Texas educators split over teaching English basics

[Johnson, David C]

This part is amazing to me: When defending their reversion to outdated methods of grammar instruction (in spite of what researchers are telling them), the educational board members asserted their qualifications for making educational linguistic decisions, saying: "[We are] eminently qualified because, first of all, we're parents, we're businesspeople and we're taxpayers." 

Really?! Those are the qualifications for making pedagogical decisions for ELLs in the state of Texas?

This is depressing since it illuminates how little our research is sometimes valued when it comes to making language in education policy. 

On the bright side, I brought this up in an Intro to Linguistics course I teach with 100+ students, highlighting how these board members were about as qualified to make pedagogical decisions as they were to perform a root canal.   

David Cassels Johnson, PhD
Department of English
Texas A&M University
Department of English
College Station, TX 77843


----- Original Message -----
From: "Francis Hult" <francis.hult at utsa.edu>
To: edling at lists.sis.utsa.edu
Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2008 9:30:08 AM GMT -06:00 US/Canada Central
Subject: [Edling] Texas educators split over teaching English basics

Via lgpolicy...
 

Texas educators split over teaching English basics

The inability of many Texas students to write and speak good
English is like a dreadful disease requiring aggressive treatment, say
some education advocates who want to use different teaching
approaches. Social conservatives on the State Board of Education,
influenced in part by a retired teacher, are backing a new curriculum
that increases the focus on basics, including grammar.
They've met fierce resistance from teachers and educators who warn
this emphasis will prepare students for the 1950s, not the 21st
century, and embarrass Texas in the process.

They fear the state's proposed new standards for reading and English
language arts contradict established research and will only make
things worse. "The results will be bloody," predicted one of those
language experts, former English professor Joyce Armstrong Carroll. A
fight over the board's perceived exclusion of Hispanic experts from
development of the curriculum has overshadowed this larger struggle. A
public comment period on the proposed curriculum will end May 18, and
the 15-member board is to take final action on May 22. If approved, it
will guide how the state's 4.7 million public schoolchildren learn
English and reading over the next decade.

Full story:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/metro/5716392.html


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