A school system in Quebec does not have any textbooks to open; instead, the students are all equipped with Apple MacBooks, according to a recent Canadian Press article. I wonder if MacBooks will really catch on, or if this is just another passing education fad?

School and school systems traditionally are slow to adopt new technology because of the costs involved and because long-time teachers can be resistant to change. No doubt computers and the Internet are here to stay, and they can be great teaching tools. It's really a matter of how we can best incorporate technology in the classroom. For the kids in Quebec the laptops provide added incentive. As the article points out, offer to publish a student's story on the Internet, and just watch how fast that kid starts writing.

But we must also be careful not to turn away from the tried and true. Teachers set in their ways are obviously onto something that works. In this fast-paced world of multi-tasking, we should be wary of creating a generation of students who cannot focus long enough to read a traditional text book, or any book for that matter. And no matter how good technology gets, I just don't get the same feeling curling up under a blanket with a night light reading my Blackberry or laptop. They just don't replace the feel, sound, and smell of a good book.

Incorporating new technology into traditional learning is not an easy task. We're working to find the right balance at Learning A–Z and have a good start with Reading A–Z and Raz-Kids. Reading A–Z delivers traditional books online for easy printing and assembly. And sister website Raz-Kids offers the option of leveled books kids can read or listen to online.

Eight pages of a recent print edition of ESchool News in English and Spanish were dedicated to the challenges today's teachers face with the influx of ELL students. Rather than rehashing here the statistics, problems, and solutions that were covered extensively in ESchool News, I'd like instead to share one idea that was not mentioned.

As people become more mobile, and the world shrinks more and more, perhaps it is time to rethink our language education and adopt a European approach to foreign language education. Second language learners are already a large minority in the United States. Soon the times when an American can get by with speaking only English will be long gone in today's global society. So, like our European and Canadian counterparts, perhaps we should think about adopting foreign language curriculum very early in student learning, and create a new generation of bilingual and multi-lingual people. Starting early is one key to language acquisition. The Europeans and Canadians understand that it is easier for students who start young to learn different languages. In fact, many Europeans and Canadians speak three languages.

Another plus of a bilingual culture is that students grow up to be teachers who speak multiple languages, benefiting generations to come. School systems already spend considerable time and money educating their teachers about how to teach ELL students. Why not spend some of that money educating our students, beginning in kindergarten, to speak multiple languages? The fact is, however we accomplish it, we must adapt to our ever-changing world of more and more ELL students and fewer global borders.

When we developed Reading A–Z and Vocabulary A–Z, we kept foreign language speakers in mind, providing Reading A–Z books in Spanish and French and designing Vocabulary A–Z so that teachers can build customized vocabulary lessons to help English language learners get over one of their biggest hurdles—vocabulary development.

Educators have long recognized what the late Jean Chall of Harvard University has called the fourth-grade slump. For reasons not entirely known, fourth-graders, sometime between becoming decoders and comprehenders of text, run into reading difficulty. It has been surmised that if we can zero in on the causes of this slump, preventive and/or corrective action can be taken.

That's why the federal government has set aside $30 million to fund a five-year research project to help shed light on the fourth-grade slump. The government's funding of this project is being fueled by interest in Response to Intervention (RTI), a framework in which teachers provide increased intervention for students who have been identified as strugglers. The framework is designed to identify children with learning disabilities so further, more intensive, intervention measures can be administered.

It is not surprising that Chall found the slump was worse with poor children. She suggested the slump was due to the lack of a vocabulary-rich environment. I suspect a lot has to do with the possibility that once we think we have taught kids to decode, we stop teaching reading. Even though kids can decode, we need to teach them the skills and strategies necessary to comprehend text. This is why, at Learning A–Z, every leveled book lesson focuses on key comprehension skills and strategies along with vocabulary development.

If the research can help us better develop instruction for kids who have mastered the code but still struggle to understand what they read, the $30 million will be well spent. Goodness knows we spend far more on social programs for those who drop out because they just don't get it.

Every once in a while I come across a nice feel-good story, and this one from the Belfast Telegraph fits the bill. The story is about an illiterate adult who, through his employment, took some basic literacy courses and is now enjoying helping with his children’s homework, higher self-esteem, and even a better job. The story made me smile thinking about how great the gift of literacy is, so I am passing it along to you.

Schools that allow special-needs students to use aids such as calculators on standardized tests are being labeled as failing under No Child Left Behind, even though the special provisions are mandated under a separate federal law, according to a recent Arizona Daily Star report. NCLB, the article says, won't even allow a student born without hands to use a scribe to take standardized state tests that determine state funding eligibility. This conflict leaves schools in a no-win situation. In choosing what is best for individual students, teachers could be contributing to lower test scores and the loss of federal funding. That is a choice a teacher should never have to make.

Cleaning up NCLB to align with the Federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) could be the start of consistent national standards. Once educators and politicians start fixing the problems in NCLB, it will become painfully obvious just how unfair it is to have a federal mandate and 50 completely different state standards on how to meet that mandate. While local control of schools is probably a good thing, federal mandates reliant on local standards is just not logical, practical, or fair.