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Nancy Bailey's Education Website

Revive, Rally and Recover Public Schools

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How School Reform, Including Common Core, Has Devastated Children and Their Joy of Learning to Read

January 4, 2019 By Nancy Bailey 134 Comments

School reform has taken a toll on children starting in kindergarten (even preschool). There’s little doubt that children are being forced to learn to read earlier than ever before. The reading gap likely reflects the developmental differences found in children when they are forced to read too soon. Why are schools doing this? Forcing kindergarteners […]

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Common Core, Emily Hanford, Joy of Reading, McGraw Hill, National Council on Teacher Quality, National Reading Panel, phonics, reading, Reading Instruction, Reading Teachers, Reading Wonders, science of reading, teachers

Common Core Creator Slammed Reading Teachers for Having a Research Gap—How Ironic

November 29, 2018 By Nancy Bailey 3 Comments

Teachers have enough difficulties. Sometimes you find an article so full of hubris and irony it cannot be ignored. Several weeks ago, I criticized a series of reports about reading by journalist Emily Hanford. Hanford claimed teachers didn’t understand reading instruction and that their education schools failed to teach them what they should know. I made […]

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Colleges of Education, Common Core, Emily Hanford, phonics, reading, Reading Instruction, Susan Pimental

Articles about “Reading Wars” Meant to Divide Teachers and Parents!

November 4, 2018 By Nancy Bailey 16 Comments

A wave of recent articles about reading trick parents and educators into thinking teachers are not teaching reading and are not being trained to teach reading correctly. The opinion pieces are written by journalist Emily Hanford. Warning! Corporate reform fingerprints are all over these articles. Could it be about transforming classrooms to technology, where students […]

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Corporate education reform, National Reading Panel (NRP), phonics vs. whole language, Reading Instruction, Reading Wars, The National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ), The Waltons, Wli and Edythe Broad Foundation

88 Reasons Why Children Don’t Read Well, and What to Do About It

April 15, 2018 By Nancy Bailey 28 Comments

The NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) repeatedly shows that reading scores are flat, and everyone wonders why. Why aren’t America’s students reading better? What can schools and parents do about it? Brainstorm when it comes to teaching reading. Here are some ideas. If you have thoughts to share, please do. Everyone has good suggestions […]

Filed Under: Featured, Uncategorized Tagged With: Children who don't like to read, how school reform has hurt reading programs, NAEP, Reading Improvement, Reading Instruction, Ways to get children to like reading

The Power of Invented Spelling: Giving Children Control

May 16, 2017 By Nancy Bailey 11 Comments

What we’ve found over the years is there seemed to be something with kids who are doing invented spelling on their own that’s really helping them learn how to read. ~ Gene Ouellette, Associate Professor of Psychology at Mount Allison University It looks like it’s best to hand young children paper and pencil instead of […]

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Computers, early childhood education, Invented Spelling, Inventive Spelling, iPads, phonics, reading, Reading Instruction, Response to Intervention (RTI), spelling, Technology, writing

Don’t Teachers Know How to Teach Reading?

May 12, 2015 By Nancy Bailey 35 Comments

To hear parents and the media talk, teachers don’t know how to teach reading. In Alabama, Education Week is bragging about a $48 million literacy program. It teaches teachers how to teach reading. Why? I find it a strange phenomenon. Reading instruction and identifying reading problems used to be a large part of learning how […]

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: reading, Reading Instruction

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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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