I just read that the Bush Administration has increased funding for education in several heavily Islamic nations. The hope is that an educated populace will help thwart extremist points of view. Much of the money is being used to train teachers to engage students in learning, rather than for building schools. I like that, after all, aren’t teachers the lynchpins of an educated society? One has to hope that reasoned and educated people will not resort to violent behavior to solve their problems—I truly hope this isn’t just wishful thinking.

The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) recently announced new research that indicates there is a strong correlation between a student's ability to use the vocabulary associated with a discipline and their academic achievement in a given subject area. The research shows that students who participated in a program aimed at building academic vocabulary performed significantly better on assessments targeting comprehension of new reading materials in the areas of science, math, and general literacy. The study cites several best practices for building vocabulary. They are:

• Describe, explain, and provide examples of each new term.
• Have students practice the above in their own words.
• Have students draw or symbolize new terms.
• Provide activities to reinforce knowledge of terms.
• Promote student discussion of new terms.
• Involve students in games that use the new terms.

If you are looking for a way to easily accomplish the above, take a look at our Vocabulary A-Z website (www.vocabularya-z.com). It allows you to build your own customized vocabulary lessons with downloadable resources that implement the six characteristics of good vocabulary instruction described above. There are enough resources for more than a week of instruction on each and every vocabulary list you build. And you can build thousands of lessons. Oh yeah, I almost forgot, you can build a few lessons to try out for free.

Would you be surprised to know that half of the high-stakes tests that states use to measure student performance do not match up with the states’ standards? According to a study published by the American Federation of Teachers, only 11 states have 100-percent alignment of their tests to strong state standards. The study found reading standards to be particularly weak in many states. This poses problems when teachers are held accountable for teaching standards advocated by NCLB while the performance of their students in meeting those standards are being measured by tests that don’t align with the standards that teachers are told to teach. Something is clearly wrong with this picture.

A former U.S. Department of Education official, in an article appearing in Education Week, compared the NCLB act to Dr. Dolittle’s two-headed llama. The two key camps fueling the controversy surrounding the act’s interpretation are the “what-works” camp and the “whatever-works” camp. It appears to be a struggle between those whose instructional practices are informed by science and those whose practices are informed by practical experience.

According to this official, the “what-works” camp insists that all instruction should be based on methods that have been scientifically proven to work. They believe that laws and regulations should be used to force these methods on the masses.

He portrays the “whatever-works” camp as those who follow a tight-loose model of management. This model advocates being tight or firm about the results that are expected but loose on the methods used to achieve these results. They believe teachers should have flexibility in determining what works best in their particular situation to achieve the expected results.

The disconnect is between federal programs that allow teachers to do whatever it takes to get results and those that dictate certain methodologies to get the same results. Imagine the frustration of the elementary reading teacher whose students are achieving stellar results with a reading program not on the approved list, who is then forced to comply with a Reading First mandate that requires the use of only a state-approved program. It will be interesting to see what the next version of NCLB due to be authorized for 2007 will look like. Which camp are you in?