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Mark Seidenberg Books

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“The US education system works well, just not for lower-SES students, it's said. Ravitch and friends would take credit for successes in the segment of the population where educational quality has less impact and relinquish responsibility for the children for whom educational quality matters most. Rather than focusing narrowly on the undeniably large role of poverty in poor achievement, we might also focus on the undeniably large role that education could play in improving outcomes.”

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Book:Language at the Speed of Sight
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“The evidence that the gap is to some extent "built in" is certainly consistent with some of these observations. However, advocating alternative forms of literacy seems like poor advice given that print remains an essential medium, and reading skill (the traditional kind) continues to be a prerequisite for engagement with major institutions that greatly affect quality of life. Are alternative literacies a means to empower a minority population or to ensure their disenfranchisement? A bleeding-edge theory that creates additional barriers to print literacy or encourages opting out does not look like progress to me, a higher-SES white person who has benefitted from the traditional concept of literacy. Perhaps these options would be judged differently by parents for whom it has been an obstacle. More likely, they would not have a say in the matter because they would be unaware that this educational theory was being tried out on their children.”

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Book:Language at the Speed of Sight
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“Teaching children to read has been superseded by an emphasis on developing literacy, which includes text, but also using sound, pictures, video, and other media. Reading as I've construed it is hardly a part of literacy in this sense, its role being comparable to spelling or typing. Yet the reading education part—helping children to become skilled readers, to be motivated to read, and to be able to comprehend and interpret texts for various purposes—is not easy.”

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“I question the ethics of a teacher education curriculum predicated on learning on the job. It’s an important job. It’s an important time in the child’s development. The fact that a substantial proportion of fourth graders have already fallen behind, as indicated by the NAEP and other assessments, may be related to the fact that many of them will have had K–3 teachers who were learning on the job.”

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Book:Language at the Speed of Sight
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