Examines twentieth century reading education. This book explores attempts by educators and psychologists to answer theoretical as well as practical questions about why only some students developed literacy skills. It looks at the efforts to prevent reading failure as well as to aid those learners who had not learned to read.

Rich in practical information about the history of American education, Solving Education''s Problems Effectively encourages readers to analyze, prioritize, and synthesize historical information by applying it to current situations. Using more than thirty case studies, Giordano suggests solutions to issues that plague educators across the nation-from textbook quality to gender, race, and religion biases. The case studies are accompanied by activities to prompt educators to higher levels of thinking about the problems they face.

Although originally designed as instruments to gauge students' progress, tests eventually were used to modify curricula, learning materials, pedagogy, and many practical features of schooling. Tests were employed to shape attitudes toward national issues such as employment, immigration, and defense. Worried about the enormous consequences that were at stake, advocates and opponents pitched their cases to educators, parents, journalists, and policymakers and also targeted special audiences. Testing proponents pleaded with military leaders, businesspeople, and scholastic publishers while their adversaries appealed to job seekers, college applicants, racial minorities, and anti-establishmentarians. This book illustrates how all of these parties showed interest; many became passionate; and some decisively influenced the course of American educational testing.

Early and recent school reformers demanded greater funding. They insisted that they needed it to protect children, the economy, and the nation. This book uses the case method to analyze the budgets that they proposed, the rhetoric that they employed, and the resistance that they encountered.

Parents asked educators about their children’s learning. Frustrated when they were ignored, they asked politicians to put pressure on the educators. They were then surprised when the politicians provided personal advice about the optimal way to nurture learning. They were even more surprised when the politicans prescribed changes to instruction, curriculum, textbooks, technology, school safety, teacher retention, student behavior, school funding, and even the menus for school cafeterias. More frustrated than ever, they intensified their barrage of common sense questions.

Parents have questions for school administrators. They want to know how they hire teachers, erect facilities, select learning materials, protect students, allocate budgets, use data, make forecasts, measure progress, and compete with for-profit schools. This book examines the questions they pose, the answers they elicit, the allies they attract, the adversaries they arouse, and the improvements they prod.

Should educators pay students? Should they make them wear sunglasses, regulate their clothing, allow them to bring animals into classrooms, discourage them from playing videogames, or transform their schools into gymnasiums? These are some of the suggestions that Cockeyed Education examines. This book enables readers to differentiate substantive from cockeyed suggestionsfor improving schools.. It directs them to the suggestions that scholastic experts, politicians, and members of the public have made. Additionally, it introduces them to the case method. It helps them apply this analytical technique to events that range from early Chicago schooling to the 2009 economic stimulus package.

Teachers Go to Rehab examines the advice given to teachers from multiple critics both historically and recently. This book looks at the scope, cost, and impact of this advice to teachers, as well as the motives behind it. It poses precise questions about the groups that gave the advice. Who were they? What did they recommend? How did they estimate impact? How did they calculate costs? What aims did they profess? What aims did they conceal? Whom did they attract? Whom did they alienate? When did they succeed? When did they fail?

Parents had reasons to be alarmed about school technology. They had been warned that these abuses could influence their children’s academic progress, motivation, communication, creativity, critical thinking, job preparedness, and even their safety at school. They had been told that it was linked to controversial instruction, faulty testing, inadequate textbooks, and invasive spyware. Upset by these claims, the parents had numerous questions. This book identifies their questions, the groups to which they directed them, the answers they elicited, and the educational changes they prompted.

Lopsided Schools introduces readers to the case method and helps the reader to use the case method to examine the scholastic challenges that critics posed from World War I to the present. Some critics have stirred up educators with threats to reduce their budgets or fire them. Others upset them with disconcerting questions. Should parents demand that their children learn speed reading? Should teachers emphasize vocational activities? Should principals train their own successors? Should superintendents award bonuses to teachers? Should employers hire the graduates with the highest scores on standardized tests? Should politicians assume greater responsibility for schooling? Should journalists publicize information about lopsided schools? This book examines these and the numerous other questions that critics posed.