–20.

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2. E. D. Hirsch, "Measuring the Communicative Effectiveness of Prose," in J. Dominic, C. Fredricksen, and M. Whiteman, eds., Writing (Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum, 1981), pp. 189–207. See also Recht and Leslie, "Effect of Prior Knowledge."

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3. There is another source of unfairness in these state tests—the cut scores in the different states vary a good deal. This means that a student is deemed proficient in one state but would be deemed below proficient in another. I have been told by authorities in several states that reading cut scores are decided on after children take the tests, so the states can meet the political requirement for a reasonable number to pass and so the schools will not appear ineffectual. This variation in cut scores is definitely not the case for the congressionally mandated National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading test. The cut score between "proficient" and "below proficient" is carefully determined and is applied without favor to children in all states. We can compare NAEP results in a state with the state's own results and thus gain a calibration tool with which we can determine just how meaningful and fair the cut scores are in the different states. This discloses a very large variation. It is hard to say which kind of unfairness uncovered here is more deplorable—the unfairness that students in one state fail while students with the same reading abilities pass in another, or the unfairness of passing a student who cannot understand much of what he reads. See Jennifer Sloan McCombs, Sheila Nataraj Kirby, Heather Barney, Hilary Darilek, and Scarlett J. Magee, "Achieving State and National Literacy Goals, a Long Uphill Road: A Report to Carnegie Corporation of New York," TR-180-EDU (Santa Monica: Rand Corporation, 2004).

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4. Ibid. See also P. E. Peterson and F. M. Hess, "Johnny Can Read ... in Some States," Education Next (Summer 2005): 52–55.

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5. See, for example, J. I. Brown, V. V. Fishco, and G. Hanna, Nelson-Denny Reading Test, Technical Report, FormsG&H, Riverside, Chicago, 1993; W. H. MacGinitie and R. K. MacGinitie, Gates-MacGinitie Reading Tests, 3rd ed., Technical Report, Riverside, Chicago, 1989.

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6. William R. Johnson and Derek Neal, "Basic Skills and the Black-White Earnings Gap," in Christopher Jencks and Meredith Phillips, eds., The Black-White Test Score Gap (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1998), pp. 480–97.

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7. John B. Carroll, "Psychometric Approaches to the Study of Language Abilities," in C. J. Fillmore, D. Kempler, and S.-Y. Wang, eds., Individual Differences in Language Abilities and Language Behavior (New York: Academic, 1979).

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8. J. Bishop, "The Impacts of Minimum Competency Exam Graduation Requirements on High School Graduation, College Attendance, and Early Labor Market Success," Labour Economics 8, 2 (2001): 203–22; J. Bishop and M. Bishop, "How External Exit Exams Spur Achievement," Educational Leadership 59, 1 (2001): 58–65.

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9. G. Taylor and G. Kimball, "The Impact of Core Knowledge Implementation on Student Achievement in the Oklahoma City Public Schools," Occasional Papers, Oklahoma City Public Schools, May 2000, http://www.coreknowledge.org/CKproto2/about/eval/eval12_2002.htm; "Summary of Research on The Effectiveness of Core Knowledge," http://www.coreknowledge.org/CKproto2/about/eval.htm.

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10. D. Lubinski and L. G. Humphreys, "Incorporating General Intelligence into Epidemiology and the Social Sciences," 24, 1 (1997): 159–202. The positive correlation between achieved ability and socioeconomic status is .422, whereas the correlation between achieved ability and general information is .811.

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7. ACHIEVING COMMONALITY AND FAIRNESS

1. Deborah Cohen, "Frequent Moves Said to Boost Risk of School Problems," Education Week, Sept. 22, p. 15. See also David Wood, Neal Halfon, and Debra Scarlata, "Impact of Family Relocation on Children's Growth, Development, School Function, and Behavior," Journal of the American Medical Association 270 (Sept. 15, 1993): 1334–38.

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2. H. J. Walberg, "Improving Local Control and Learning," Preprint 1994. Walberg cites B. C. Straits, "Residence, Migration, and School Progress," Sociology of Education 60 (1987): 34–43.

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3. U.S. Census Bureau, Annual Geographical Mobility Rates, by Type of Movement: 1947–2000 (2001). http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/migrate.html.

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4. U.S. Government Accounting Office, Elementary School Children: Many Change Schools Frequently, Harming Their Education, GAO/ HEHS Publication No. 94–45 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1994).

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5. Deborah Cohen, "Moving Images," Education Week, Aug. 3, 1994, pp. 32–39; D. Kerbow, "Patterns of Urban Student Mobility and Local School Reform," Journal of Education for Students Placed At Risk 1, 2 (1996); S. Pribesh and D. Downey, "Why Are Residential and School Moves Associated with Poor School Performance?" Demography 36, 4 (1999): 521–34; T. Fowler-Finn, "Student Stability vs. Mobility," School Administrator 58, 7 (2001): 36–40; R. Rumberger, K. Larson, R. Ream, and G. Palardy, "The Educational Consequences of Mobility for California Students and Schools," PACE Policy Brief (Berkeley, Calif.: Policy Analysis for California Education, 1999); D. Stover, "The Mobility Mess of Students Who Move," Education Digest 66, 3 (2000): 61–64.

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6. U.S. Government Accounting Office, "Elementary School Children."

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7. Ibid.

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8. Cohen, "Moving Images."

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9. Ibid.; Roger A. Johnson and Arnold H. Lindblad, "Effect of Mobility on Academic Performance of Sixth-Grade Students," Perceptual and Motor Skills 72 (Apr. 1991): 547–52; Gary M. Ingersoll, James P. Scamman, and Wayne D. Eckerling, "Geographic Mobility and Student Achievement in an Urban Setting (Denver Public Schools)," Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 11 (Summer 1989): 143–49.

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10. E. D. Hirsch, Jr., The Schools We Need (New York: Doubleday, 1996).

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11. Ibid., pp. 26–32.

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12. D. Ravitch, The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn (New York: Knopf, 2003).

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13. Roger Shattuck, "The Shame of the Schools," New York Review of Books 52, 6 (Apr. 2005).

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14. The Core Knowledge Foundation has provided a document for each state showing how its schools can follow state standards and at the same time teach a real curriculum, Core Knowledge, without doing extra work.

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15. E. D. Hirsch, The Schools We Need, p. 29.

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16. A. D. Benner, The Cost of Teacher Turnover (Austin: Texas Center for Educational Research, 2000), http://www.sbec.state.tx.us/SBEC/Online/turnoverrpt.pdf.

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17. B. Rowan, R. Corenti, and R. J. Richard, "What Large-Scale Research Tells Us about Teacher Effects on Student Achievement" (Philadelphia: Consortium for Policy Research on Education, U. of Pennsylvania, 2002), http://www.cpre.org/Publications/rr51.pdf.

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18. M. H. Abel and J. Sewell, "Stress and Burnout in Rural and Urban Secondary School Teacher," Journal of Educational Research 92, 5 (1999): 23–35.

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19. S. Black, "When Teachers Feel Good About Their Work, Student Achievement Rises," American School Board Journal (Jan. 2001).

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20. H. Stevenson and J. Stigler, The Learning Gap: Why Our Schools Are Failing and What We Can Learn from Japanese and Chinese Education (New York: Summit, 1992), p. 196.

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21. J. Bruner, The Process of Education (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960), p. 33.

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22. W. C. Bagley, Education and Emergent Man: A Theory of Education with Particular Application to Public Education in the United States (New York: Nelson, 1934), p. 139.

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APPENDIX: THE CRITICAL IMPORTANCE OF AN ADEQUATE THEORY OF READING

1. S. Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory(NewYork: Pantheon, 1992), pp. 257–58.

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2. J. Mervis, "Meager Evaluations Make It Hard to Find Out What Works," Science 11, 304 (June 2004): 1583.

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3. H. P. Grice, "Logic and Conversation," in Studies in the Way of Words (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989). This was the title of a series of seven William James Lectures that Grice delivered at Harvard University in 1967–68, widely circulated in typescript.

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4. J. Habermas, On the Pragmatics of Social Interaction: Preliminary Studies in the Theory of Communicative Action, B. Fultner, trans. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001).

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5. Barak Rosenshine and Carla Meister, "Reciprocal Teaching: A Review of the Research," Review of Educational Research 64, 4 (Winter 1994): 479–530.

[back]

6. Keith E. Stanovich and Paula J. Stanovich, Using Research and Reason in Education: How Teachers Can Use Scientifically Based Research to Make Curricular and Instructional Decisions (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, 2003); Keith E. Stanovich and Paula J. Stanovich, "How Research Might Inform the Debate about Early Reading Acquisition," Journal of Research in Reading 18, 2 (Sept. 1995): 87–105. It would be unfortunate if "random assignment" were thought to be a uniquely royal road to educational improvement. Random assignment of subjects is machinery, just as use of statistics is machinery. If the experiments themselves aren't long-term, and if the interventions being studied aren't based on the best theoretical principles, they will be unlikely to foster educational improvement merely because the experiments are punctilious. The theoretical advantage of randomized trials lies in their probable lack of bias. In many cases, computerized matched-pair analyses from the archives might be even more informative when the analysis is carried out with a greater number of students. Such analysis carries the additional advantage of not requiring a wait of five years in order to gauge long-term effects.

[back]

7. A. Einstein, "Ueber das Relativitaetsprinzip und die aus demselben gezogenen Folgerungen," Jahrbuch der Radioactivitaet und Elektronik 4 (1907): 411–62. See also M. Taper and R. L. Subhash, eds., The Nature of Scientific Evidence: Statistical, Philosophical, and Empirical Considerations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).

[back]

8. Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory, pp. 62–63.

[back]

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Acknowledgments

I am very grateful for the excellent advice I have received from the following people who read and commented in detail on the entire manuscript: Matthew Davis, Ted Hirsch, Elizabeth McPike, Robert Shepherd, Keith Stanovich, and Deanne Urmy. I am also grateful for comments by Barbara Garvin-Kester, Polly Hirsch, Gloria Loomis, Diane Ravitch, Louisa Spencer, and Daniel Willingham. My intellectual debts branch out in so many directions that it would be idle to attempt a listing of them, but I wish to express particular gratitude to two writers whose scientific works have been of special value, George A. Miller and Walter Kintsch.

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Index

academic intensity, [>]–[>]

achievement gap. See also disadvantaged children; "Matthew effect" in reading

content standards and, [>]

between demographic groups, [>]–[>], [>]–[>]

as knowledge problem, [>]–[>], [>]

NCLB activity and, [>]–[>]

social goals and, [>]

U.S. vs. other countries and, [>]–[>], [>], [>]

Adams, Marilyn Jager, [>]

alphabet, [>]–[>]

American Educator (journal), [>], [>]

American Federation of Teachers, [>]

Anderson, Richard, [>]

anticontent ideas, [>]–[>]. See also comprehension strategies; formalism

anti-intellectualism, [>]–[>]

Aristotle, [>]

Arizona, [>]

assumed knowledge. See background knowledge; shared knowledge; taken-for-granted knowledge

background knowledge. See also "domain-specific" knowledge; shared knowledge

anti-intellectualism and, [>]

baseball example and, [>]–[>]

class time and, [>]–[>]

core content in early grades and, [>]–[>]

cultural literacy and, [>]

curriculum content and, [>]–[>]

disparagement of "facts" and, [>]–[>]

effects of deficits in, [>]–[>]

general vs. specific, [>]

as individual, [>]–[>]

language comprehension and, [>], [>]–[>]

Martian example and, [>]

"Matthew" effect and, [>]–[>], [>]–[>]

mental speed and, [>]–[>]

nature of knowledge needed and, [>]–[>]

NCLB and, [>]–[>]

newspapers and, [>]–[>]

sentence comprehension and, [>]–[>]

strategies and, [>]–[>], [>]–[>]

types of, [>]–[>]

Bagley, William, [>]

Bank Street School of Education (New York City), [>]–[>]

Bernstein, Basil, [>]–[>], [>]

Bishop, John, [>]

blame-society theory, [>]–[>], [>]

blank spaces, and language comprehension, [>]–[>]

book learning

factual knowledge and, [>]–[>]

pre-romantic tradition and, [>]

boredom

comprehension strategies and, [>]–[>]

curricular incoherence and, [>]–[>]

broad knowledge. See background knowledge

Brown Corpus, [>]

Bruner, Jerome, [>]–[>]

Burt Dow: Deep-Water Man (McCloskey), [>]

California, [>], [>]–[>], [>]

California Test of Basic Skills (CTBS), [>]

Chall, Jeanne, [>], [>], [>]

class time

comprehension strategies and, [>]–[>]

current allocation for reading, [>]

effective use of, [>]–[>]

opportunity cost and, [>]–[>]

vocabulary learning and, [>]–[>]

Clifford, Geraldine, [>]

cognitive science, and comprehension, [>], [>]–[>]

Coleman, James, [>]–[>]

Columbia University Teachers College, [>]

commonality

decline of, [>]–[>]

democratic ideals and, [>]–[>]

myth of local curriculum and, [>]–[>]

comprehension strategies, [>]–[>]. See also process orientation; reading comprehension

class example of, [>]–[>]

formalism and, [>]–[>]

initial effects of, [>]

standardized testing and, [>], [>]–[>]

textual understanding and, [>]–[>]

theory behind, [>]–[>]

types of, [>]

computer translation, [>]

conservative tradition, [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>]

convergence, principle of, [>]–[>]

conversational speech, vs. formal speech, [>]–[>]

core content

advantages to specifying, [>]–[>]

in early grades, [>]–[>]

indoctrination issue and, [>]–[>]

Core Knowledge Sequence

curriculum and, [>]–[>], [>]

effectiveness and, [>], [>]

Web site for, [>] (n13)

criterion-referenced tests, [>], [>], [>]

critical thinking, [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>], [>] (n19). See also comprehension strategies; formalism

CTBS. See California Test of Basic Skills (CTBS)

Cultural Literacy (Hirsch), [>]

culture

anticontent ideas and, [>]

blame-society theory and, [>]–[>], [>]

polarization and, [>]–[>]

standardized testing and, [>]

textual comprehension and, [>]–[>], [>]

Cunningham, Anne, [>]

curriculum content

Core Knowledge Sequence and, [>]–[>], [>]–[>]

incoherence of, [>]–[>], [>]–[>]

language arts classes and, [>]–[>], [>]

localism and, [>]–[>]

in other countries, [>]

process orientation in, [>]–[>], [>]

reading as separate and, [>]–[>], [>]–[>]

teacher effectiveness and, [>]–[>]

testing and, [>], [>]–[>]

value of coherence in, [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>]

cut scores, [>], [>] (n3)

Darwin, Charles, [>]

data-gathering, [>]–[>], [>]

decoding (phonics)

achievements in, [>]–[>], [>]

naturalistic approach and, [>], [>]

NCLB activity and, [>]

reading skill and, [>]–[>], [>], [>]–[>]

democracy, [>], [>]

early education and, [>]–[>], [>]

fairness and, [>]–[>]

indoctrination and, [>]–[>]

demographic determinism, [>]–[>], [>], [>]. See also disadvantaged children; parental education

determinism. See demographic determinism

development, as term, [>]–[>], [>] (n9)

Dewey, John, [>]–[>], [>]–[>]

disadvantaged children

achievement gap and, [>], [>]–[>], [>], [>]

core curriculum and, [>]–[>]

mobility problem and, [>]–[>], [>]–[>]

standardized testing and, [>]–[>]

use of school time and, [>]–[>]

vocabulary building and, [>]–[>]

"domain-specific" knowledge. See also background knowledge

mental models and, [>]

reading ability and, [>], [>]–[>]

early education. See also early grades; preschools; toddler years

delayed effects and, [>], [>]

democratic ideal and, [>]–[>]

in France, [>]–[>]

early grades

core content in, [>]–[>]

oral language and, [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>]

reading tests and, [>]

self-reading skill and, [>]

Ebonics, [>], [>]

educational organizations, [>]–[>]

educational philosophy

blame-society approach and, [>]–[>], [>]

conflict of ideas in, [>]–[>], [>]–[>]

conservative-liberal debate in, [>]–[>], [>]

formalism and, [>]–[>], [>]–[>]

localism and, [>]–[>]

romanticism and, [>]–[>]

scientific evidence and, [>], [>]–[>]

educational reform, [>]

educational research

NCLB legislation and, [>]–[>]

need for theory in, [>]–[>]

Tennessee STAR study and, [>]–[>]

education schools. See teacher education

Edwards, Jonathan, [>], [>]

Einstein, Albert, [>], [>]

elaborated code vs. restricted code, [>]–[>], [>]

elaboration, [>], [>]–[>]

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, [>], [>], [>]

enthymeme, [>]

equity. See fairness

factual knowledge. See background knowledge

fairness. See also demographic determinism; disadvantaged children

academic intensity and, [>]–[>]

curricular incoherence and, [>]–[>]

cut scores and, [>], [>] (n3)

democracy and, [>]–[>], [>]

early education and, [>]–[>], [>]–[>]

standardized testing and, [>]–[>]

fiction, [>]

Florida

FCAT and, [>]

testing guidelines in, [>]

test questions in, [>]

Ford, Henry, [>]

formalism. See also comprehension strategies; process orientation

comprehension strategies and, [>]–[>]

content of reading programs and, [>]–[>]

ideology vs. theory and, [>]–[>]

reform and, [>]–[>]

testing policy and, [>]–[>]

fourth-grade slump, [>]–[>]

France, preschools in, [>]–[>]

Gates-MacGinitie Reading Tests, [>]

general reading skill. See also reading comprehension

and standardized tests, [>]–[>]

Georgia, [>]

gradualism

standardized testing and, [>]–[>], [>]

theoretical understanding of, [>]–[>]

grammar

learning of, [>]–[>], [>]

oral dialects and, [>]–[>]

Grice, H. P., [>]

growth, as term, [>]–[>]

Guthrie, James, [>]

Halpern, Diane, [>] (n19)

Hart, Betty, [>]–[>]

Herman, Patricia, [>]

Highland Elementary School, Maryland, [>]–[>], [>]

Hofstadter, Richard, [>]

home speech

respect for diversity and, [>]–[>]

vs. school speech, [>]–[>]

how-to knowledge. See formalism

implicit-explicit learning debate, [>]–[>]

indoctrination

core content and, [>]–[>]

teachers and, [>]

inferences

background knowledge and, [>]–[>], [>]

"inferencing" as strategy and, [>]–[>], [>], [>]

scientific data and, [>]–[>]

inflection, [>]–[>]

instructional materials, [>]. See also reading programs

instructional methods, efficiency of, [>]

international comparisons

Japan and, [>] (n23)

U.S. achievement gap and, [>]–[>], [>]

Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS), [>], [>], [>]

ITBS. See Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS)

Japan, comparisons with, [>] (n23)

Jefferson, Thomas, [>], [>], [>], [>], [>]

Jesperson, Otto, [>]

Johnson, Dr. Samuel, [>]

Joseph, Marion, [>], [>]

Kett, Joseph, [>]

Keynes, John Maynard, [>]

knowledge deficit

achievement gap in U.S. and, [>]–[>]

anti-intellectualism and, [>]–[>]

blame-society theory and, [>]–[>], [>]

formalism in reading and, [>]–[>]

reading as unnatural and, [>]–[>]

romantic ideas and, [>]–[>]

knowledge-oriented reading program. See also Core Knowledge Sequence

demand for, [>]–[>]

other school subjects and, [>]

Labov, William, [>]

Landauer, Thomas, [>]

language arts classes. See also curriculum content

curriculum coherence and, [>]–[>], [>]

required time in, [>]–[>]

state curriculum guidelines and, [>]–[>]

language knowledge. See also Standard English

elaborated vs. restricted code and, [>]–[>]

grammar and, [>]–[>]

print code and, [>]–[>]

vocabulary building and, [>]–[>]

Learning Gap, The (Stevenson and Stigler), [>]

Learning to Read: The Great Debate (Adams and Chall), [>]

liberal tradition, [>]–[>], [>]–[>]

listening skill, [>]–[>], [>] (n17). See also oral language

localism, [>]–[>]

Lorentz, H. A., [>]

Lyon, Reid, [>]

"main idea," [>]–[>], [>], [>]

Mann, Horace, [>], [>]–[>]

Marshall, John (Chief Justice), [>]

Massachusetts, [>]

math achievement, [>]–[>]

math learning, [>]–[>]

"Matthew" effect in reading

background knowledge and, [>]–[>], [>]–[>]

vocabulary and, [>]–[>], [>]–[>]

Mayflower, teaching the, [>]–[>]

McCloskey, Robert, [>]

McGuffey Readers, [>]

McPike, Elizabeth, [>]

meaning

unspoken, [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>]

of words, [>], [>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>]

mental speed, and background knowledge, [>]–[>]

"metacognitive skills," [>]–[>]. See also comprehension strategies

Miller, George A., [>]–[>]

Milton, John, [>], [>], [>] (n15)

mobility problem, [>]–[>], [>]–[>]

NAEP scores. See National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores

Nagy, William, [>]

National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores, [>] (n22), [>] (n3)

National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), [>], [>] (n3)

natural, as term, [>]–[>], [>]

naturalism

ideology vs. theory and, [>]–[>]

reform and, [>]–[>]

as romantic idea, [>]–[>]

vocabulary building and, [>], [>] (n26)

newspapers, and general knowledge, [>]–[>]

New York City, [>], [>]–[>]

New York State

examples of questions in, [>]

testing guidelines in, [>]–[>]

New York Times, background knowledge and, [>]–[>], [>]

Nixon tapes, [>]–[>]

No Child Left Behind law (NCLB)

complaints against, [>]–[>]

educational philosophy and, [>]–[>]

standardized testing and, [>], [>]–[>]

yearly progress assessment and, [>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>]

"norm-referenced" tests, [>]–[>], [>], [>]

opportunity cost

class time and, [>]–[>]

educational research and, [>], [>]

oral class presentations, [>]–[>]

oral language

dialects and, [>]–[>]

early grades and, [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>]

elaborated code vs. restricted code and, [>]–[>], [>]

need for traditional knowledge and, [>]–[>]

reading skill and, [>]–[>]

school speech vs. home speech and, [>]–[>]

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, [>]

parental education

decoding and, [>]

elaborated talk and, [>]–[>]

Parrington, Vernon, [>]

Pauli, Wolfgang, [>]

Perlstein, Linda, [>]–[>], [>], [>]

phonics. See decoding (phonics)

"phonological loop," [>], [>]

Pinker, Steven, [>]

Planck, Max, [>]

poverty. See disadvantaged children

prepping, [>], [>]

preschools, [>]–[>]. See also toddler years

print code, learning of, [>]–[>]. See also Standard English

problem-solving, [>]. See also formalism

process orientation. See also comprehension strategies

and curriculum content, [>]–[>], [>], [>]–[>]

progressivism

how-to knowledge and, [>]–[>]

as term, [>]–[>]

radio speech

examples of, [>]–[>]

vs. ordinary talk, [>]–[>]

writing proficiency and, [>], [>]–[>]

random assignment, [>]–[>], [>] (n6)

Ravitch, Diane, [>]

reading

gradualism and, [>]–[>]

as natural, [>], [>]

as unnatural, [>]–[>]

reading aloud, [>], [>]. See also listening skill

reading comprehension. See also comprehension strategies

decoding and, [>]–[>], [>]–[>]

fourth-grade slump and, [>]–[>]

language comprehension and, [>]

listening skill and, [>]–[>], [>] (n17)

nature of, [>]

vocabulary growth and, [>]–[>]

word meaning and, [>], [>]

reading programs

content of, [>]–[>], [>]–[>]

scientific knowledge and, [>]

taken-for-granted knowledge and, [>]–[>], [>]

reading tests, nature of, [>]–[>]. See also standardized testing

repetitiousness, [>], [>], [>]

replicability, [>]–[>]

Risley, Todd, [>]–[>]

romantic ideas. See also naturalism

knowledge deficit in U.S. and, [>]–[>]

NCLB and, [>]–[>]

teacher education and, [>], [>], [>]

unnaturalness of reading and, [>]–[>]

rote learning, [>]

Rothstein, Richard, [>]–[>]

SAT scores, verbal, [>], [>] (n22)

school mobility rate, [>]–[>]. See also mobility problem

schools

academic intensity and, [>]–[>]

effects of migration among, [>]–[>]

school speech vs. home speech, [>]–[>]

"self-monitoring" skills, [>]–[>], [>]–[>]

sentence comprehension, background knowledge and, [>]–[>]

Shakespeare, William, [>]

shared knowledge. See also background knowledge; taken-for-granted knowledge

communication with strangers and, [>]–[>]

general readers and, [>]–[>], [>]–[>]

restricted vs. elaborated code and, [>]–[>], [>]–[>]

Shattuck, Roger, [>]

situation model

comprehension and, [>], [>]–[>], [>]

as term, [>] (n26)

vocabulary building and, [>]

Smith, F. D., [>]

social equity. See fairness

social justice goals, and achievement gap, [>], [>]–[>]

specific background knowledge. See background knowledge

speech community, idea of, [>]–[>], [>]

spoken language. See oral language; strangers, communication with

Standard English. See also language knowledge

formal vs. informal speech and, [>]–[>]

grammar and, [>]–[>]

oral dialects and, [>]–[>]

origin of, [>]–[>]

print code and, [>]–[>]

standardized testing

delayed effects and, [>]–[>], [>]

disadvantaged children and, [>]–[>]

examples of materials in, [>], [>]–[>], [>]

flaws in state guidelines for, [>]–[>]

frequency of, [>]

general knowledge and, [>]–[>]

improvement of policy on, [>]–[>]

jargon and, [>]–[>]

as measure of progress, [>]–[>]

nationwide vs. state tests and, [>]–[>]

nature of reading tests and, [>]–[>]

NCLB and, [>]–[>]

prepping and, [>], [>]

provision of context in, [>]

referencing and, [>]–[>]

teaching of strategies and, [>]–[>]

Stanovich, Keith, [>]

state guidelines

core content and, [>]–[>]

curriculum standards and, [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>]

as empty, [>]–[>], [>]–[>]

scoring and, [>]–[>]

testing flaws and, [>]–[>]

Sticht, Thomas G., [>], [>] (n17)

strangers, communication with. See also Standard English

assumed knowledge and, [>]–[>], [>]–[>]

elaborated code and, [>]–[>]

reading comprehension and, [>]–[>]

standard language and, [>]

taken-for-granted knowledge. See also background knowledge; shared knowledge

need to teach, [>]–[>]

reading programs and, [>]–[>], [>]

speech community and, [>]

teacher education

anticontent ideas and, [>]

anti-intellectualism and, [>]–[>]

curricular incoherence and, [>]–[>]

individual knowledge and, [>]–[>]

romantic ideas and, [>], [>], [>], [>]–[>]

teachers

indoctrination and, [>]

job satisfaction and, [>]–[>]

quality of, [>]–[>]

television. See also listening skill

speech comprehension and, [>], [>]

time spent watching, [>], [>] (n23)

Tennessee STAR study (Student Achievement Teacher Ratio), [>]–[>], [>]

testing policy, [>]–[>]

Texas

examples of questions in, [>]

testing guidelines in, [>]

theory of reading, need for, [>]–[>]

Thoreau, Henry David, [>], [>]

toddler years, [>]–[>]. See also preschools

Torgesen, Joseph, [>]

Trefil, James, [>]

unspoken meaning, [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>]. See also background knowledge

vocabulary building, [>]–[>]

disadvantaged children and, [>]–[>]

familiarity of context and, [>]

implicit-explicit learning debate and, [>]–[>]

"Matthew" effect and, [>]–[>], [>]–[>]

naturalism and, [>], [>] (n26)

word-learning process and, [>]–[>]

Walberg, Herbert, [>]

Walsh, Kate, [>]

Wattenberg, Ruth, [>]

Weinberg, Steven, [>]

What Your Second Grader Needs to Know (Hirsch), [>]

"why" questions, [>]–[>]

word frequencies, [>]

word-learning capacity, [>]–[>]. See also vocabulary building

word meaning, [>], [>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>]

Wordsworth, William, [>]

yearly progress assessment, [>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>]. See also standardized testing

---