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Winter 2001 Issue
FURTHER COMMENT
- Pragmatizing the Imaginary: A Response to a Fictionalized Case
Study of Teaching
-by Tom Barone
BOOK REVIEW
- Sound Identities: Popular Music and the Cultural Politics of Education
edited by Cameron McCarthy, Glenn Hudak, Shawn Miklaucic, and Paula
Saukko
-by Nadine Dolby
Winter 2001 Reviews of Current Books (Full-Text):
Order
the Winter 2001 Issue
Harvard Educational Review
Winter 2001
Article Abstracts:
Empowering Minority Students: A Framework for Intervention
Jim Cummins
Jim Cummins presents a theoretical framework for analyzing minority
students' school failure and the relative lack of success of previous
attempts at educational reform, such as compensatory education and bilingual
education. The author suggests that these attempts have been unsuccessful
because they have not altered significantly the relationships between
educators and minority students and between schools and minority communities.
He offers ways in which educators can change these relationships, thereby
promoting the empowerment of students, which can lead them to succeed
in school. (pp. 656-676)
(Reprint of 1986 article.)
Resisting and Reversing Language Shift: Heritage-Language Resilience
among U.S. Native Biliterates
Lucy Tse
In this article, Lucy Tse examines the experiences of one group of
U.S. native bilinguals who have managed to develop high levels of literacy
in both English and their home or "heritage" language (HL). This unique
group has defied the typical pattern among U.S. minority language speakers
of losing the home language while learning English. The results show
that biliteracy development is aided by the coexistence of two sets
of factors related to a) language vitality and b) literacy environment
and experiences. Participants had high levels of perceived language
vitality resulting from parental, institutional, and peer support, which
helped in their formation of a social identity inclusive of their heritage
language and culture. Having access to HL literacy environments and
guidance from more literate adults and peers allowed the participants
to observe the use of HL literacy in meaningful and socially important
ways. Tse discusses these and other results in terms of social and cultural
identity formation, literacy access and practices, and the social nature
of literacy development. (pp. 677-709)
Rethinking the Digital Divide
Jennifer S. Light
The term digital divide entered the American vocabulary in
the mid-1990s to refer to unequal access to information technology.
However, public debate has addressed the digital divide as a technical
issue rather than as a reflection of broader social problems. In this
article, Jennifer Light critically analyzes how access to technology
is constructed as a social problem and examines the particular assumptions
about technology and inequality that frame the debate. Drawing on historical
examples, Light examines why hopes that technology would improve society
have often not been fulfilled. The author examines the striking asymmetries
between the current and earlier debates about the relationship between
technology and society. She invites us to consider the different ways
in which the problem of access to technology has been constructed, and
suggests that these differences may generate ways to enrich the current
debate and begin a conversation about more robust solutions. (pp. 710-734)
Winter 2001 Reviews of Current
Books
(Full Text)
It Takes a City: Getting Serious about Urban School Reform
by Paul T. Hill, Christine Campbell, and James Harvey.
Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 2000. 205 pp. $16.95 (paper).
Tired of the slow pace of educational reform, many mayors
and civic leaders across the United States have taken control of (or
increased their involvement with) their local school systems. These
non-educators are the target audience of It Takes a City: Getting
Serious about Urban School Reform by Paul Hill, Christine Campbell,
James Harvey, and their associates at the University of Washington’s
Center on Reinventing Public Education. The authors of this book, the
second in a three-book series published by The Brookings Institution,
a public policy institute, describe some of the major challenges facing
city schools, analyze the reform strategies and experiences of six U.S.
cities, and propose three new strategies that they feel have considerable
promise. Those who are already familiar with Hill’s earlier writing
on school choice and school contracting may find that It Takes a
City covers familiar ground.1 However,
educators and non-educators alike who are unfamiliar with his provocative
ideas on how to restructure urban school systems will benefit from this
slender volume and its framework for evaluating and designing school
reform strategies.
In chapter one, Hill, Campbell, and Harvey briefly describe
seven policy approaches to school reform and argue that each one is
insufficient for the task of dramatically improving school performance.
None of these proposals can “deliver all of the changes its proponents
intend unless other changes, which the proposal itself [can]not deliver,
occur at the same time” (p. 23). The authors divide the reforms
into two groups: those favored by individuals within the educational
community and those favored by individuals outside it. The first group
of reforms includes standards, teacher development, new school designs,
and decentralization and site-based management. The second group of
reforms includes charter schools, school contracting, and vouchers.
The authors end the chapter by arguing that “every systemwide reform
strategy must have three strong and interdependent elements: incentives
for school performance, ways of increasing school capabilities, and
opportunities for school staff to change how they serve students”
(p. 24, emphasis in original).
In chapter two, the authors of It Takes a City present very
brief case studies of six U.S. cities: Boston, Memphis, New York City
(District 2), San Antonio, San Francisco, and Seattle, with more detailed
versions of these case studies included in the book’s appendix.
They then discuss some of the implementation challenges that reformers
have faced in these cities: loss of superintendents who originated the
reform, weakening of support from the school board, teacher resistance,
failure to sustain expected funding, and other delays that resulted
from half-measures or competing initiatives.
Chapters three through five are the heart of the book.
In chapter three, Hill, Campbell, and Harvey compare the six cities’
reform initiatives and the extent to which these emphasized the three
key reform elements: school performance incentives, investments in school
and teacher capacity (e.g., professional development and leadership
development), and school freedom of action. The authors find that only
one city, New York City (District 2), emphasized all three elements
and, as a result, experienced significant success. The authors then
explore the theories of action and “zones of wishful thinking”
(p. 52) that lie behind each city’s reform initiative. The zones
of wishful thinking consist of events “that each city’s reform
initiative requires, but cannot cause, to happen” (p. 55). For
instance, in Memphis the district reform strategy focused on dismissing
the principals of poorly performing schools and on having schools adopt
whole school design models such as those provided by the New American
Schools Development Corporation. An assumption behind this strategy
was that “remodeling every school on a design developed elsewhere,
coupled with central office monitoring of student test results, [would]
motivate improvement” (p. 54). Hill, Campbell, and Harvey point
out that the Memphis district’s zone of wishful thinking was that
schools would improve without clear freedom of action or opportunities
to diverge from or adapt the models. Whether or not readers agree with
the authors’ depictions and analyses, they will benefit from the
attention paid in this section to assumptions about cause and effect
that often go unexamined.
The authors end chapter three by reporting on a set of
decisionmaking simulations that they conducted. The simulations sought
to answer the following question: “If leaders and the public could
start afresh with reform, not with a completely blank slate, but with
the basic system we have now, what kinds of changes would they be willing
to entertain?” (p. 56). They found that the professors of education,
superintendents, principals and assistant principals, public and private
sector managers, and the members of a business alliance and a nonprofit
school reform organization who participated in the simulations were
willing to consider a broader range of changes than one might have expected.
Citing a lack of clear evidence on which school reforms work, the seven
groups focused on the need for experimentation. Some ideas that they
generated included giving individual schools control over 90 percent
of all available funding allocated on a per pupil basis, waiving all
state regulations and contracts, and creating baselines for monitoring
the value added by specific reform initiatives (both districtwide and
by school and student demographic group). In addition, there was considerable
support for experiments involving charter schools and other types of
deregulation. Ultimately, however, most groups’ recommendations
tended to create a mix of central oversight of academic performance
and decentralized control over resources and school practices.
In chapter four, the authors discuss their ideas for
building school reform strategies that are more powerful than those
implemented by the six cities in the case studies. Together, these strategies
“introduce three features missing or barely evident in today’s
public education: choice, competition, and entrepreneurship” (p.
70). The CEO-Strong Schools Strategy is based on the successful reform
strategy implemented in New York City (District 2) and combines top-down
pressure for performance with significant freedom of action at the school
level. Under this strategy, the district CEO-superintendent negotiates
annual performance agreements with each school and supports its efforts
with necessary resources. He or she would hold schools accountable for
carrying out their agreements and would have full authority to close
or overhaul schools (for instance, by removing administrators and teachers)
if the schools failed to do so. The Diverse Providers Strategy, on the
other hand, would involve a significant reconceptualization of the role
of the local school board. Under this strategy, rather than overseeing
an entirely publicly managed school system, the local school board would
have the authority to contract with a variety of school providers (public,
nonprofit, or even for profit). In a sense, this would be similar to
having an entire system of charter schools with the school board as
the chartering agent. Contracted schools would admit interested students
through a lottery system, receive a set amount of funding for each pupil
enrolled, and operate more or less as independent enterprises, though
regulated through their contracts with the school board. The school
board would maintain a portfolio of schools (some of which might still
be publicly managed) and make adjustments to it on the basis of performance
data or parent demand — that is, shifting contracts from poorly
performing school providers to more promising ones. Finally, the Community
Partnerships Strategy extends the Diverse Providers strategy even further
to mobilize a wider range of community resources, “not simply its
schools . . . to meet children’s educational needs and their general
well being” (p. 77). Under this strategy, a community education
board would not only contract for school services but also for other
out-of-school learning opportunities, cultural activities, and health
and social services. The authors conclude by discussing how to choose
a reform strategy and which strategies fit which circumstances.
Chapter five contains some of the most interesting ideas
in It Takes a City. The authors argue in this chapter that in
order to implement any of the comprehensive reforms they have described,
“we need to eliminate some institutions, change the missions and
capabilities of others, and create new institutions” (p. 88). All
of these strategies require the development or enhancement of four functions:
portfolio management (i.e., managing and adjusting the mix of schools
under contract), fostering school development, monitoring school and
system performance, and ensuring quality inputs. Moreover, the authors
argue, “some of the most important new institutional capabilities
should exist outside what we now consider the central [district] office”
(p. 88). The Diverse Providers and Community Partnership strategies,
in particular, create new roles for nongovernmental entities and individuals
outside of the public school system. Under these strategies, for instance,
for-profit and nonprofit organizations could help develop schools under
contract with central school or community boards, and parents would
help monitor system performance through their choices of schools for
their children. The authors also envision roles for nonpartisan, quasi-public
school evaluation organizations to provide independent performance data
for district superintendents and school boards. They also propose roles
for school “incubators” (organizations that invest in the
development of new schools before they open by giving advice, technical
assistance, and even office space to the founding groups of administrators
and teachers) and public school real estate trusts to help new schools
get off the ground.
In the final two chapters of the book, the authors discuss
implementation, local politics, and how to get started with reform.
The treatment of these subjects seems a bit cursory, although this may
be because the authors plan to explore the topics in more depth in the
third book in this series.
Paul Hill, Christine Campbell, and James Harvey have
written a useful book for civic leaders and, indeed, for anyone interested
in school reform, though the book dwells largely on structural reform
at the district level and does not explore some of the thornier school-level
challenges that make the improvement of teaching and learning so difficult.
Perhaps this is appropriate, given the book’s intended audience.
However, in order for civic leaders to understand school reform, they
might well need a better sense of what capacity building truly entails,
and what it means for teachers to change their practice. Overall, though,
Hill, Campbell, and Harvey have delivered on what they set out to do.
To their credit, they are up front about their advocacy of school contracting.
Furthermore, more than most other proponents of school choice, they
have thought carefully about the amount (and types) of public oversight
and regulation that is needed to hold schools accountable and avoid
some potentially negative consequences of their proposals.
E.P.L.
1. For example, Paul T. Hill, Lawrence
C. Pierce, and James W. Guthrie, Reinventing Public Education: How
Contracting Can Transform America’s Schools (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1997).
All Together Now: Creating Middle-Class
Schools through Public School Choice
by Richard D. Kahlenberg.
Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 2001. 379 pp. $29.95.
All Together Now: Creating Middle-Class Schools through
Public School Choice, by Richard D. Kahlenberg, is a clarion call
for the socioeconomic desegregation of U.S. public schools. Simultaneously
principled and pragmatic, Kahlenberg marshals a great deal of evidence
to support his argument that integrating U.S. schools along socioeconomic
lines is a necessary precondition for successful educational reform.
U.S. schools, he notes, remain highly segregated by socioeconomic class.
The concentration of low-income students in one quarter of the nation’s
schools places unfair educational burdens on teachers, parents, administrators,
and students themselves, and leads to the misallocation of an important
educational resource: peer influence. By using public school
choice to redistribute students within school systems, policymakers
can ensure that every child attends a school in which the majority of
the students come from middle-class homes.
In chapter one, Kahlenberg introduces the “animating
vision of this book,” which is “that all schoolchildren in
America have the right to attend a solidly middle-class public ‘common
school’” (p. 1). Creating more middle-class schools is essential,
he argues, because two other strategies for promoting equal educational
opportunities — racial integration and compensatory education —
have proved disappointing. In order for socioeconomic integration to
work, however, it must be combined with public school choice. Choice
is important because, along with fairness and unity, it is one of three
“central American values” (p. 6).
Chapter two provides background information for the book’s
main argument. In this chapter, Kahlenberg discusses how U.S. schools
are failing to promote equal opportunity and social mobility, and the
role that socioeconomic segregation plays in this. In chapter three
the author begins to make the educational case for socioeconomic
integration. Kahlenberg presents extensive evidence that “the socioeconomic
status of classmates has a powerful effect on academic achievement”
(p. 25). This effect is independent of the effect of a student’s
own socioeconomic status. Kahlenberg also presents evidence that “from
an academic achievement standpoint, the social class of a student’s
classmates matters more than their race” (p. 36). These two findings
suggest that attending schools with high poverty concentrations places
low-income students in double jeopardy, and that socioeconomic integration
might be an important lever for raising overall academic achievement.
Kahlenberg addresses concerns that integration might negatively affect
middle-class students by citing research evidence that having more low-income
classmates does not hurt middle-class students, as long as the schools
they attend remain predominantly middle class and employ some ability
grouping or limited tracking in some academic subjects.
After sketching out the broad outline of his argument,
Kahlenberg delves more deeply in chapter four into the question of why
the socioeconomic composition of schools matters. While he barely avoids
making an argument that attributes low academic achievement to a culture
of poverty or that blames the victims, he does assert that
high-poverty schools are marked by students who have less
motivation and are often subject to negative peer influences; parents
who are generally less active, exert less clout in school affairs, and
garner fewer financial resources for the school; and teachers who tend
to be less qualified, to have lower expectations, and to teach watered-down
curriculum. Giving all students access to schools with a core of middle-class
students and parents will significantly raise the overall quality of
schooling in America. (p. 47)
Kahlenberg’s point is not that the middle-class
has a superior culture to which low-income students should be exposed,
but rather that when schools have high concentrations of poor students,
educators face overwhelming challenges and have insufficient resources,
both financial and social, to meet them. Socioeconomic integration makes
meeting these challenges more manageable at any given school. Integrating
schools has the potential to create more academically productive peer
cultures and less disruptive classroom and school environments, and
the potential to ensure that each school has a core of active parents
who will demand high performance from teachers and administrators. It
may also even out, across schools, the expectations that teachers have
for students and the curricula they offer.
In chapter five, Kahlenberg discusses why some alternatives
are less powerful than socioeconomic integration. He divides these alternatives
into “piecemeal reforms . . . that address discrete inequalities
. . . and global responses” (p. 77). Piecemeal reforms — such
as standards, teacher development, and class-size reduction — are
insufficient because they leave the mix of people within schools, which
is more important than structural reforms, unchanged. Moreover, structural
reforms are not likely to be implemented or sustained unless the people
within schools change. Without integration, Kahlenberg contends, poor
schools are likely to continue to have teachers with lower credentials
and who hold lower expectations of students than teachers in more affluent
schools. Poor schools will also continue to lack the important social
resources of positive peer influence and parent involvement. Global
solutions, such as racial desegregation or vouchers, also fall short.
Racial desegregation is a limited strategy because it is currently politically
and legally out of favor, and because schools’ socioeconomic class
compositions matter more for academic achievement than their racial
compositions. Private school vouchers are limited because most plans,
as proposed, would probably lead to more rather than less socioeconomic
segregation.
In chapter six the author tackles the nuts and bolts
of putting socioeconomic integration into practice. He discusses various
policy options for defining students’ socioeconomic status, for
setting the proper mix of students within schools, and for putting into
place a controlled choice system of student assignment. Under a controlled
choice system, parents and students submit their top choices for the
schools they would like to attend, and the central office makes assignment
decisions based on these preferences, as well as on the goal of socioeconomic
balance. Kahlenberg then discusses the benefits of controlled choice
over compulsory assignment, uncontrolled choice, and magnet schools.
Kahlenberg also talks about the need in some metropolitan areas for
district consolidation or interdistrict choice. While in the vast majority
of metropolitan areas majority middle-class schools can be achieved
within district lines, in 14 percent of school districts, crossing or
redrawing district lines may be needed. Kahlenberg concludes the chapter
by discussing policies regarding tracking and discipline that might
be necessary to make integration work, both practically and politically.
In chapters seven and eight, Kahlenberg discusses the
political and legal feasibility of economic school integration and rebuts
the case against it. He argues that socioeconomic integration is less
controversial and has much broader public support than racial integration.
Moreover, combining integration with public school choice is quite powerful
politically. A significant part of the opposition to busing, Kahlenberg
argues, stems from its compulsory nature. By empowering parents with
choice and carefully designing integration plans — for instance,
placing attractive educational programs in working-class neighborhoods
— policymakers can harness parental self-interest toward positive
educational ends. In further addressing potential objections to socioeconomic
integration, the author argues that integration will not overwhelm or
stigmatize low-income children; that the concerns that moving away from
neighborhood schools will destroy an important community institution
are overblown; that integration will not substantially increase middle-class
flight from public schools; and that additional transportation costs
for implementing integration would be modest.
Finally, in chapter nine, Kahlenberg describes the experiences
of three communities — La Crosse, Wisconsin; Wake County, North
Carolina; and Manchester, Connecticut — with socioeconomic integration.
While these communities faced opposition to their integration plans,
they were ultimately successful in improving the socioeconomic balance
within their schools.
All Together Now arrives at an opportune moment.
At a time when racial desegregation efforts have run afoul of federal
court rulings and declining public support, and when voucher proposals
challenge some of the core ideals of the common school, Kahlenberg’s
important book proposes an integration strategy that has a chance of
garnering broad support and raising overall educational performance.
It deserves to find a broad audience.
E.P.L.
The Teaching Gap: Best Ideas from
the World’s Teachers for Improving Education in the Classroom
by James W. Stigler and James Hiebert.
New York: Free Press, 1999. 210 pp. $23.00.
The Teaching Gap by James Stigler and James Hiebert
is a must read for anyone interested in improving education and, more
specifically, classroom practice. The authors argue that most educational
reforms in the United States fail because they do not alter deeply embedded
cultural models of teaching. Teaching, they argue, is a cultural activity,
and understanding this is essential. Stigler and Hiebert arrived at
this conclusion that teaching is a cultural activity after collecting
and analyzing videotaped eighth-grade mathematics lessons from three
countries (the United States, Germany, and Japan) as part of the Third
International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMMS). The authors were
struck by “how much teaching varied across cultures and how little
it varied within cultures” (p. 11). There are, they argue, distinctly
American, German, and Japanese ways of teaching. Moreover, the American
way of teaching mathematics consisted of a relatively limited repertoire
of methods that focused on helping students acquire isolated skills
through repeated practice. In contrast, Japanese teaching focused on
teaching for conceptual understanding, and Japanese teachers participated
in the ongoing, incremental, and continuous improvement of their teaching.
The example of Japanese lesson study, described in this book, is a powerful
one for teachers, administrators, professional developers, and policymakers
in the United States.
In chapter one, Stigler and Hiebert set the stage for
their argument and introduce the idea of the teaching gap. They coin
the term teaching gap to describe differences in commonly used
teaching methods across cultures. They argue that improving overall
student achievement does not involve finding more extraordinary teachers
but, rather, raising the average performance of teachers. To do this,
the United States needs “a system for developing professional knowledge
and giving teachers the opportunity to learn about teaching” (p.
13). Rather than searching for silver-bullet approaches, U.S. schools
need to commit to the long-term, continuous improvement of teaching.
Chapter two presents the methods that Stigler and Hiebert
used to study teaching in the United States, Japan, and Germany. The
TIMMS video study used a complex sampling plan to randomly select classrooms
in the three countries for videotaping. The final sample included 231
eighth-grade mathematics classrooms. In addition to videotaping lessons,
the researchers asked teachers to fill out questionnaires and collected
supplementary materials such as textbook pages and worksheets.
In chapter three, the authors present portraits of mathematics
lessons from the three countries. They use these portraits to give readers
an understanding of the differences in the ways lessons are typically
designed and implemented. The German lesson presented in the chapter
focuses on developing advanced mathematics procedures; for most of the
class period, the teacher leads the class through a challenging problem
(a geometric proof). The Japanese lesson focuses on structured problem-solving.
Most of the class time is spent working on the problem for the day,
but the Japanese teacher has students work individually, in small groups,
and with the entire class. Finally, the U.S. lesson focuses on learning
terms and practicing discrete (and rather disconnected) procedures.
After presenting individual images of teaching in Germany,
Japan, and the United States, Stigler and Hiebert contrast mathematics
teaching in the three countries in chapter four. They find that “students
in the United States encounter a different kind of mathematics from
that encountered by their peers in Germany and Japan. The content appears
to be less advanced and is presented in a more piecemeal and prescriptive
way” (p. 56). In their cross-national comparison of lessons, Stigler
and Hiebert consider the level of content, the nature of content, content
elaboration, content coherence, and overall content quality (i.e., the
lessons’ potential for helping students understand important mathematics
concepts). They also examine the extent to which the lessons engage
students in mathematics: How are the lessons organized? Who does the
work? What kind of work is expected?
In chapter five, the authors argue that teaching is a
system with distinct patterns rather than a loose collection of individual
features cobbled together by teachers. Teaching is not only a system,
they argue; it is a cultural system.
In chapter six, Stigler and Hiebert describe how teaching
consists of cultural scripts that are “learned implicitly, through
observation and participation, and not by deliberate study” (p.
86). In each country, these scripts “appear to rest on a relatively
small and tacit set of core beliefs about the nature of the subject,
about how students learn, and about the role that a teacher should play
in the classroom” (p. 87). The authors devote most of the chapter
to exploring the implications of teaching as a cultural activity for
the improvement of teaching. They argue that cultural activities tend
to be highly stable over time and are not easily changed. Most educational
reforms fail because they do not alter teachers’ widely shared
beliefs and mental models of teaching. In order to change and improve
the cultural scripts teachers are using, we need to give teachers opportunities
to compare scripts, to see that other scripts are possible, and to notice
things about their own scripts that they had never seen before. In chapter
seven, Stigler and Hiebert present Japan’s approach for improving
classroom teaching that does just this.
In Japan, teachers participate in lesson study (jugyou
kenkyuu), in which groups of teachers meet regularly over long periods
of time to work on the design, implementation, testing, and improvement
of a specific lesson. With lesson study, improving teaching takes place
in the context of a classroom lesson. Teachers meet together to develop
“research lessons.” They define a problem to guide their work,
plan a lesson, have one teacher teach the lesson while the others observe
it, evaluate and reflect on the lesson as a group, revise the lesson,
teach the revised lesson, evaluate and reflect once again, and share
the results. What is striking about lesson study is that it is based
on a long-term, continuous improvement model. Moreover, it maintains
a constant focus on student learning. In evaluating and redesigning
a lesson, teachers take note of students’ responses to the lesson
— the types of questions they asked, the full or partial understanding
they demonstrated, the solutions they offered to specific math problems,
the types of mistakes they made, etc. Importantly, lesson study focuses
on the direct improvement of teaching within specific classroom contexts
and is collaborative.
In chapters seven and eight, Stigler and Hiebert discuss
how to implement a continuous improvement system for improving teaching
with U.S. schools. They are optimistic that this can be done and that
lesson study can be adapted to the United States, despite several differences
between the Japanese and U.S. educational systems — Japanese education,
for instance, is more centrally organized and has a national curriculum.
The authors conclude the book with a call to action in chapter ten.
It is time, they argue, to make teaching a true profession in which
teachers play a central role in developing and disseminating professional
knowledge.
James Stigler and James Hiebert have written a cogent
and thought-provoking book. Their observation that teaching is a cultural
activity harkens back to, and builds upon, the earlier works of Dan
Lortie and Seymour Sarason.2 At a time
when policymakers and the public unrealistically expect immediate results
and search for silver-bullet solutions to educational challenges, their
argument for focusing on long-term, continuous improvement is a wise
one. Anyone who cares about improving teaching and learning should read
this book.
E.P.L.
2. Dan C. Lortie, Schoolteacher:
A Sociological Study (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975);
Seymour B. Sarason, The Culture of the School and the Problem of
Change (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1971).
The Annual Review of Adult Learning
and Literacy, Volume One
edited by John Comings, Barbara Garner, and Cristine Smith.
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000. 356 pp. $34.95.
The Annual Review of Adult Learning and Literacy,
Volume One is an informative collection of articles that documents
existing research and best practices in the field of adult learning
and literacy in the United States. The book is the first in a series
to be published by the National Center for the Study of Adult Learning
and Literacy (NCSALL).3 The Annual Review is meant to “serve
as the journal of record for the field of adult learning and literacy”
(p. xvii). It is a welcome addition to the field of education, given
the relative paucity of literature focused on this particular adult
learner population, which is comprised of adults “who have limited
literacy and math skills, have limited English skills, or have not obtained
a high school diploma” (p. xvii).
According to editors John Comings, Barbara Garner, and Cristine Smith,
each volume of the Annual Review will include a chapter summarizing
key events of the previous year, highlighting legislation, public policy
changes, and trends in adult education program development. In chapter
one of this first volume, Fran Tracy-Mumford, the state director for
adult education in Delaware, writes the chronicle for the year 1998,
which includes a concise overview of the Adult Education and Family
Literacy Act, the piece of legislation that provides most of the funding
for adult basic education and training programs in the United States.
Also to be included in each volume of the Annual Review
is a chapter examining “the adult learning and literacy systems
of a country dealing with issues similar to those we face in the United
States” (p. xix). In chapter seven of this first volume, researchers
Mary Hamilton and Juliet Merrifield explore the development of the adult
learning system in the United Kingdom and analyze points of similarity
to and difference from the U.S. system.
A large portion of this volume focuses on adult literacy
skills, an area of enduring concern in this field. Chapter two, authored
by literacy researchers Catherine Snow and John Strucker, discusses
the implications for the adult literacy field of a recently published
report by the National Research Council (NRC), Preventing Reading
Difficulties in Young Children for Adult Learning and Literacy.
The report, of which Snow is one of the NRC report’s principal
authors, focused on the prevention of reading difficulties in children
through third grade, and is used as a basis of comparison for examining
the factors contributing to low literacy among adults. For adult literacy
instructors, this chapter offers much informative material, including
a discussion on the nature of skilled reading and several brief case
histories of adult learners that “illustrate . . . that many of
today’s adult literacy students were yesterday’s at-risk children”
(p. 62). The authors of this chapter highlight the need to understand
the childhood literacy learning experiences of adult learners. Chapter
four, which also focuses on adult literacy skills, provides insight
into the “overlapping relationships” between the adult basic
education (ABE) system and the community college arena. In this chapter,
Stephen Reder, also a literacy researcher, employs 1992 National Adult
Literacy Survey (NALS) data to draw a comparative analysis of the literacy
skills of postsecondary students and adult basic education students.
Even readers with substantial experience in the adult literacy field
will find chapter five educational; this chapter, authored by public
health scholars Rima Rudd, Barbara Moeykens, and Tayla Colton, focuses
on the relationship between health outcomes and literacy levels, a link
that receives relatively less publicity in the adult education literature.
The authors review several U.S.-based studies that have found a relationship
between low literacy levels and poor health. With their extensive review
of literacy issues in the medical and public health literature, the
authors underscore the need for greater collaboration between adult
literacy educators and health professionals.
Talk of standards and accountability is pervasive in
education, and so it is fitting that included in this volume of the
Annual Review is a chapter on assessment of adult English to
Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) program outcomes and learner progress.
Coauthored by Carol Van Duzer, a researcher based at the Center for
Applied Linguistics, and Robert Berdan, a professor at California State
University, Long Beach, this chapter provides “a timely overview
of the state of assessments in adult ESOL programs” (p. 202). The
focus on adult ESOL instruction is significant in light of the fact
that these programs represent “the fastest growing area in federally
funded adult education programs in the United States.” (p. 201).
Also highlighted in this chapter are recent developments in the assessment
of language learners in the K–12 system in the United States and
in adult language education in other countries (e.g., Australia, Canada,
and the United Kingdom) in an attempt to identify possible models for
assessment reform in the U.S. adult education programs. This discussion
serves to illustrate how adult ESOL practitioners share similar concerns
regarding assessment decisions with K–12 educators in the United
States and adult educators abroad.
The integration of technology into adult literacy education
— or, more precisely, the possibilities of its integration —
is the focus of chapter eight, by David Rosen, director of the Adult
Literacy Resource Institute in Boston. Following Rosen’s chapter
is a useful annotated bibliography of resources compiled by Jeff Carter
and Lou Wollrab, experts in technology and professional staff development.
An important part of Rosen’s chapter examines several challenges
to the successful integration of technology in adult literacy programs,
such as “the barriers to access” (p. 309), of which funding
is the most serious. The integration of technology into adult education
programs requires thoughtful planning and increased resources, but,
as this chapter illustrates, technology funding, policy initiatives,
and research are largely directed at the K–12 sector, not the adult
literacy system. This trend must change if technology is to genuinely
“enable and strengthen teaching and learning” (p. 305) in
adult education classrooms.
Of all the chapters, I most enjoyed reading chapter three,
“Youth in Adult Literacy Education Programs.” Written by Elizabeth
Hayes, a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, this
chapter provides an in-depth exploration of a recent trend in adult
education programs — the increasing enrollment of sixteen- and
seventeen-year-olds. The importance of this chapter lies not only in
the careful documentation of this influx, but rather in the way Hayes
has framed the trend as an opportunity for the adult education system
to reflect critically on its mission as an educational institution.
Whose responsibility is it to educate youth who drop out of school?
How successful will adult literacy programs — already strained
by limited resources — be in serving this group of learners? In
addressing such questions, Hayes succeeds in “[laying] the groundwork
for a more informed response” (p. 74).
The Annual Review of Adult Learning and Literacy is
an important book for any professional working in the adult literacy
and learning field, as it provides the reader with up-to-date analyses
of research and policy trends in the adult basic education sector. The
visibility that this “journal of record” brings to the purpose
of adult education programs and the needs of adult learners also makes
it a valuable contribution to the field of education as a whole.
M.G.S.
3. The second volume of the Annual
Review was published in March 2001.
Crossing the Water: Eighteen Months on an Island
Working with Troubled Boys — A Teacher’s Memoir
by Daniel Robb.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001. 285 pp. $16.80.
What makes a boy screw up, turns him toward the belief
that he is outside the domain of what would save him, make him whole,
safe, valued, loved, integral? (p. 13)
On an island that used to serve as a leper colony off
the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, Daniel Robb spent time with small
groups of contemporary social outcasts, troubled teenage boys. In this
recollection of his experiences with the boys and staff at the Penkinese
Island School, and of memories of his own childhood, Robb presents a
compelling narrative of his struggles to develop teaching relationships
with his young charges and, in doing so, to connect with the troubled
boy within himself.
Robb describes the island school as a last resort for
some of the boys, many of whom came from juvenile detention centers
or alternative school settings. In this new island setting, in many
ways removed from the outside world, the boys developed fishing- and
farm-related skills in building and setting lobster pots and fixing
boats and tractors. In their more formal school lessons, they read and
wrote poetry and essays. More importantly, however, Robb writes that
his goal was to teach them to accept themselves, and to believe in their
abilities as they engaged in academic learning.
The isolation of the school from the rest of society
provided an opportunity for Robb to get to know the boys as individuals,
through their actions and reactions to him and to one another. He and
other staff members on the island attributed many of the boys’
problems to violent family situations and inconsistent relationships.
Violence, drugs, and illegal behavior filled the biographies of many
of the island boys. Robb’s strategy as a teacher was to provide
consistency and attention, and to use stories drawn from literature
as teaching parables. In doing so, his role expanded to mentor, parent,
friend, and teacher. Robb looked to his own childhood and family situation
to help him understand the boys’ distrust and volatile behavior,
and in several passages he notes that in trying to “save”
some of the boys, he was also seeking to understand his own father,
his own childhood, and, ultimately, to save himself. For example, through
recalling his own adolescent pain of coping with his absent father,
Robb connected to students who shared the same kind of pain, helping
them understand and cope with their own pain while working through his
own memories.
Ironically, what was missing from the island school and
thus from Robb’s book is an acknowledgement of the boys’ larger
social — gendered, racial, and socioeconomic — context. For
example, motifs of physical power and dominance — wielded by both
larger boys and male staff members — occur throughout the book,
and yet Robb leaves these patterns of behavior unexplored. Robb offhandedly
mentions several boys’ race and class, and yet he does not explore
the possible ways that racial and social oppression were embodied in
the boys and their families. As several boys left the island and returned
to their illegal behaviors on the streets, Robb seems mystified about
why he was not able to “save” all of his charges. A glimmer
of the dilemma embodied in these boys is captured in the words of Henry:
They always sayin’ here, like, “you can get ahead,”
you know, “keep your nose clean and you could go to college,”
you know, stuff like that, and I know that’s true, but it’s
hard . . . because it isn’t like there’s a lot of options,
and, to tell you the truth, I don’t feel bad dealin’, cause
I ain’t twistin’ their arms to buy nothin’ from me. .
. . What are my options? I don’t have no money for college, it’s
a good chance I’m gonna be lookin’ at you from the grave in
a couple of years. (p. 269)
On the other hand, time on the island gave boys like
Henry time to be boys and to think about their lives. Henry continues:
They be treatin’ us good out here, with respect and
all that, and I’m learning a lot of stuff, like how to take care
of animals and how to make a boat — shit like that — and I’m
keeping’ up with my studies, but man, it ain’t like I’m
gonna be usin’ this stuff in my life. . . . But I don’t mind
knowin’ those things, and there’s a lot of time to think out
here, and that’s good, and I don’t have to be watching my
back all the time, you know. I like that. (p. 270)
The strength of this book lies in Robb’s rich descriptions
of his conversations and interactions with the boys, and in his honesty
about his emotions, reactions, and thoughts as he developed teaching
and living relationships. Robb captures an element of immediacy as he
writes about these troubled teenagers.
A compelling story, Crossing the Water captures
one teacher’s struggle to make sense of the relationships that
he develops with his students, and his struggle to reconnect with his
own boyhood.
C.L.M.
Restructuring High Schools for Equity
and Excellence: What Works
by Valerie E. Lee and Julia B. Smith.
New York: Teachers College Press, 2001. 210 pp. $26.95.
Using a quantitative approach, Valerie Lee and Julia
Smith explore secondary school reform through the dual lenses of equity
and effectiveness, asking, do school reforms positively affect student
learning, and in particular, does school restructuring affect student
learning equitably across socioeconomic status? Like much of Lee’s
previous work, Restructuring High Schools for Equity and Excellence
focuses on questions about the effects of school size on student achievement
and engagement. In the end, the authors conclude that size, like other
school reforms, is not a determinant of student learning, but can be
a “facilitating factor” (p. 157) for creating a positive learning
environment.
Lee and Smith draw their data from the National Educational
Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88), which surveyed the same sample
of students in eighth grade, tenth grade, and twelfth grade. Using hierarchical
linear modeling, they examine variables like student achievement, engagement,
and at-risk behaviors across individual variables like socioeconomic
status (SES) and gender, and also across organizational profiles of
schools with traditional, moderate, or restructured practices.
Across school grade levels, Lee and Smith confirm that
students with higher SES were more academically engaged and successful
than students with lower SES. They find, however, that certain organizational
reforms decreased this gap. At the middle school level, for example,
their findings suggest that, across social class, students who attended
schools with flexible department structures had higher and more equitable
achievement. The presence of team teaching, a popular middle school
reform, was not associated with achievement, and was only moderately
associated with positive student engagement. Team-teaching environments,
however, were associated with students’ increased at-risk behaviors.
At the high school level, students who attended small schools with 600–900
students had higher achievement levels that were less differentiated
by social class. In schools that engaged in school reform practices
(i.e., providing common planning times for teachers, involving parent
volunteers in the school, emphasizing cooperative learning in classes),
almost all students, but particularly those from low social classes,
had higher achievement levels. Utilizing longitudinal data, Lee and
Smith examine predictors of student achievement gains. They find that
one of the most important predictors for low-SES student achievement
gains was the degree to which teachers assumed responsibility for student
learning.
Restructuring High Schools for Equity and Excellence
provides a quantitative look at the effects of school reform. The
authors claim that school restructuring efforts can help to reduce achievement
gaps between students of different social classes. Although at times
the authors of this book strain to find specific causal relationships
between school reform efforts like smaller school size and outcomes
like student achievement, their data and analysis begin to outline a
much more complex picture that cannot be fully captured by one longitudinal
data set. In the end, despite their assertions of the power of small,
personalized learning environments, they lament that “from a statistical
perspective, the inability to match practices to teachers and students
introduces some degree of unreliability into our analyses” (p.
159). The book provides a starting point for further research that would
investigate the effects of particular school reforms, and the experiences
of the educators and students within those particular reforms. This
book would be an interesting read for both researchers and educators
interested in small school reform issues.
C.L.M.
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