Phi Delta Kappan Research Articles

The Voice of Evidence in Reading Research

As I began writing this review, I was reminded of an oft-seen yellow highway sign adorning the steep and winding roadsides of the Rocky Mountains: Watch for Falling Rocks! Within mere months of the publication of The Voice of Evidence in Reading Research, intended by its authors to help educators access and understand the findings of scientific research about reading and reading instruction, the familiar cast of critics had predictably begun rolling the rocks down the mountainside to pummel the book’s message and contents (See the Phi Delta Kappan, February 2005 issue.) Admittedly, healthy skepticism and critique are important to the advancement of science itself, but The Voice of Evidence in Reading Research covers such a wide range of topics that it is simply not deserving of the same types of criticisms as those leveled at The Report of the National Reading Panel (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000) with its much narrower research focus on only five areas related to reading instruction. The Voice of EviJOURNAL OF LITERACY RESEARCH, 38(4), 467–474 Copyright © 2006, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

The Political Dynamics of Mayoral Engagement in Public Education

Hill, P. T., & Celio, M. B. (1998). Fixing urban schools. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Howell, W. (Ed.). (2005). Besieged: School boards and the future of education politics. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Kirst, M. W. (2002). Mayoral influence, new regimes, and public school governance. Philadelphia: Consortium for Policy Research in Education. Kirst, M., & Bulkley, K. (2003). Mayoral takeover: The different directions taken in different cities. In J. Cibulka & W. Boyd (Eds.), A race against time: The crisis in urban schooling. Westport, CT: Praeger. Kirst, M. W., & Wirt, F. (2005). The political dynamics of American education. Berkeley, CA: McCutchan. National League of Cities. (2002). Improving public schools: Action kit for municipal leaders. Washington, DC: Author. Smith, H. (2005). Using community assets to build an “education system.” Voices in Urban Education Reform, 7, 25–35. Stone, C., Henig, J., Jones, B., & Pierannunzi, C. (2001). Building civic capacity: The politics of reforming urban schools. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. Tyack, D. (1974). The one best system: A history of American urban education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Usdan, M. D. (1994, January 1). The relationship between school boards and general purpose government. Phi Delta Kappan, 75, 374–378. Wong, K. K. (2005). The political dynamics of mayoral engagement in public education. Unpublished paper, Brown University. Wong, K. K., & Shen, F. (2003a). Big city mayors and school governance reform: The case of school district takeover. Peabody Journal of Education, 78, 5–32. Wong, K. K., & Shen, F. (2003b). Measuring the effectiveness of city and state takeover as a school reform strategy. Peabody Journal of Education, 78, 89–119.

A Brief History of the Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll

Phi Delta Kappa and the Gallup Organization have been asking the public what it thinks of the public schools since the late 1960s. Mr. Rose describes the evolution of the PDK/Gallup poll itself and how educators and policy makers are influenced by its findings. THE 37th Annual Phi Delta Kappa/ Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools was released in August 2005 at a press conference held at the Gallup Building in Washington, D.C. Members of the national media were in attendance; the president of Phi Delta Kappa International came from Denver to preside; and the poll's director, PDK's executive director, and a consultant to the poll responded to questions for over 40 minutes. The conference was carried on C-SPAN, and numerous media outlets reported the poll results. The poll was subsequently printed in a 16-page article in the September issue of the Phi Delta Kappan. Major publications, such as the Christian Science Monitor and Education Week, analyzed the results, and some reprinted the poll in part or even in its entirety. Those who started this poll in the late 1960s would be amazed at the way it has endured and grown in both content and purpose. Its annual release is widely anticipated. It is disliked by some, respected by others. A former secretary of education, having reviewed the approval ratings given the public schools, commented, We will never bring about the needed change if people continue to believe that they have good schools. Today's PDK/Gallup poll is a cooperative effort between PDK and the Gallup Organization, a tie established after the first poll had been published in 1969 in the IDEA/ Reporter. The poll was the brainchild of James Kettering and Edward Brainard, two members of the prestigious Kettering Foundation's board. Envisioning a poll that would provide educators with insights regarding the public's views on day-to-day issues, they enlisted the expertise and support of George Gallup, Sr., who was on the way to establishing public-opinion polling as a true science. Gallup, strongly committed to the public schools, liked the idea of an education poll and used his expertise to make it a reality. He was the poll's first director. In a 2004 conversation in Colorado, Brainard recalled that, while the first poll was judged a success, there was general agreement that it needed wider distribution. Stanley Elam, who had established the Phi Delta Kappan as a leading education journal since he took over as its editor in 1956, readily signed on with the understanding that the Kappan would be the poll's publisher. Thus began the partnership between the Gallup Organization and Phi Delta Kappa that has so far endured for nearly four decades. THE EARLY DAYS In the early days, Gallup convened a national panel of experts to discuss the issues the poll should explore. He chaired the meeting, asked questions, listened intently, and took copious notes. At some point, he would thank everyone and declare the meeting over. Then he would draft the questions, prepare the questionnaire, and direct the polling process. When the surveying was complete, Gallup analyzed the results, picked out the significant findings, and wrote the report. Elam edited it, checking frequently with its author, and the poll was published in the Kappan. From 1969 until his death in 1984, this was George Gallup's poll, and he delighted in it. Alec Gallup, co-chair of the Gallup Organization, became the point person for the poll after his father's death. He monitors the questions and co-authors the report. Stan Elam remained a co-author of the report until 1995, and I joined Stan and Alec in 1991 and became co-author, with Alec, in 1995. THE PROCESS TODAY The poll cycle starts in October, when potential questions are sought from and proposed by a variety of sources. Roughly half the questions are trend questions, whose meaning is enriched by the valuable data collected when they were asked in previous years. …

Using Scientific Knowledge to Inform Preschool Assessment: Making the Case for “Empirical Validity”

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 crystallized the concern for accountability in education. National testing was mandated as a way to improve the “broken” educational system. Publicly funded early education programs were not spared from such testing. While the positive effects of high-quality early education on children’s later school achievement is well demonstrated, too many early care and educational settings in the United States are of minimal or poor quality. Accountability is clearly important for increasing the quality of our early childhood programs, however, it is not yet evident how best to formulate a standard of accountability that reflects the body of knowledge we have gained concerning how young children learn. In this report, we propose two major thrusts designed to bring about a more scientifically informed accountability system: reconceptualizing the ways in which we think about the validity of our test instruments, and reconceptualizing markers of development from products of learning (performance standards) to processes of learning. We introduce the term “empirical validity” to draw attention to the fact that assessments should be built on current empirical work in the various developmental domains. This report focuses on the domains of language and literacy, two areas of major concern for the Federal Head Start program and for which there is an abundance of current research. This body of knowledge provides many examples illustrating how an emphasis on process rather than product can be vital for improving the quality of education. For example, although vocabulary is centrally important and psychometrically adequate tests of early vocabulary exist, these tests do not measure essential aspects of word learning that have been identified as predictive of later language and reading success in early language learning literature. Our case study of language and literacy illustrates how today’s developmental science offers a new knowledge that can be strategically incorporated in assessments for empirically valid testing of children’s competencies. The same argument for “empirically valid” and evidence-based assessments applies to other domains of cognitive growth and to socio-emotional development. The future of preschool assessment would be well served by attention to primary research that focuses on the processes of learning. In this report, we also suggest that one possible avenue for progress in assessment would center on integrative and dynamic assessment techniques that would comprehensively capture the nature of children’s learning, minimize validity concerns related to context and culture, and evaluate how competencies in different developmental domains interact for optimal learning. To bridge the gap between science and policy, developmental scientists and test developers are urged to work together to create innovative ways to chart the developmental processes that support learning and progress toward social maturity in ways designed to ensure that research findings are continuously reflected in current assessments.

Working inside the Black Box: Assessment for Learning in the Classroom

'Inside the Black Box' (Phi Delta Kappan, October 1998) summarized research evidence that showed that improving the quality of teachers' day-to-day classroom assessment could have substantial impact on students' learning. Here we report on one study that has attempted to put this into practice with 24 secondary school mathematics and science teachers in England. Through the use of improved questioning techniques, feedback focusing on how to improve rather than grading, and involving students in peer-assessment and self-assessment, teachers found that the motivation and attitudes of their students improved, and the students achieved higher scores on externally set tests and examinations than other students at the same schools.

When the Smoke Clears

Mike Schmoker's aversion to planning, Mr. Cook points out, is actually a response to the widespread misapplication of the original concept. IT IS RATHER discouraging to see critics still firing broadsides at planning, an imperative as old as Western Civilization. Without exception, these salvos, whether prompted by misunderstanding or negative experience, lack both sensible tactic and sufficient charge, so they tend to quickly dissipate in clamor and smoke. Usually, they are little more than amusing distractions. But the discharge titled Tipping Point, by Mike Schmoker, which appeared in the February 2004 Phi Delta Kappan, may actually serve a serious instructional purpose. Amid a collage of original sources -- some taken out of context (my own, twice) -- Schmoker raises a number of legitimate complaints against the current applications of planning. In fact, the situation may be even worse than he alleges. Unfortunately, he deploys tendentious propositions and unfounded declamations aimed at debunking the whole idea, as if failure in practice means flaw in philosophy. Ironically, the article brilliantly serves the opposite of the announced thesis: it epitomizes the contemporary misconceptions and malpractices of strategos and, consequently, illustrates the urgency of remaining true to the original concept. Most misconceptions can be traced to the 1960s and the discovery by corporations (such as G.E.) of as a means of gaining competitive advantage in the marketplace. The nominal meaning of the word -- and, therefore, the original concept -- was immediately distorted by refracting it through the prism of the corporation and, of necessity, interpreting it in the context of The effect was permanent debilitation of the concept. Even today, the oxymoron strategic persists in the language and literature of business. And, sure enough, in that world, strategy is generally understood only as a management methodology to achieve preestablished goals. The most anyone is expected to do is think outside the box within the ever-present confines of the box. This misconception of is popularly manifested in Total Quality Management programs (Baldrige being the chief perpetrator). In education, it is reflected in curriculum audits and even in something called policy management. Here is the difference. Management is about compliance; is about creation. Management is about rationalistic science; requires intuitive imagination. Management is about probability; is about possibility. Management is about preserving the existing order; is about destroying existing structures to generate new formations. Management is about implementation; is about creating capacity for constant emergence. Therefore, planning is not long-range planning, even though most long-range corporate plans are commonly called strategic. This kind of planning always proceeds from an environmental scan or market research. The obvious issue is whether the locus of control is inside or outside the organization. This raises a point beyond the point. That is, only organizations can plan strategically. And for them, planning is not an option: it is a necessity. The first, and defining, requirement of a organization is that it be autonomous; that is, self-governing. Autonomous literally translates as self-ruling. There can be no degree or quality to autonomy; an organization is either autonomous or it is not. The corporate model of organizational structure adopted by education systems in the U.S. presupposes autonomy in that each school district has a governing board. Although that assumption is actively threatened today by political intrusion from state and federal governments, school boards still have a broad measure of legal authority, even though, in reality, they choose not to exercise it. …

Whole-School Reform from the inside

Unlike those who are ready to call comprehensive school reform a failed strategy for improving urban schools, Mr. Lytle -- himself an urban superintendent -- firmly believes that working with a group of national developers is much to be preferred to going it alone in improving the effectiveness of urban schools. OVER THE past several months the RAND Corporation, the Phi Delta Kappan, and other professional journals have published a number of books, articles, commentaries, and letters raising serious questions about the efficacy of comprehensive or reform as a solution to the long-standing challenges of improving urban schools and minority student achievement. (See, for example, the debate between Stanley Pogrow and Robert Slavin in the February 2002 Kappan.) However, none of the authors of these publications actually works in a school or district engaged in whole-school reform, and none considers the range of ways that schools engaged in this sort of reform may be changing and growing from the experience. I write from the perspective of a superintendent in a state where every urban district is implementing a complex, court-mandated set of education reforms, including: * preschool for all 3- and 4-year-olds; * state curriculum standards to be met by all students; * reduced class size; * school management teams and school-based budgeting; * expanded social service supports; * new and rehabilitated school facilities; and * adoption by every school of a research-based comprehensive/whole- school reform model selected from a group approved by the state department of education. (If an elementary school does not choose a model, then it must implement Success for All.) Districts are to implement these reforms in addition to being responsible for special education inclusion programs, programs for bilingual students and those with limited proficiency in English, new approaches to scheduling and school organization, high-stakes testing, and accountability requirements. To support these programs, the New Jersey legislature and the state's taxpayers have provided substantial additional funding to all 30 urban districts and 400+ schools affected by the court order. In Trenton we estimate our base per-pupil cost at more than $14,000, making us among the best-funded urban districts in the country. We have the resources to educate our students, as do most New Jersey cities. I make these points to support my thesis that a discussion of whole-school reform that does not take New Jersey into account is very much incomplete. Unlike Memphis and other districts and states where some but not all schools were involved in whole-school reform, New Jersey represents the only large-scale trial of whole-school reform where the prospects for long-term support, adequate resources, and sustained implementation and evaluation are likelihoods. Further, the New Jersey approach is truly holistic, including as it does an array of programs -- such as preschool - - considered by the court and the attorneys for the plaintiffs to be the conditions for equal opportunity. Our results in Trenton during the past three years have been encouraging and provide early justification for the approach New Jersey is taking. Student performance on state tests and the nationally normed tests we use has shown consistent improvement. The number of high school graduates has tripled, and performance on many other indicators has been equally positive. But we are well aware of the RAND studies1 and of the prospect that performance improvements may well plateau. When we began implementation, our approach to meeting the whole-school reform mandate was to encourage schools to choose the model they felt was most appropriate for them. Our 24 schools are now in the third or fourth year of implementing one of seven models, ranging from highly prescriptive ones like Success for All to somewhat more conceptual ones like Co-nect and Coalition of Essential Schools. …

School Superintendents’ Choices of Professional Periodicals

In this national survey of public school superintendents, respondents indicated the “best” and the most read from a list of 34 periodicals in education leadership. Their top choices for both highest quality and most read were, in order, Educational Leadership, Phi Delta Kappan, School Administrator, and American School Board Journal. Their primary criterion for selecting these journals was practical utility, not refereed scholarship. Therefore, professors who conduct research and publish it solely in journals perceived as unfamiliar to practitioners are, at least in the field of education leadership, missing a broader audience and direct influence on practice. Additionally, other education periodicals were not ranked often, but at least one periodical outside of education— Newsweek—ranked second only to Educational Leadership, among the responding superintendents for actual usage.

What I've Learned about Effective Reading Instruction

The District Role in Instructional Improvement Phi Delta Kappan September 2001 83: 78-84, What I've Learned about Effective Reading Instruction: From a Decade of Studying Exemplary Elementary Classroom Teachers Phi Delta Kappan. What I've learned about effective reading instruction from a decade of studying exemplary elementary teachers. Phi Beta Kappan, 83(10), 740-747. Burkins, J., & Croft, M. (2010). Preventing misguided reading: New strategies for guided reading teachers. Davies, A. (2007). Making classroom assessment work (2nd ed.).

At What Age Should Children Enter Kindergarten? A Question for Policy Makers and Parents

At What Age Should Children Enter Kindergarten? A Question for Policy Makers and Parents

Beyond the Smoke and Mirrors: Putting Out the Fire

The National Reading Panel report reiterates what many teachers recognize: phonics instruction is one ingredient of a successful reading program. Why such a clear and obvious finding is so threatening to some people remains a puzzle to Ms. Ehri and Mr. Stahl. IN PROFESSIONAL sports, it is called trash talking. In community debates, it is called building a straw man. In politics, it is known as negative campaigning. Those who do it believe that victory comes from attacking the other side, from tearing down structures rather than making them sturdier. Faults are featured, and strengths are slighted or denied. In The Argument Culture, Deborah Tannen regards this trend as a big problem. She suggests that a culture of critique has replaced rational analysis. Critique has become synonymous with criticism, and it has become the dominant approach in responding to people or ideas. She writes: What I is the ubiquity, the knee-jerk nature, of approaching almost any issue, problem, or public person in an adversarial way. . . . What l is using opposition to accomplish every goal, even those that do not require fighting but might also (or better) be accomplished by other means, such as exploring, expanding, discussing, investigating, and the exchanging of ideas suggested by the word dialogue. l am questioning the assumption that everything is a matter of polarized opposites, the proverbial two sides to every question that we think embodies open-mindedness and expansive thinking.1 The article by Elaine Garan, Beyond the Smoke and Mirrors: A Critique of the National Reading Panel Report on Phonics, which appeared in the March 2001 Phi Delta Kappan, exemplifies this tactic. Garan seems to be motivated more by a need to denigrate than by a desire to contribute a rational analysis of the National Reading Panel (NRP) report on phonics instruction and its effectiveness in helping children learn to read. Our purpose here is to examine the merits of Elaine Garan's criticisms and the adversarial quality that pervades her article. As we will document, her criticisms are highly selected, ill-founded, and overgeneralized. Moreover, her article does not represent the findings of the full NRP report. Garan begins her review with a plea for fairness in looking at the NRP report. Yet she finds only problems. Even a stopped watch is correct twice a day! Her unrelenting negative view reflects an unfortunate bias, one that we believe threatens to undermine rather than contribute to progress in our field. The National Reading Panel Report In April 2000, the NRP released its report, Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction. The NRP was convened by Congress for the purpose of examining what research says about the effectiveness of reading instruction. The resulting report was intended to move the nation forward in the process of helping teachers improve their reading instruction. The panel included distinguished literacy researchers from the U.S. and Canada. Not only phonics instruction but several other types of reading instruction were reviewed by the panel, including phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary learning, and comprehension strategy instruction. The report was distributed in print and electronic form. In preparing the review of phonics instruction, the NRP carefully and objectively analyzed the results of 38 independently conducted studies of phonics instruction that included more than 7,000 students. Multiple protections against bias and established meta-analytic procedures were employed. Attention was focused on controlled experiments, the strongest form of scientific evidence. The report found clear evidence indicating that phonics instruction should have a place in the reading curriculum in today's schools. * Systematic phonics instruction was found to be more effective than unsystematic phonics instruction or no phonics instruction in helping students learn to read. …

Leadership in Education

Mr. Goldberg looks back on the 43 interviews he has conducted since 1989 with eminent individuals who merit the label leaders, and he discovers that there is no algorithm for success in educational leadership - though there are a handful of large-minded that leaders tend to share. SINCE September 1989, I have interviewed 43 educational leaders for the Phi Delta Kappan and Educational Leadership. Strictly speaking, not all the people I interviewed and wrote about were professional educators, but all the interviews were exclusively about education, and all the interviewees were seriously concerned about significant educational issues. Theodore Sizer, John Goodlad, and the late Ernest Boyer were important national educational leaders; Deborah Meier and Dennis Littky were school principals; and Audre Allison and Florence Mondry were teachers. E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Dorothy Rich, and Carol Gilligan were somewhat more distant from schools but had a great deal to say about education as well as considerable indirect influence on school matters. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Mayor Kurt Schmoke, and Gov. Lowell Weicker were politicians with extremely strong feelings about education and the political leverage to affect what happened in schools. Each of these people - and all the others I interviewed - were, through position or influence, educational leaders. Leadership can take more than one form and has many characteristics, but throughout the 43 interviews, five qualities stood out. These leaders held a bedrock belief in what they were doing; they had the courage to swim upstream in behalf of their beliefs; they possessed a social conscience, particularly on issues of racism and poverty; they maintained a seriousness of purpose, holding high standards and devoting years of service to their causes; and they exemplified situational mastery, the happy marriage of personal skills and accomplishment. I make no claim that these five characteristics or indicators of leadership complete the domain for the topic or that I might not have found another quality or two had I interviewed a different cast of characters. However, the people I interviewed represent a good sample of the leaders of education in America. They are women and men of different ages. They work in Boston, Massachusetts, and Austin, Texas; New York City and Berkeley, California; Charlottesville, Virginia, and Seattle, Washington; Providence, Rhode Island, and Honolulu, Hawaii. They come from the majority white community and from minority African American and Hispanic backgrounds; six of the interviewees did not speak English as their first language, and five of them were born in countries other than the United States. Clearly, there are educational conservatives, moderates, and liberals in this group. I made no special effort to interview women or men, Northerners or Southerners, or members of any other category. The only criteria for eligibility were substantial achievement in education, considerable ability to influence education, or a combination of the two. While I am convinced of the firmness of the ground beneath me when I talk about the five characteristics below, I do not mean to represent any particular educational philosophy as the one I most favor. Don Hirsch and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani might be characterized as educational conservatives, Ernest Boyer and John Goodlad are probably closer to the liberal camp, while Shirley Strum Kenny and Kurt Schmoke are somewhere in between. Those people might not agree with my labels, and many of them cautioned me during the interviews not to confuse their educational alignments with their political beliefs. I could easily place myself along the conservative to liberal continuum, but that is not the point. I could easily tilt my description to represent a particular camp as best, but that is not the point. The theme of this article is that the five common characteristics themselves are indicators of leadership. …

The Past is Prologue: American Catholic Education and the New Century

The author of a recent history of American Catholic education points to three ongoing traditions”tenacity, adaptability, and identity”as evidence that parochial education will continue well into the next century. In this personal essay, Walch challenges pessimistic assessment of Catholic education that appeared in Phi Delta Kappan. He also highlights other, more positive assessments of Catholic schooling. Walch concludes that even though American Catholic parochial education will never again attain the position of influence it had in the mid-20th century, parish schools will remain important education laboratories for the coming century.

Is it Time to Revisit Multiage Teams in the Middle Grades?

For over thirty years, educators in America's middle schools have been making schools more responsive to the needs of adolescents. Interdisciplinary teams, advisory programs, active learning strategies, block scheduling, and more positive school climates are found in eifective middle schools. Although progress is being made and fewer students are falling through the seams, an observable improvement in academic achievement, has remained an elusive element. Until recently, there has been little to suggest that young adolescents learn more in a mid dle school. A recent longitudinal study published in Phi Delta Kappan clearly shows that functioning mid dle grade teams do result in significant student gains, both academically and affectively (Feiner, Jackson, Kasak, Mulhall, Brand, & Flowers, 1997). The definition of a well functioning team, however, is a critical issue. In addition to effective teaming, many reformers have stated that for academic achievement to occur, middle level educators must find a more meaningful curriculum. Beane (1990) stated, Persistent claims about the need for sensitivity to the characteristics of early adolescence have resulted in important organiza tional changes, but little has been done to answer the crucial question of what ought to be the middle school (p. 12). Designing a flexible and meaningful curriculum which meets the needs of young adolescent learners is desirable, but this task is daunting because of the diver sity among students. Additionally, there is a lack of drive to change the curriculum in significant ways. Teachers are already overburdened with daily teaming issues, such as planning field trips, preparing for student and parent conferences, getting ready for presentations, and completing administrative reports. While teachers may want to move past these immediate issues, they often give them a higher priority than curriculum changes. The result is a continuation of the same cur riculum delivered in essentially the same manner. To facilitate getting to curricular issues, one additional organizational change in middle schools needs to be reconsidered. This change is to create multiage or non graded teams in our middle schools. Nongraded teams are not new. They have been around since the early middle school reform literature of the 1960s. Eichhorn (1966/1986) called for them in his seminal work, The Middle School. As an administra tor in Upper St. Clair, Pennsylvania, he established schools structured along developmental characteristics of adolescents. Eichhorn concluded that schools orga nized by chronological age were based on a faulty assumption (Brough, 1994). Instead he advocated orga nizing team membership around student developmen tal stages. In an address to the National Middle School Association Annual Conference, Doda (1977) looked to the future of middle grade schools and declared, would like for you to consider what I believe to be a key ingredient in promoting human involvement—multiage (p. 8). She continued by stating that disci pline and vandalism problems decrease as strong roots are established for our kids who are struggling to be someone, somewhere (p. 9). Neither developmental nor multiage grouping have become the standard in middle school teams. Despite the successes of the two middle schools in Upper St. Clair and the advantage seen by educators like Doda, there has not been a widespread movement toward nongraded teams. Perhaps the reason for this

Guest editorial: Improving the interpretation and reporting of quantitative research

Guest editorial: Improving the interpretation and reporting of quantitative research

Focus on the USA Ed. by Edgar W. Schneider (review)

222 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 74, NUMBER 1 (1998) baby name, to advertisers' and marketers' concerns with avoiding a faux pas in product naming (cf. the recent Incubus sneaker), names are an area where linguistic research and popular interest intersect. The two works under consideration here, both reference works on the study of names, illustrate two rather different paths to this intersection. Adrian Room, the author of a number of popular reference works on etymology and onomastics, has written a curious dictionary of onomastic terms. His book is a 107-page compilation of terms related to names and naming which includes not only standard terms (colophon, homonym, nom deplume) butalso a great many of R's own coinages. However, it is not clear that terms such as marsionym (names for the planet Mars) ailuronym (cat names), scholionym (collegenames ),anemonym(hurricanenames), andecclesionym (names ofplaces of worship) are necessary or useful coinages. In addition, the coverage in the dictionary is somewhatskewed: aLatinatetermlikefranconym is listed, for example, but there is no coinage for Native American orAfrican American names. The book concludes with a glossary of Greek and Latin elements (109-12) and a select bibliography of (largely popular) works on names and naming. Edwin Lawson's More names and naming is a companion to his 1987 bibliography, Personal names and naming (Westport, CT: Greenwood). Here, L, president of the American Name Society, has compiled a useful bibliography containing over 2000 entries grouped into 47 categories (with about 150 pages devoted to material on ethnic names and naming ). Entries are well-annotated, and sources range from work by Einar Haugen, Franz Boas, and Margaret Bryant to recent PhD dissertations to popular books on names. Such journals as Anthropological Linguistics, Onoma, Nomina, and Name are represented as are the New York Times, The Ladies Home Journal, the Phi Delta Kappan, and similar works. Also represented are such items as The officialpreppy handbook, at one extreme and CIA reports (e.g. on Amharic personal names) on the other. The book concludes with an author index (255-78) and a subject index (279-98). Of the two books, L's is by far the more useful and would be a good addition to any library, personal or institutional. R's work falls short, illustrating a near-fetishization of superfluous naming that is disappointing . [Edwin Battistella, Wayne State CoIduring the winter of 1994-95 at Aston University in Birmingham, UK. The first paper, by Lawrence Venuti, is titled 'Translation and the formation of cultural identities' (9-25); the second, by Candace Séguinot, is titled 'Translation and advertising: Going global' (55-71). Each paper is followed by a transcript of the debate the paper elicited. In her preface, 'Editorial' (1-8), Schaffner makes the point that inasmuch as translations are vital to intercultural communication, a translation ofa source text must be fully intelligible to the members of the society served by the translation. In the first paper, Venuti gives several examples, in some detail, of 'how translation forms particular cultural identities and . . . how it creates possibilities for cultural resistance, innovation, and change' (11). One of his examples has to do with the interpretation of Greek tragedy. Until the publication of John Jones's OnAristotle and Greek tragedy in 1962, individualistic interpretations ofAristotle's Poetics were imposed on the text by scholarly translators, whereas, in Jones's opinion, 'the centre of gravity of Aristotle 's terms is situational and not personal' (11). The long debate (32-54), preceded by Venuti's preliminary remarks (26-31), brings up many interesting points and offers additional examples, grouped together under such headings as the concept of ethnocentricity , foreignizing vs. domesticating, editorial limitations, translation strategies, and translation and social change. Séguinot's paper stresses the need for translators to understand the various aspects of marketing in the country to be served by their translations ofadvertising , including how cultural differences may affect marketing. Many examples are given to illustrate the problems inherent in the translation of advertising. One short example: a translator should know to what extent a culture tolerates directness. Regardless of the original text of an advertisement, in some societies the phrasing 'to stay slim . . .' rather than 'ifyou are fat . . .' may make the...

Cultural functions of translation Ed. by Christina Schaffner and Helen Kelly-Holmes (review)

222 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 74, NUMBER 1 (1998) baby name, to advertisers' and marketers' concerns with avoiding a faux pas in product naming (cf. the recent Incubus sneaker), names are an area where linguistic research and popular interest intersect. The two works under consideration here, both reference works on the study of names, illustrate two rather different paths to this intersection. Adrian Room, the author of a number of popular reference works on etymology and onomastics, has written a curious dictionary of onomastic terms. His book is a 107-page compilation of terms related to names and naming which includes not only standard terms (colophon, homonym, nom deplume) butalso a great many of R's own coinages. However, it is not clear that terms such as marsionym (names for the planet Mars) ailuronym (cat names), scholionym (collegenames ),anemonym(hurricanenames), andecclesionym (names ofplaces of worship) are necessary or useful coinages. In addition, the coverage in the dictionary is somewhatskewed: aLatinatetermlikefranconym is listed, for example, but there is no coinage for Native American orAfrican American names. The book concludes with a glossary of Greek and Latin elements (109-12) and a select bibliography of (largely popular) works on names and naming. Edwin Lawson's More names and naming is a companion to his 1987 bibliography, Personal names and naming (Westport, CT: Greenwood). Here, L, president of the American Name Society, has compiled a useful bibliography containing over 2000 entries grouped into 47 categories (with about 150 pages devoted to material on ethnic names and naming ). Entries are well-annotated, and sources range from work by Einar Haugen, Franz Boas, and Margaret Bryant to recent PhD dissertations to popular books on names. Such journals as Anthropological Linguistics, Onoma, Nomina, and Name are represented as are the New York Times, The Ladies Home Journal, the Phi Delta Kappan, and similar works. Also represented are such items as The officialpreppy handbook, at one extreme and CIA reports (e.g. on Amharic personal names) on the other. The book concludes with an author index (255-78) and a subject index (279-98). Of the two books, L's is by far the more useful and would be a good addition to any library, personal or institutional. R's work falls short, illustrating a near-fetishization of superfluous naming that is disappointing . [Edwin Battistella, Wayne State CoIduring the winter of 1994-95 at Aston University in Birmingham, UK. The first paper, by Lawrence Venuti, is titled 'Translation and the formation of cultural identities' (9-25); the second, by Candace Séguinot, is titled 'Translation and advertising: Going global' (55-71). Each paper is followed by a transcript of the debate the paper elicited. In her preface, 'Editorial' (1-8), Schaffner makes the point that inasmuch as translations are vital to intercultural communication, a translation ofa source text must be fully intelligible to the members of the society served by the translation. In the first paper, Venuti gives several examples, in some detail, of 'how translation forms particular cultural identities and . . . how it creates possibilities for cultural resistance, innovation, and change' (11). One of his examples has to do with the interpretation of Greek tragedy. Until the publication of John Jones's OnAristotle and Greek tragedy in 1962, individualistic interpretations ofAristotle's Poetics were imposed on the text by scholarly translators, whereas, in Jones's opinion, 'the centre of gravity of Aristotle 's terms is situational and not personal' (11). The long debate (32-54), preceded by Venuti's preliminary remarks (26-31), brings up many interesting points and offers additional examples, grouped together under such headings as the concept of ethnocentricity , foreignizing vs. domesticating, editorial limitations, translation strategies, and translation and social change. Séguinot's paper stresses the need for translators to understand the various aspects of marketing in the country to be served by their translations ofadvertising , including how cultural differences may affect marketing. Many examples are given to illustrate the problems inherent in the translation of advertising. One short example: a translator should know to what extent a culture tolerates directness. Regardless of the original text of an advertisement, in some societies the phrasing 'to stay slim . . .' rather than 'ifyou are fat . . .' may make the...

Taking Charge of School Reform: English Teachers as Leaders

Language is a way of ... . You fill in the The authors blank. But language is also a way of leading each other, and that is what we wish to offer eight speak of here. suggestions Jor The so-called moveschool reform. ment, according to Tony Wagner, needs to be brought down to earth (1996, Bringing School Reform Back Down to Earth, Phi Delta Kappan [Oct.], 146). It is careening all over the place. Some of the language associated with it includes words and phrases such as these: high standards, benchmarks, outcomes, rubrics,frameworks, back-tobasics, whole language, cooperative learning, choice, vouchers, free markets, assessment, accountability, and so on. Many such words and phrases have little if anything to do with the ways in which teachers actually talk to each other each day; however, such language often dominates the talk that occurs on a regular basis in school administrative offices, school board rooms, professional conferences, and legislative buildings. In many contexts, this language is perhaps appropriate, even necessary. But bringing the school reform movement down to earth, in our opinion, means bringing it back to the schoolhouse where it belongs. In the schoolhouse, teachers can use language as a way of leading students, other teachers, and administrators to doing better work. Many English teachers do so all the time. We need more teachers, of all disciplines, to join their ranks.

School Reform and the High School Proficiency Test

t is unfortunate, but we live in an age in which more and more autonomy is being usurped from teachers and being given to a host of test makers, legislators, and university experts. In 1997, teachers don't teach nearly as much as they respond to a cascade of reforms, tests, and new and improved initiatives for achieving that elusive catchword known as excellence. Stanley Pogrow (1996), in a recent Phi Delta Kappan, argues that much of the problem faced by school teachers today involves the onslaught of reforms that are forever imposed upon educators and always touted as the latest in educational nirvana.

Three Approaches to Coping with School Violence

Some school critics and statisticians have observed that drug-dealing, vandalism, robbery, and murder have replaced gum-chewing, “talking out of turn,” tardiness, and rudeness as the most chronic problems afflicting today’s schools. If the intent of this observation is to shock and rattle the public’s sensibilities, it’s working. Of course, some of us may interpret such suggestions as merely dark, stoic, and cynical—“scare” tactics quite in keeping with the current national mood about many social issues these days. Yet, as a profession (and a society) maybe a little shock treatment now and then is good for us, especially if we ourselves work in relatively “safe” schools and communities. Maybe it’s time to remind ourselves that one school’s problem can become every school’s problem if the profession at large is not watchful and careful. No school is immune to the potential of extreme violence, as many of us, without meaning to, have learned. If you’re a long-time, veteran English teacher, you may never have thought you’d see the day when an issue of English Journal would be devoted to school violence. The idea never occurred to me, either. But here we are, and here that issue is. And, what’s more, it’s high time. While none of us needs convincing that the violence problem is serious in a great many places, some of the statistics are sobering. The National Education Association (March 1994) reports that the number of children killed by firearms between 1979 and 1991 equals the number of Americans killed in the Vietnam War; every two hours, a child dies from gunshots; guns kill more black males between the ages of 10 and 24 than any other cause. A 1993 Harris survey (Youth Record, August 3), reveals that 22% of students polled claimed they took weapons to school in the previous school year (and how many declined to admit it?); a Gallup poll conducted for Phi Delta Kappan (Elam 1993, 137–152) showed the public ranking drug abuse, discipline, and violence in the top four of the ten most serious problems affecting schools. And the depressing numbers drone on. Yet, a MetLife teacher’s survey in 1993 shows that 77% of teachers and 50% of kids felt safe in and around their own schools (9). And according to a New York Times article (1994), although violent incidents in New York City’s 1,100 public schools (K–12) rose 26% in 1993–94, no homicides occurred in them—the first year since 1990. Still, in the same article, New York City Schools’ Chancellor Ramon C. Cortines laments: