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Nancy Bailey's Education Website

Revive, Rally and Recover Public Schools

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The Science of Reading Ignores The Importance of Picture Books to Early Learning

June 6, 2021 By Nancy Bailey 52 Comments

Increasingly, parents and teachers are embracing the controversial Science of Reading (SoR), pushing for State policies that reinforce more phonics instruction. It’s troubling to see they only discuss commercial decoding programs, of which there are many. They rarely mention the importance of picture books and giving children the chance to read freely. Is phonics important? […]

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: audiobooks, Bibliotherapy, Causal Information and picture books, Comic books, Decoding Booklets, Dolly Parton's Imagination Library, kindergarten readiness, libraries, libraries and reading, magazines, Picture Books, picture books and mathematics, Reach out and Read, science of reading, Wordless Picture Books

Bill & Melinda Gates Don’t Discuss Their Takeover of America’s Public Schools

March 8, 2019 By Nancy Bailey 15 Comments

Bill and Melinda Gates’s 2019 letter “We Didn’t See This Coming,” is filled with their concerns and optimism about everything from commodes to climate change. Always eager to discuss their global initiatives to help the poor, and a variety of other endeavors, they say little about the aggressive ways they are remaking public education to their […]

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, books, charter schools, Common Core, Data Collection, Librarians, libraries, Privatization of Public Education, Public School Takeover, reading, reading gains, school libraries, Teacher Effectiveness

Does this Summer Reading Program Bypass Librarians, Teachers, and Fun, While Tracking Students?

July 24, 2018 By Nancy Bailey 1 Comment

READS is a summer program for disadvantaged children promoted by the i3 (Investing in Innovation) Fund and The Wallace Foundation. It uses computer algorithms to figure out a student’s interests. Next, it matches them to books. It gives students in kindergarten through fifth grade 10 free books, but there are strings attached. Both the i3 […]

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: libraries, privatization, public schools, reading, READS, Summer Reading, Summer School, teachers

How Did We Learn to Read? Is There a Teacher to Thank?

May 8, 2018 By Nancy Bailey 15 Comments

The debate surrounding how to teach children to read is ongoing. What we tend to forget and ignore is how we learned to read ourselves. I think it’s important to address what helped make us the readers we are today, or what problems we encountered. Perhaps we can recall what worked, and what didn’t, by […]

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: books, dyslexia, Learning to Read, libraries, reading, reading difficulties

Can Students Have Teachers, Tech, and Librarians Too?

April 27, 2018 By Nancy Bailey 5 Comments

Is it possible in this fast-paced world, to see a future with technology and professionally credentialed librarians and teachers working alongside one another? Can we be one big happy family? My last post about the loss of librarians and libraries brought a comment from a Follett representative. Follett is a for-profit company that has been […]

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Alliance for Excellent Education, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Follett, future ready schools, Librarians, libraries, teachers, Technology

California’s Reading Crisis: Why Aren’t U.S. Kids Reading Well?

December 10, 2017 By Nancy Bailey 8 Comments

Children in California are not reading well. The New York Times reports that lawyers are suing the state on behalf of three schools, one a charter, for not following state literacy experts who are concerned about students learning English, those with disabilities, and African American and Hispanic students. Here are some thoughts when it comes […]

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: California, child health care, child homelessness, Child Hunger, civil rights, Common Core, libraries, phonics, public schools, reading, School Librarians, school libraries, U.S. reading

Hillary Clinton, Zip Codes, and School Equality

April 17, 2016 By Nancy Bailey 4 Comments

The point often made during debates by Sec. Hillary Clinton is that children should not get a poor education based on their zip code. Most of us would agree about poverty and its harmful effects on children in school. But the zip code message was co-opted a long time ago by those who want to […]

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Bernie Sanders, Counseling Services, Detroit, discipline, Hillary Clinton, libraries, Online Instruction, Over-Testing, Poor Schools, poverty, private schools, Punishing Schools, recess, Rich Schools, Rundown School Facilities, School Nurses, Strictness, teachers, the arts, Wealthy Schools, Whole Curriculum, Zip Codes

What President Obama Got Right—Warning—It’s Wild and There Was No Drill!

April 22, 2014 By Nancy Bailey Leave a Comment

OK. You don’t like Race to the Top or the corporate education agenda that all presidents subscribe to. Me neither. Maybe you don’t like a lot of President Obama’s policies and can’t wait for a new guy…or gal! I get it. But how can you not appreciate the way President Obama has been practicing his […]

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Acting, Early Childhood, High School, Librarians, libraries, Middle School, President Obama, Reading Outloud, teachers

Misguided Education Reform

December 31, 2013 By Nancy Bailey Leave a Comment

A nice thing that happened to me this past year was the publishing, back in July, of my book, Misguided Education Reform: Debating the Impact on Students, by R & L Books (Rowman & Littlefield). It covers many of the same topics you will find on my blog. I discuss special education which might be […]

Filed Under: Common Core, Special Education Tagged With: charter school buildings, Common Core, discipline, early childhood education, emotional disabilities, gifted, IDEA, learning disabilities, libraries, loss of the arts, Misguided Education Reform, PL 94-142, poor/unsafe school facilities, re-authorizations, reading, Reading First, special education, testing, Zero Tolerance

Breaking a Child’s Spirit—Twenty Harshly Negative Effects of Today’s School Reforms

October 11, 2013 By Nancy Bailey 2 Comments

Part I     1-10 These are not easy to read. But I’m sure you will find that many, if not all, have been used to negatively change public elementary schools in recent years. And you will recognize why they break a child’s spirit. Here are the first ten. I will post the others later. 1.      Children […]

Filed Under: Special Education Tagged With: ADHD, Children, elementary school, health, homework, libraries, preschool, recess, retention, socialization, testing, the arts

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Do we really want an America where we no longer own our public schools?

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This book says “no” to the reforms that fail, and challenges Americans to address the real student needs that will fix public schools and make America strong.

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Nancy E. BaileyFollow

SPED Teacher, Author, PhD Ed. Leadership, Blogging for Kids, and Democratic Public Schools that should belong to all of us.

Nancy E. Bailey
Retweet on TwitterNancy E. Bailey Retweeted
NancyEBailey1Nancy E. Bailey@NancyEBailey1·
17h

@PennBat I worry that many students with disabilities will miss out on inclusion classes with their non-disabled peers with vouchers. The best they will find are segregated charters or private schools that only focus on the disability.

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Retweet on TwitterNancy E. Bailey Retweeted
PennBatPA BATs R Pro Charter Reform@PennBat·
18h

1. You lost
2. Where are the Special Ed students supposed to go when all the public schools are gone and voucher schools won't accept them?

"School Choice" isn't for ALL kids. Anyone who says it is, is full of 💩 https://twitter.com/DeAngelisCorey/status/1513571301155348481

Corey A. DeAngelis@DeAngelisCorey

@RepKrajewski the money doesn't belong to the government schools.

education funding is meant for educating children, not for protecting a particular institution.

we should fund students, not systems.

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NancyEBailey1Nancy E. Bailey@NancyEBailey1·
19h

@SecCardona There's a place for technology. It's important. But so are teachers and a child's privacy. I wonder if you're paying attention to this, @SecCardona. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/medialse/2022/05/18/algorithmic-personalization-is-disrupting-a-healthy-teaching-environment/

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Retweet on TwitterNancy E. Bailey Retweeted
molly_esqMolly Esquivel@molly_esq·
21h

To prepare for @linakhanFTC discussion on #COPPA @Velislava777 and I shed light on the sidelining of #teachers and the soft power edtech wields in the classrooms. This is just the beginning. #edutwitter #edtech
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/medialse/2022/05/18/algorithmic-personalization-is-disrupting-a-healthy-teaching-environment/

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Retweet on TwitterNancy E. Bailey Retweeted
NancyEBailey1Nancy E. Bailey@NancyEBailey1·
17 May

Here are words & phrases indicating a change from public schools & teaching to all-tech instruction. https://nancyebailey.com/2022/05/17/6-terms-transforming-public-schools-to-the-all-tech-endgame/

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