New New York School Chancellor. No Teaching Experience

Another high-level administrator without classroom experience
Sent to the NY Daily News, April 9, 2011

Andrew Wolf points out that "Dennis Walcott is more of the same: Bloomberg's new chancellor once again lacks classroom experience," (April 8). 
Here is another obvious case: US Education Secretary Arne Duncan has never taught and has no actual credentials in education. He has no background in education other than administration. 
His uniformed view that increased testing is the answer to improving schools demonstrates that, like Dennis Walcott, he "lacks the instructional experience to actually fix what is going wrong in our classrooms."
Stephen Krashen 

Andrew Wolf article: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2011/04/08/2011-04-08_dennis_walcott_is_more_of_the_same_bloombergs_new_chancellor_once_again_lacks_cl.html#ixzz1IxAUQ0f1

NCLB: Lacks evidence

Deputy Secretary of Education Raymond Simon feels that
“Testing critics ignore [NCLB’s] ‘positive record”
(April 4). Not so. It is Secretary Simon who appears
to have ignored the record.

Simon claims that since NCLB (No Child Left Behind)
was passed, “reading and math scores have risen
sharply and achievement gaps have narrowed to record
lows.”

Several recent reports have concluded that the
increase in reading on national tests occurred before
NCLB went into effect, not after. There has been no
improvement in reading on national tests for fourth or
eighth graders since NCLB went into effect. In math,
the rate of improvement after NCLB is the same as it
was before NCLB. The research also shows that the gaps
among racial groups and between high and low poverty
groups are mostly unchanged.

Just in case Simon and his colleagues at the
department of Education have missed this research,
here is a reading list:
1. Bracey, Gerald. 2006. The 16th Bracey report on
the condition of public education, Phi Delta Kappan,
October.
2. Crawford, James. 2007. Selling NCLB: Would you buy
a used law from this woman?
http://www.elladvocates.org/index.htm#selling.
3. Fuller, Bruce, Gesicki, Kathryn, Kang, Erin, and
Wright, Joseph. (2006). Is the No Child Left Behind
Act Working? The Reliability of How States Track
Achievement. University of California, Berkeley:
Policy Analysis for California Education
4. Krashen, Stephen. 2006, Did reading first work?
http://www.districtadministration.com/pulse/commentpost.aspx?news=no&postid=17349
5. Lee, Jaekyung. 2006. Tracking achievement gaps and
assessing the impact of NCLB on the gaps: An in-depth
look into national and state reading and math outcome
trends.
Cambridge, MA: The Civil Rights Project at Harvard
University.

Stephen Krashen

Newt Gingrich is wrong on bilingual education

Re: Gingrich critical of bilingual education (April 1)

Newt Gingrich is wrong and Peter Zamora is right:
Bilingual education does a better job of helping
children acquire English than English “immersion.”
Bilingual programs use the child’s first language in
ways that accelerate English language development.

In the last two years, four major reviews (including
one from the US government) have been published
confirming that children in bilingual programs do
better on tests of English reading than those in
all-English programs, including one report from the US
government.

Stephen Krashen

The four major reviews:
1. Slavin, R. and Cheung, A. 2005. A synthesis of
research of reading instruction for English language
learners, Review of Educational Research 75(2):
247-284.
2. Rolstad, K., Mahoney, K., & Glass, G. 2005. The big
picture: A meta-analysis of program effectiveness
research on English language learners. Educational
Policy 19(4): 572-594.
3. Genesse, F., Lindolm-Leary, K., Saunders, W., and
Christian, D. 2005. English Language Learners in U.S.
Schools: An Overview of Research. Journal of
Education for Students Placed at Risk, 10(4), 363–385.
4. Francis, D., Lesaux, N., & August, D. 2006.
Language of instruction, In D. August & T. Shanahan,
(Eds.) Developing literacy in second-language
learners, pp. 365-413. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.