In this article, the authors explore a young child's lived experience of discipline and play with/in a mandated balanced literacy curriculum. Mandating balanced literacy presents an interesting case of disciplining literacy because it is rooted in the progressive tradition of meaning-and-process pedagogies. As such, it avoids the most obvious…

The American public school curriculum has narrowed as a result of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Music is being eliminated in public schools so more time and resources can be spent on "tested" subjects like reading and math. However, research has shown that both the intrinsic and extrinsic values of music may improve reading…

Practitioners are often faced with the national legislation's influence at the school-based curricular level. In the United States, the federal government No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 mandates reading instruction at the early primary grade levels. The position of "literacy coach" was created to support this curriculum change by…

NCLB and Reading First are negotiated in implementing beginning reading instruction. The article describes and analyzes how two critical conditions for creating opportunity--access to qualified teachers and rigorous academic curriculum--are met by examining the enactment and adaptation of a prescriptive core reading program disproportionately…

Ken Goodman and Frank Smith met for the first time in 1970, though they had each been studying and writing, separately, about the reading process for several years prior to that. They commemorated the occasion by collaborating on an article, On the Psycholinguistic Method of Teaching Reading which appeared soon after in The Elementary School…

Response to Intervention (RTI) is an instructional framework through which schools can provide early intervention for students experiencing academic and behavioral difficulties. It is also promoted as an alternative to the IQ-discrepancy model for identifying students with learning disabilities. Most states have developed, or are developing,…

A component of the "No Child Left Behind" Act (NCLB) (PL 107-110) is its emphasis on the importance of systematic and explicit instruction in early reading using practices that are grounded in scientific research. The Reading First legislation (Title I, Part B, Subpart 1) within NCLB is designed to support state and local education…

We evaluated the validity of DIBELS ("Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills") ORF ("Oral Reading Fluency") for predicting performance on the "Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test" (FCAT-SSS) and "Stanford Achievement Test" (SAT-10) reading comprehension measures. The usefulness of previously…

A recent national study of state and local No Child Left Behind activities indicated that 80 percent of elementary teachers reported participating in 24 hours or less of professional development on reading instruction during the 2003-2004 school year and summer. Reading and professional development experts are concerned that this is not intensive…

This study investigated the role of the amount, content, and implementation of reading instruction provided by 17 kindergarten teachers in eight "Reading First" elementary schools as it related to students' progress (n = 286 students) on early reading assessments of phonological awareness and letter naming-decoding fluency. Children's…

The goal of the RF program, Part B of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), is to have all children reading at grade level by the end of third grade. There is no legislative precedent for this program, focused as it is on preventing reading failure in the early elementary years (US Department of Education, April 2002). Because the design of…

In the wake of "No Child Left Behind Act" (U.S. Department of Education, 2006), educational reforms focused on providing students with effective systematic instruction in reading skills have become a nationwide concern. Report findings from the National Reading Panel (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000),…

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 created the Reading First program to help ensure that all students could read at or above grade level by the end of grade 3. The program promotes practices recommended by the National Reading Panel for early reading instruction, highlighting essential components of reading instruction. As required by the…

This report, the sixth in a series developed by the Education Commission of the States (ECS) examining the impact of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act 2001, discusses Reading First, which replaces the Reading Excellence Act. The report states that Reading First, a voluntary program, aims at having all children achieve reading proficiency by the…

Identifies inaccuracies and distortions in the research supporting the No Child Left Behind legislation, as well as in government documents and the National Reading Panel "Summary Booklet." Offers alternatives to the limitations of the Reading First initiative through five major sections. Presents 12 recommendations regarding Reading…