Discussing How Economics, Racial Inclusion, Social Equity, and Executive Power Influence School Reforms

From a moral perspective, the variables of economics, racial inclusion, and social equity, speak to core American inalienable rights whereby all men are created equal.  These rights include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  Truly, we the people could not be true to our democratic principles unless we use Executive power and legislative mandates to maintain these principles and ensure opportunity gaps are mitigated. 

From an educational perspective, the variables of economics, racial inclusion, and social equity are undeniable factors that can mitigate efforts to promote learning for all.  Beginning in 2009, Race to the Top competitive grants exercised the Executive branch’s power and encouraged legislative mandates be brought to bear to promote social justice and equity in quality goals.  The Great Recession provided the need and opportunity because, at the time, diverse states were not exhibiting the same effort toward achieving social justice or equity in quality goals.  This increased the need for the federal Department of Education to utilize its funding streams to influence implementation of mandates designed to ensure the learning for all mission. 

Executive power can be maximized through the federal Department of Education.  Beginning ten years after the initial 1959 questioning of federal aid to public schools, Berke, Bailey, Campbell, and Sacks (1971) conducted an eighteen-month study of the pattern of how federal aid to education was allocated.  As a result, the authors reported the “story in general is grossly disappointing” (p. 52).  Major findings were:

“(1) in most urbanized areas, there is a crisis in educational finance, yet school districts in rural areas received more federal aid per pupil; (2) there was no compensatory relationship between federal aid and assessed property valuation; (3) because of the impact of Title I, districts with lower income and higher proportions of nonwhite pupils received more aid than those with lower proportions; (4) amounts of aid received varied markedly and erratically in individual school districts; (5) the failure to concentrate funds on most needy students has resulted in fragmented programs or new equipment; and (6) amounts of aid are too small in view of the existing problems” (p. 53).

            During the ensuing four decades, education has become increasingly politicized while the findings identified by Berke et al (1971) remain pervasive.  Based on ignored or politicized conditions, the lack of equity in quality continues.  This results in the continued inability of public education to close the achievement gap and increase the quality of equitable education, especially when compared to other industrialized nations. 

In the United States, two main philosophies have emerged:  One group advocates that federal aid for public schools should be increased.  They argue that since current funding systems for schools, such as dependency on local property taxes, do not provide just and equitable compensation for public schools.  Federal Aid, they contend, would provide the equity in quality required for effective schools.

By contrast, opponents to Federal Aid for public schools, led by the Cato Institute, advocate for the privatization of schools with funding coming from sources outside of the tax base.  The Cato Institute “argues that schools cannot cater to their constituents when government institutions run and fund them” (Fitzpatrick, 2010).

Clarity over the role of Federal Aid in public education is more important than ever.  Since the premise of equity in quality is grounded in civil rights and social justice, the role of the Federal government in assuring this policy should be clear.  Therefore, the focus of any debate should be less on “whether” and more on “how” to optimize the role of Federal Aid to optimize reform of public education in pursuit of social justice and equity in quality goals.

To cite:

Anderson, C.J. April 30, 2018) Discussing how economics, racial inclusion, social equity, and executive
             power influence school reform [Web log post] Retrieved from http://www.ucan-cja.blogspot.com/

References:

Berke, J.L., Bailey, Campbell, and Sacks, (1971) Federal Aid to Public Education: who

Benefits?  http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED051441.pdf

Fielding, L., Kerr, N., & Rosier, P. (2007). Annual growth for all students, catch-up growth for

those who are behind. New York: Foundation Press.

The Benefits of Increased Phonemic And Phonological Awareness Teaching Skills

Phonemic and phonological awareness is an essential competency for emergent literacy (Moats, 1999; Yopp, 1992).  Phonemic and phonological awareness is now typically introduced during Pre-kindergarten programs.  This emphasizes the need for universal Pre-K, since foundational concepts in emergent literacy are being introduced and then reinforced during the Kindergarten year.  When such learning opportunities are missed or ineffective, a child might find him or herself in First Grade and in need of a Tier 2 or 3 reading intervention to develop the phonemic and phonological awareness exhibited by same-age/grade peers. 

Why do we need teachers proficient in developmental reading skills?  Samantha Coppola's TED Talk provides a powerful response.  Effective teachers are the great equalizer with the potential to positively change a child's destiny.  

  Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate the sounds in spoken words and the understanding that spoken words and syllables are made up of sequences of speech sounds (Yopp, 1992). Phonemic awareness is essential to learning to read in an alphabetic writing system, because letters represent sounds or phonemes.  Without phonemic awareness, phonics makes little sense.  Phonemic awareness is fundamental to mapping speech to print.  For instance, if a child cannot hear that "man" and "moon“ begin with the same sound or is unable to blend the sounds /rrrrrruuuuuunnnnn/ into the word "run",  then he or she may have great difficulty connecting sounds with their written symbols or blending sounds to make a word.

A phoneme is a speech sound.  A phoneme is the smallest unit of spoken language and has no inherent meaning (National Reading Panel, 2000).  Phonemic awareness involves hearing language at the phoneme level.

Phonemic awareness is not phonics.  Phonemic awareness is auditory and does not involve words in print.  Phonemic awareness is important because it teaches students to attend to sounds. Phonemic awareness primes the connection of sound to print.  Phonemic awareness gives students a way to approach reading new words.  Phonemic awareness helps students understand the alphabetic principle whereby letters in words are systematically represented by sounds.

Phonics, is the use of the code (sound-symbol relationships to recognize words.  Phonological awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate the sound structure of language. This is an encompassing term that involves working with the sounds of language at the word, syllable, and phoneme level.

Phonemic and phonological awareness is difficult because although the English language includes 26 letters, there are approximately 40 phonemes.  Sounds are represented in 250 different spellings.  For instance, /f/ as in ph, f, gh, ff.  Research has established that children lacking phonemic and phonological awareness skills exhibit difficulty grouping words with similar and dissimilar sounds (mat, mug, sun), blending and splitting syllables (sun-ny), blending sounds into words (m_a_n), segmenting a word as a sequence of sounds (e.g., fish is made up of three phonemes, /f/ ,/i/, /sh/), detecting and manipulating sounds within words (change “r” in “run” to “s” to make “sun”), (Kame'enui, et. al., 1997).

Teacher preparation programs need to strengthen their training in this regard and develop better partnerships with early childhood programs and elementary schools to ensure optimal training of teachers in the implementation of intervention programs that utilize a phonemic and phonological awareness approach.  Acceptance of the need for this awareness will increase the likelihood of effective action planning for students identified as at-risk learners during the emergent literacy stage of learning.

Vacca & Padak (1990) find at-risk learners are seldom more academically vulnerable than during instructional situations that require them to engage in acts of literacy.  Kletzien & Bednar (1990) view at-risk readers as students who see themselves “as poor learners who have limited aptitude to benefit from educational opportunities.  They are at risk by being constantly discouraged and by having an inadequate understanding of their own learning abilities and potential” (p 528). 

Most research-based reading intervention programs utilize a phonemic and phonological awareness approach as the foundation for their model of reading intervention.  The most effective reading programs for at-risk students utilize a multisensory and systematic approach (Ehri, Nunes, Willows, Schuster, Yaghoub-Zadeh, & Shanahan, 2001; Kim, Wagner, & Lopez, 2012; Kruidenier, MacArthur, Wrigley, 2010). Research by Slavin, Lake, Davis, and Madden, (2009) found one-to-one intervention effective for students at-risk for reading failure.  As noted above, effective teachers are the great equalizer with the potential to positively change a child's destiny.  Developing phonemic and phonological awareness skills as a teacher of reading simply makes a teacher more effective.  

To cite:

Anderson, C.J. (August 31, 2017) The benefits of increased phonemic and phonological awareness

teaching skills. [Web log post] Retrieved from http://www.ucan-cja.blogspot.com/

References;

Big Ideas in Beginning Reading (2009) University of Oregon Center on Teaching and Learning

Retrieved from:  http://reading.uoregon.edu/resources/bibr_pa_concepts.pdf

Davenport, P., & Anderson, G. (2002). Closing the achievement gap: No excuses. Houston, TX:

            APQC.

Ehri, L. C., Nunes, S. R., Willows, D. M., Schuster, B. V., Yaghoub-Zadeh, Z., & Shanahan, T. (2001)

                Phonemic awareness instruction helps children learn to read: Evidence from the national

                reading panel's meta-analysis. Reading Research Quarterly 36 (3). 250-287.         http://dx.doi.org/10.1598/rrq.36.3.2

Lezotte, L. W. (1991) Correlates of Effective Schools: The First and Second Generation.

            Retrieved from: http://www.effectiveschools.com/images/stories/escorrelates.pdf

Kame'enui, E. J., Simmons, D. C., Baker, S., Chard, D. J., Dickson, S. V., Gunn, B., Smith, S. B.,

Sprick, M., & Lin, S. J. (1997). Effective strategies for teaching beginning reading. In E. J.

Kame'enui, & D. W. Carnine (Eds.), Effective Teaching Strategies That Accommodate

Diverse Learners. Columbus, OH: Merrill.

Kim, Y.-S., Wagner, R. K., & Lopez, D. (2012). Developmental relations between reading fluency and

reading comprehension: A longitudinal study from grade 1 to grade 2. Journal of

Experimental Child Psychology , 113(1), 93-111. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2012.03.002

Kletzien, S.B. & Bednar, M.R., (1990). Dynamic assessment for at-risk readers. Journal

 of Reading v33. n7  528-533

Moats, L. C. (1999). Teaching reading is rocket science: What expert teachers of reading

should know and be able to do. Washington, D. C.: American Federation of Teachers.

Lyon, G. R. (1995). Toward a definition of dyslexia. Annals of Dyslexia, 45, 3-27.

National Reading Panel (2000). Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of

the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction

[online]. Retrieved from: http://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/nrp/smallbook.htm.

Shaywitz. S. (2003). Overcoming dyslexia: A new and complete science-based program for

Reading problems at any level. New York: Knopf.

Slavin, R. E., Lake, C., Davis, S., & Madden, N. A. (2011). Effective programs for struggling readers:

                    A best-evidence synthesis. Educational Research Review, 6(1), 1–26.

                    doi:10.1016/j.edurev.2010.07.002

Smith S. B., Simmons, D. C., & Kame'enui, E. J. (1998). Phonological awareness: Research

bases. In D. C. Simmons & E. J. Kame'enui (eds.), What reading research tells us about

children with diverse learning needs: Bases and basics. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum

Associates.

Yopp, H. K. (1992). Developing Phonemic Awareness in Young Children. Reading Teacher,

45(9), 696-703.

Vacca, R. T. & Padak, N. D. (1990). Who's at risk in reading? Journal of Reading v33. n7

486-88.

Zangwill, W.I. & Kantor, P. B. (1998). Toward a theory of continuous improvement and the

            learning curve.  Management Science, 44(7) 910-920.

Invitational Theory and Practice: In the pursuit of fairness in educational equity

The theoretical foundations for Invitational Education (Purkey, 1992) include “the democratic ethos” (Dewey, 1916), the perceptual tradition (Combs, Richards, & Richards, 1988), and self-concept theory (Rogers, 1969).  These foundations rest upon core principles.  As an effective educational theory, Invitational Education (IE) utilizes assumptions requiring people, places, policies, programs, processes to interdependently transcend from the present organizational culture to the desired ideal.  Thus, IE theory rests upon:

• The 5 basic assumptions: optimism, trust, respect, care, intentionality;
• The 5 P’s: people, places, policies, programs, processes;
• The ladder: intentionally disinviting, unintentionally disinviting, unintentionally inviting, intentionally inviting, and;
•  The 4 corner press: being personally inviting with oneself, being personally inviting with others, being professionally inviting with oneself, being professionally inviting with others (Welch & Smith, 2014).

Undeniably, a humanist approach to education guides Invitational Education (IE).  Richards and Combs (1993) advocated for the implementation of positive aspects of humanist approaches in education.  These aspects embraced the human being’s uniqueness, the importance of self-concept, development of methodologies that encouraged group work, increased the involvement of students in decision-making, and sought to create more pleasant and inviting schools (pp. 266–67). 

However, the dawn of the new millennium brought new critics to the humanistic approach in education. Educational psychologists: Duchesne and McMaugh (2016), blame humanist approaches to education for promoting a structure that led to weaker academic outcomes, unprepared teachers implementing ineffective approaches, and ineffective measures of success.  Such criticism was not new to IE.  As recalled by Welch & Smith (2014), in 1986, McLaren complained that Purkey and Novak (1984) failed “to situate their pedagogical concerns within a broader problematic, one that understands how classrooms can be truly humanized only when there exists greater social justice and economic equality in the larger society” (p. 91).

While Purkey and Novak (1996) believed education to be “fundamentally an imagination of hope” (p. 1), as an effective humanistic approach to education, IE must consider “engagement with the broader social and political context” (Welch & Smith, 2014, p. 9).  In this endeavor, IE continues to evolve beyond simple re-branding.  Now widely cited in research as Invitational Theory and Practice (Shaw, Siegel, & Schoenlein, 2013), IE’s humanistic approach still embraces its theoretical foundation while seeking to extend moral responsibility and political commitment to ensure the democratic ethos, the perceptual tradition, and self-concept theory is utilized to provide fairness in equity to promote the learning for all mission.

As cited by Butler (2005), Duetsch (1975) provided three distinctive definitions of fairness based on equality, equity, and need. 

•  Equality, by definition, is treating everyone the same.  For example, after a certain age, everyone gets to vote. 
•   Equity suggests consequences: both rewards and punishment, are proportionate to product. For  example, all children are taught to write but the gifted poet is celebrated. 
•   Need was defined by Duetsch based on provision or availability of accommodations and supports.  For example, “accommodations and supports will not be provided to everyone (equality) or to only the best (equity), but to those that need them to be successful” (Butler, 2005, para 2).

         Of course, practitioners of Invitational Theory and Practice (ITP) will continue to embrace the theoretical foundation of IE (Purkey & Novak, 2008).  However, ITP practitioners must also fully understand the issues of fairness in equity.  Thereafter, ITP practitioners could more effectively consider the social and political context  in which ITP should be integrated with principles of cognitive, social, and behavioral learning theories.  

 To Cite:

Anderson, C.J. (February 28, 2017) Invitational theory and practice: In pursuit of fairness in

educational equity.  [Web log post] Retrieved from http://www.ucan-cja.blogspot.com/

References:

Butler, C. J. (2005) Equal and fair are not the same: Classroom issues of fairness. Retrieved

from: http://www.ttac.odu.edu/newsletter/PDF/OLD/Nov_Dec_2004_Jan_2005/Page2.pdf

Combs, A., Richards, A., & Richards, F. (1988). Perceptual psychology: A humanistic approach

to the study of persons. New York: Harper & Row.

Deutsch, M. (1975). Equity, equality, and need: What determines which value will be used

as the basis of distributive justice? Journal of Social Issues, 31, 137-149

Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education: An introduction to the philosophy of education.

New York, NY: Macmillan.

Duchesne, S., McMaugh, A. (2016). Educational psychology for learning and teaching (5th ed.).

Melbourne: Cengage Learning.

McLaren, P. (1986). Interrogating the conceptual roots of invitational education: A review of Purkey

and Novak's inviting school success. Interchange, 17, 90-95.

Purkey, W. (1992). An invitation to invitational theory. Journal of Invitational Theory and

Practice, 1(1), 5-15.

Purkey, W., & Novak, J. (1984). Inviting school success: A self-concept approach to teaching,

learning, and democratic practice. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Richards, A., & Combs, A. (1993). Education and the humanist challenge. In F. J. Wertz (Ed.),

The humanist movement: Recovering the person in psychology (pp. 256–73). Lake Worth,

FL: Gardner Press.

Rogers, C. (1969). Freedom to learn. Columbus, OH: Charles E. Merrill.

Shaw, D., Siegel, B., & Schoenlein, A. (2013). The basic tenets of invitational theory and

practice: An invitational glossary. Journal of Invitational Theory and Practice, 19, 30-42

Welch, G. & Smith, K. (2014) From theory to praxis: Applying invitational education beyond

schools. Journal of Invitational Theory and Practice, 20, 5-10