Latest trends in education, part 4

Please enjoy posts from Golden Apple’s own Penny Lundquist for the next few weeks.  Penny is a 1986 Golden Apple Fellow. She has been on the staff of Golden Apple for 17 years, and currently serves as Golden Apple’s Director of Professional Development. Prior to working at Golden Apple, she was an English teacher with 23 years of classroom experience in grades five through twelve. Her interests include literacy and teacher professionalism.

What follows is a highly personal list of what I perceive to be 5 key education trends . . . expressed as injunctions.  I would love to have readers comment on my choices and list picks of their own.  These are in no particular order, just things I’m picking up surfing the internet, reading Educational Leadership, Edutopia and other education publications, and following Obama’s/Duncan’s education priorities. 

Today is the 5th and final trend in this series.

5.  Start young and focus on reading. 
President Obama and Secretary Duncan have placed a high priority on early childhood education as the key to improving student achievement.  High quality, universal early childhood education can generate a generation of children entering elementary school ready to read and to learn.  The early years are critical in laying the groundwork for developing literacy, which leads to success in school, graduation from high school, entry into higher education and success in securing jobs demanding intellectual capital.  Reading is Everybody’s Business!!  This is something we’ve seen illustrated recently as Secretary Duncan and the Obamas have gone public reading to children.  Whatever else is or isn’t done educationally, reading is the basis for learning how to learn, the bedrock of education.  Deep in our national DNA is the image of Abraham Lincoln, our 16th president, largely self-taught, trudging miles to get library books and reading by candlelight. 

Expect a renewed emphasis on this most important of skills, the bedrock of all other learning, and the call for more and better early childhood education and for more teachers to become highly skilled teachers of reading.  Arne Duncan’s work in Chicago focused on early childhood education and reading.  Golden Apple Award-winning teachers developed a Children’s Reading Bill of Rights to help schools and communities define a reading agenda for children, and we are sharing it as one of this month’s Free Resources.

The International Reading Association is a repository of excellent research and policy recommendations, including recommendations to President Obama. For more, check out their website.

What trends in education have you noticed?

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