The Politics of Education-Dr. Stephen Krashen

First, I have to admit that I am a hippy (I try to use natural soaps, grow vegetables in my back-yard garden, cloth diaper my baby, and recycle like crazy...). I was so happy to go to this session and be surrounded by hippies. I consider a hippy to be anyone who believes that we can improve on the status quo, is willing to fight to make it happen, and will use their beliefs and anything else they have to speak up for the little guy who can't fight for himself.

I already said how much I loved listening to Krashen speak during the keynote address. He was just as engaging here, and he didn't talk about aliens. :)

Krashen started off by telling us that we are not the problem in education. In fact, he said that our educational system is not broken at all. If we look at our national test scores, but remove the scores of those living in poverty, we are very competitive with the other countries. Which is pretty amazing as some of the other countries have little or no poverty and some countries do not educate or test those of below-normal intelligence.

Whew! It's not us! We're not failing our kids! Okay, so what now? Krashen says that there are three main things that have a direct correlation with achievement levels. He says that good public libraries are huge...access to books is one of the biggest indicators of success in school. But most of the poorer schools and communities do not have great access to books. Sooo, pump money into the libraries. But we also need trained librarians who can help students find books that are interesting to them. They need to feel compelled to read. Librarians are number two. And third is a trained library staff to help. Amazing! Of course, he has the research to back this up.

The other thing that Krashen said that I found incredible is that SSR is as effective or MORE effective than direct instruction in reading. I am dumbfounded by this! I will definitely be taking this back to my administrators this fall...

Krashen also talked about curing poverty to make sure that our kids are well-fed with HEALTHY meals and have access to healthcare to help reduce the achievement gap. All-in-all...amazing stuff.

Action plans: follow susanohanian.org and go to www.saveourschoolsmarch.org. We need to convince politicians that TESTING is not the way to go. Spend those billions of dollars used currently for testing to get more books in schools, feed our kids, and offer them school nurses.