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SQE has an extensive library, and most of the materials cited here are available for borrowing free of charge. Contact Malkin Dare at mdare@sympatico or call 519-884-3166.
Crazy Like a Fox: One principal’s triumph in the inner city
Ben Chavis. The author is a highly-unorthodox Lumbee Indian who has transformed California's American Indian Public Charter School from a disaster into the fifth-highest-ranking middle school in California. This despite a school population that consists mainly of poor minority students! Dr. Chavis pulls no punches in debunking the myth that poor minority inner-city students are doomed to fail. Focusing on back-to-basics ideas - academics, attendance, and hard work - he has created a structured school that delivers astonishing results. Am American Indian from humble sharecropping roots, Dr. Chavis emphatically rejects the culture of victimization so common in today's schools.
The Death and Life of the Great American School System
Diane Ravitch. The author, a prominent education reformer who formerly supported testing and school choice, repudiates them in this book. The vast majority of the book is devoted to the problems with the accountability measures now being tried in the US, and it would be hard to argue with her conclusion that they are not working well and may even be harmful. But the chapter in which Ravitch nixes school choice is not convincing, as it condemns school choice solely on the grounds that there has not yet been the spectacular improvement anticipated by school choice proponents. However, the jury is still out on school choice.
The Making of Americans: Democracy and our schools
E. D. Hirsch, Jr. The author makes a very convincing case that the fundamental flaw in progressive education is not ineffective teaching methods (although he agrees hey are problematic) but rather progressive educators' rejection of the need for a common content-rich curriculum. Dr. Hirsch argues that the absence of such a curriculum leads inevitably to low standards, perpetuation of class differences, widening inequality, and a weakened democracy.
The Beautiful Tree: A personal journey into how the world’s poorest people are educating themselves
James Tooley. This is a lyrical retelling of the author's discovery of thousands of small parent-funded schools in the slums of cities in Africa, India, and China. Dr. Tooley learned that poor parents are willing to make tremendous financial sacrifices to get better education for their children. While international aid agencies counsel the poor to wait patiently while they work on improving the appalling government schools, the poor have taken matters into their own hands. The author hints at the relevance of their solution to efforts to improve public education in developed countries.
Why Don’t Students Like School? A cognitive scientist answers questions about how the mind works
Daniel T. Willingham. Written in an engaging and entertaining style, filled with interesting examples and quizzes, this book illustrates nine principles of cognitive science that, if applied, will improve teaching significantly. Although the book is aimed primarily at classroom teachers (and should be on every teacher's desk), parents will also find it interesting and informative.
The Talent Code: Greatness isn’t born. I’ts grown. Here’s how.
Daniel Coyle. This fascinating book convincingly argues that there are no such things as "geniuses" or "savants". Rather, world-class performance - in any sphere, from music to sports to math to chess - is the result of a huge amount of dedicated, purposeful practice. Filled with interesting examples and anecdotes, this book painlessly conveys important information about the learning process - information every teacher and coach should know.
Measuring Up: What educational testing really tells us
Daniel Koretz. Anyone who has read this book will never again take tests results at face value. Some types of testing are better than others, and possibly the worst type of testing, according to this Harvard professor, is "performance standards testing", the type of testing used in most North American public schools.
Outliers: The story of success
Malcolm Gladwell. Most people think the only way you can be outstanding at something like music or hockey is by being born with a rare talent. The author builds on recent findings that even the most talented individuals have to invest a minimum of 10,000 hours of purposeful practice before they can attain the status of world-class expert. Mr. Gladwell argues that a third element (besides talent and practice) is necessary for success.
What the Best College Teachers Do
Ken Bain. What makes a great teacher great? Who are the professors students remember long after graduation? This book, the conclusion of a 15-year study of nearly 100 college teachers in a wide variety of fields and universities, offers valuable answers for all educators.
The Self-Esteem Trap: Raising confident and compassionate kids in an age of self-importance
Polly Young-Eisendrath. Well-meaning parents and educators believe that praise, encouragement, and advantages translate directly into happiness in childhood and success in adulthood. According to this book, the reverse is true. Misplaced indulgence produces young adults who are stymied by the ordinary challenges of life, lack basic skills of empathy, and fear humiliation above all else.
Teaching and Learning in Japan
Thomas Rohlen and Gerald LeTendre. Drawing on ethnographic and experimental studies, this book gives the reader an inside view of Japanese teaching methods in elementary classrooms. A far cry from western notions of an emphasis on rote learning and strict discipline, Japanese classrooms emphasize the process of learning and encourage individuality in their students. The book also explores interesting aspects of Japanese culture, such as Zen meditation and noh drama.
Ivory Tower Blues: A university system in crisis
James E. Côté and Anton L. Allahar. This book provides a very frank report on the situation in modern Canadian universities, principally with reference to the problems of grade inflation and its consequences. In response to an increasing number of high school students arriving with increasingly inflated marks, the universities have responded by watering down their courses and inflating their own grades.
The Last Normal Child
Lawrence W. Diller. This book presents the viewpoint of a pediatrician who specializes in children with learning and behaviour problems. Although the author sometimes prescribes stimulants like Ritalin, he strongly prefers to begin by trying behavioural and educational interventions, such as encouraging parents and teachers to use more structured responses to bad behaviour.
End of Ignorance: Multiplying our human potential
John Mighton. The author, a Toronto mathematician and playwright, diplomatically but devastatingly demolishes the constructivist approach used in most Canadian public schools to teach math. Drawing on new research in brain development, Dr. Mighton calls for a re-examination of the assumptions which underlie current teaching.
It`s Being Done: Academic success in unexpected schools
Karin Chenoweth. This book proves that even disadvantaged immigrant children can be taught to a high level, profiling 15 American schools that are doing exactly that. The author shows that an unyielding belief in the ability of all children - regardless of background - to excel at the highest levels, combined with a relentless commitment to excellent instruction, can transform people's lives.
The Brain that Changes Itself: Stories of personal triumph from the frontiers of brain science
Norman Doidge. Only a few decades ago, scientists considered the brain to be fixed or “hard-wired” and considered most forms of brain damage, therefore, to be incurable. Dr. Doidge, an eminent psychiatrist and researcher, was struck by how his patients' own transformation belied this, and set out to explore the new science of neuroplasticity by interviewing both scientific pioneers in neuroscience and patients who have benefited from neuro-rehabilitation. (Review by Oliver Sacks)
The War Against Hope
Rod Paige. According to the author, a former US secretary of education, the biggest impediment to meaningful school reform is the enormous, self-aggrandizing power wielded by the teacher' unions. Although the teacher' unions profess to be on the side of the teachers (and of the students), they are in fact acting in their own best interests - even when those interests conflict with the welfare of classroom teachers and students.
Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity: Get out the shovel - why everything you know is wrong
John Stossel. A fun read, this book describes many popularly-held beliefs on a variety of topics, including parenting, health, business, and government. Of particular interest is the chapter entitled "Stupid Schools". As with other areas of the book, the format is to state a "myth" and follow it with a "truth" counterpoint. Regular readers of the SQE Forum will be familiar with many of these education myths but will enjoy the way the author lays out his counter-arguments. (Review by Nancy Wagner)
Let’s Kill Dick and Jane
Let's Kill Dick and Jane: How the Open Court Publishing Company Fought the Culture of American Education. Harold Henderson. Educational reforms come and go, yet public schools preserve their pervasive and almost invisible culture. Nothing much is going to change until their anti-intellectural, activity-oriented bias changes. This book tells the story of the Open Court Publishing Company which for 34 years sold research-based elementary math and reading textbooks in an effort to combat the culture and bring about real school reform
Myths and Misconceptions about Teaching: What Really Happens in the Classroom
Myths and Misconceptions about Teaching: What Really Happens in the Classroom. Vicki E. Snider. The author identifies six teaching myths that are particularly harmful for low-performing students (those with disabilities or risk factors). The six myths are: the myth of process which emphasizes what occurs during instruction and de-emphasizes what happens as a result of instruction; the myth of fun which requires instruction to be entertaining; the myth of eclectic instruction which prevents teachers from using the best approach for a particular lesson; the myth of the good teacher which discourages teachers from trying to improve their techniques; the myth of learning style which expects teachers to teach all of their students differently; and the myth of disability which refers to the low expectations conferred on certain students.
The Knowledge Deficit
The Knowledge Deficit: Closing the Shocking Education Gap for American Children. E. D. Hirsch, Jr. In his latest book, Dr. Hirsch once more tackles the disastrous effect of the current "content-neutral, skills-oriented concept of education" on students, especially disadvantaged students. He explains that modern teaching approaches not only fail to help low-income students catch up to their more privileged peers, but actually cause them to fall even further behind. Dr. Hirsch deplores the unfairness of this process, and points out that it has negative consequences in terms of social cohesion, democracy, and the health of the economy. As well, the widening spread in academic preparation contributes to teacher dissatisfaction and student boredom.
Reading Through Tears
Reading Through Tears. Byron Harrison and Jean Clyde. This book comes from Australia. The authors are reading tutors who use systematic phonics, succeeding in teaching 100% of their students to read. The data reported in this book are based on their study of more than 3000 children. Out of their clinical practice has come the Visual Attention Span (VAS) Theory. VAS is the number of letters that can be held in short-term memory and, as children mature, their VAS increases. The more letters a student can hold in his or her short term memory, the better he or she will fare with whole language/balanced literacy methods (which involve a lot of memorization). Since boys mature more slowly than girls, boys tend to have lower VAS scores and do worse at reading in whole language/balanced literacy classrooms. But in systematic phonics classrooms, where children are required to process sounds as opposed to memorizing letters, VAS is not a factor and there is no gender gap.
Order from VAS Pty. Ltd., Box 388, Kingston, Tasmania, Australia 7050
For the Love of Words: Vocabulary Instruction that Works
For the Love of Words: Vocabulary Instruction that Works. Diane E. Paynter, Elena Bodrova, and Jane K. Doty. Many students have vocabularies far below what is necessary for them to do well at school. This book offers teachers a practical and systematic instructional framework for helping their low-vocabulary students close the gap. There are chapters on such things as direct instruction of new vocabulary words, planning for incidental learning, creating a customized list, deciding when and how to introduce new words, and assessing students' progress. The book includes a list of essential words by grade level.
Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children
Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children. Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley. This is the very interesting story of two young researchers who wandered why, despite the best efforts of early childhood educators, low-income children were still lagging behind in school. Knowing that the dramatically-larger vocabularies of high-income children are one of the main reasons for their academic success, the researchers expected to find big differences in the quality of the experiences and language to which the children had been exposed. However, it turned out that by far the biggest difference was simply the amount of talking - the number of words children were exposed to hour after hour. A secondary factor was the far greater amount of encouragement and affirmation that high-income children received from their parents.
Educating Citizens
Educating Citizens: International Perspectives on Civic Values and School Choice. Patrick J. Wolf and Stephen Macedo. This book contains a collection of essays that examine whether school choice promotes religious and social fragmentation and the erosion of civic values. Looking at the extensive school choice programs in the Netherlands, England and Wales, Belgium, Canada, Germany, France, and Italy, the more or less unanimous conclusion may be summed up as follows. The measurable effects of recent school choice policies on academic achievement, on civic virtue, and on integration and educational equity have been modest, but they have been in almost every case positive.
Doomed to Fail: The Built-In Defects of American Education
Doomed to Fail: The Built-In Defects of American Education . Paul A. Zoch. This book zeroes in on an aspect of child-centred learning that may not have occurred to many people. Because the child-centred philosophy calls for learning to be easy and fun, students are freed from the need to work hard to meet high standards. In child-centred classrooms, the primary responsibility for learning falls on teachers, not on students. In some cases, the teachers work harder for the students' success than the students themselves do.
Exceptional Children
Exceptional Children - Ordinary Schools: Getting the Education You Want for your Special Needs Child. Norm Forman. This book was written by a Toronto psychologist who makes his living helping parents advocate for their special-needs kids in publicly-funded schools. The author outlines an advocacy campaign that would impress General Norman Schwartzkopf: creating a master file, knowing your rights, and so on. However, the author never admits the possibility that even the best advocacy can fail to achieve a satisfactory outcome - a depressingly common state of affairs.
The War Against Grammar
The War Against Grammar. . David Mulroy. The author, a professor of classics, disagrees with the establishment view that the teaching of traditional grammar is a waste of time. Arguing that a solid grounding in the grammatical analysis of sentences is necessary for the development of good writing and speaking skills, both in one's native tongue and in foreign languages, the author attributes students' inability to write in complete sentences, not to mention logical paragraphs, to their lack of foundation in basic grammar.
Hold on to your Kids
Hold on to your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More than Peers. Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Maté. The authors hypothesize that young children have a hard-wired survival-related instinct to become attached to others. But many features of modern society are conspiring to hijack the attachment from healthy bonding to parents to unhealthy bonding with peers. Some of the results of this lost orientation of children toward nurturing adults are troubled and rebellious children, bullies, the practice of medicating kids, and general alienation on the part of today's young people.
Signposts of Success
Signposts of Success: Interpreting Ontario's Elementary School Test Scores. David Johnson. The author ranks most Ontario publicly-funded elementary
schools on the basis of their students' results on provincial testing.
Dr. Johnson, a professor of economics at Wilfrid Laurier University,
finds that high scores at schools in wealthy neighbourhoods do not
necessarily mean that these schools are providing a superior service.
Some schools with less affluent and less well-educated parents have
high achievement results, and some schools with affluent, well-educated
parents have results that are not especially good given their school
community.
Order from C.D. Howe Institute
What America Can Learn from School Choice in Other Countries
What America Can Learn from School Choice in Other Countries. David Salisbury and James Tooley, eds. This book examines the school choice policies of a number of countries, including Chile, Australia, and several European countries. The article on Canada, by Claudia Hepburn of the Fraser Institute, provides a useful overview of the range of policies among the provinces and the associated outcomes.
Education Myths
Education Myths: What Special-Interest Groups Want You to Believe About Our Schools - And Why It Isn't So. Jay P. Greene. Dr. Greene examines 18 widely-held beliefs about education and finds they just aren't true. Some examples of these untrue myths are: schools perform poorly because they need more money; small classes would produce big improvements; certified or more experienced teachers are substantially more effective; and school choice harms public schools.
Education and Capitalism
Education and Capitalism: How Overcoming our Fear of Markets and Economics Can Improve America's Schools. Herbert J. Walberg and Joseph L. Bast. This book applies basic economic principles to education reform. It isolates eight root causes of the poor performance of government (public) schools: lack of competition; ineffectual school boards; union opposition to reform; conflicts of interest; political interference; lack of standards; centralized control and funding; and anti-academic classroom incentives.
Kill the Messenger: The War on Standardized Testing
Kill the Messenger: The War on Standardized Testing. Richard P. Phelps. This book demolishes the myths and half-truths circulated by the critics of standardized testing. While acknowledging that standardized testing has its flaws and will never be perfect, the author deplores the fog of unreasonable criticisms that obscures the legitimate criticisms and renders policy-makers' jobs very difficult and confusing.
Making Schools Work
Making Schools Work: A Revolutionary Plan to get your Children the Education They Need. William G. Ouchi. The author, an expert on organization and management, examined innovative decentralized school systems in Edmonton, Seattle and Houston. He found that decentralized systems consistently outperform centralized systems. Dr. Ouchi identifies seven keys to success: every principal is an entrepreneur; every school controls its own budget; everyone is accountable for student performance and for budgets; everyone delegates authority to those below; there is a burning focus on student achievement; every school is a community of learners; and families have real choices among a variety of unique schools.
Public Education as a Business
Public Education as a Business: Real Costs and Accountability. Myron Lieberman. This book discusses a number of hidden costs to public education, for example: depreciation expenses; deferred maintenance; non-levied property taxes; parental fund-raising; parent-paid remedial and enrichment education; corporate donations; schools in Native reservations, military bases, and correctional institutions; subsidized teacher training; remedial education in post-secondary institutions and workplaces; and the administrative costs of collecting education taxes.
Growing a Reader from Birth
Growing a Reader from Birth: Your Child's Path from Language to Literacy. Diane McGuinness. This research-based book provides a very readable blueprint for parents on how to facilitate their children's healthy language development. It includes advice on how to talk with young children and how to handle beginning reading instruction.
Early Reading Instruction
Early Reading Instruction: What Science Really Tells Us About How to Teach Reading. Diane McGuinness. This book provides an extremely comprehensive analysis of the research on teaching beginning reading and spelling. Dr. McGuinness explains that certain practices (learning sound-letter correspondences; practice blending and segmenting sounds in words; and copying/writing words, phrases and sentences) strongly predict reading success. Most so-called literacy activities have no effect and some, like sight-word memorization, have a strongly-negative effect.
Why Boys are Different and How to Bring Out the Best in Them
Why Boys are Different and How to Bring Out the Best in Them. Bonnie Macmillan. This book discusses all the ways that boys differ from girls, including such things as their fetal development, brain differentiation, emotional differences, and so on. Dr. Macmillan attributes the world-wide gender gap in academic achievement (in favour of girls) to "multi-focus" teaching methods, pointing out that when a single-focus approach such as systematic phonics is used, sex differences are eradicated and sometimes the boys even outperform the girls.
Getting It Wrong From the Beginning
Getting It Wrong From the Beginning: Our Progressivist Inheritance from Herbert Spencer, John Dewey, and Jean Piaget. Kieran Egan. This important book isolates the essential ideas of progressivism, such as the superiority of hands-on and discovery learning, and the inferiority of rote learning. Tracing these beliefs back to an 18th-century English philosopher named Herbert Spencer, Dr. Egan shows that Spencer's scientific and social ideas are now considered museum pieces.
The Well-Trained Mind
The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home. Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer. This book provides a blueprint for parents who wish to give their children a classical education at home. The curriculum is very demanding. For example, grade 9 students are expected to read 25 books, among them Homer's Iliad, Plato's Republic, and Ovid's Metamorphoses.
The Worm in the Apple
The Worm in the Apple: How the Teacher Unions are Destroying American Education. Peter Brimelow. This is a devastating and marvelously-readable account of the malevolent role of the teachers' unions in American elementary and secondary education. The author compares the unions' political and economic monopoly to the industrial trusts that put a stranglehold on American business a hundred years ago (and which are now against the law).
The Myth of Ability
The Myth of Ability: Nurturing Mathematical Talent in Every Child. John Mighton. Anyone can learn math and anyone can teach it. Dr. Mighton has used this premise to develop a revolutionary teaching method that isolates and describes concepts so clearly anyone can understand them. Instead of fearing failure, kids learn from their own successes, and gain the confidence and skills they need to love learning.
Overcoming Dyslexia
Overcoming Dyslexia: A New and Complete Science-Based Program for Reading Problems at any Level. Sally Shaywitz. The author, co-director of the Yale Center for the Study of Learning and Attention, discusses some excellent systematic phonics programs, along with key principles of teaching beginning reading. Among these principles are the importance of oral reading with immediate feedback, the need to teach to the point of "overlearning", the importance of early intervention, and the necessity for vocabulary development.
There are no Shortcuts
There are no Shortcuts. The author is a teacher at a Los Angeles school where the vast majority of students are economically disadvantaged and have English as a second language. Yet Mr. Esquith's students score in the top 10% on standardized tests and go on to colleges such as Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford. He attributes their success to the fact that he and his students work harder, longer, and with more discipline than almost anyone else.
The First Days of School
The First Days of School: How to be an Effective Teacher. Harry K. Wong and Rosemary T. Wong. This book lays out everything teachers need to do to get the year off to a strong start — including such things as preparing the classroom, teaching and enforcing routines, acting and dressing for success, and much more.
Unraveling the ADD/ADHD Fiasco
Unraveling the ADD/ADHD Fiasco: Successful Parenting Without Drugs. David B. Stein. Dr. Stein attacks many widely-held but unsubstantiated assumptions about ADD/ADHD, such as that stimulant medication and behavioural management techniques should be the mainstay of an effective long-term way of managing ADD/ADHD, instead offering the Caregivers’ Skills Program, a treatment alternative that sounds very promising.
Class War
Class War: The State of British Education. Chris Woodhead. The former Chief Inspector of Schools explains the state of education in England and his belief that the only way forward is school vouchers.
How to Increase your Child’s Verbal Intelligence
How to Increase your Child’s Verbal Intelligence: Read America’s Revolutionary Language Wise Programme. Carmen and Geoffrey McGuinness. This book lays out a program for augmenting children’s intelligence, improving their ability to understand what they read and hear.
Parenting a Struggling Reader
Parenting a Struggling Reader: A Guide to Diagnosing and Finding Help for Your Child’s reading Difficulties. Susan L. Hall & Louisa C. Moats. Stressing the importance of catching problems early, this book is an excellent guide to diagnosing and finding help for children’s reading difficulties.
Teach Them All to Read
Teach Them All to Read: Catching the Kids Who Fall Through the Cracks. Elaine K. McEwan. This excellent book, directed primarily at elementary teachers and principals, is a step-by-step blueprint for ensuing that every single child learns to read.
Teachers as Owners
Teachers as Owners: A Key to Revitalizing Public Education. Edward J. Dirkswager, ed. This book outlines how the model of the professional partnership can be adapted to fit public education, allowing teachers to join doctors, lawyers, dentists and so forth as managers of small businesses.
Vocabulary Development
Vocabulary Development. Steven A. Stahl. Explaining that the number of words a person knows is highly related to his or her reading comprehension and overall intelligence, the author outlines the most effective ways to expand children’s vocabularies.
Can the Market Save Our Schools
Can the Market
Save Our Schools? Claudia R. Hepburn. This collection of papers makes a compelling case that
market mechanisms can dramatically improve the effectiveness of Canadian
education.
Order from the Fraser Institute
Core Knowledge Preschool Sequence
Core Knowledge Preschool Sequence. Core Knowledge Foundation. Unlike the Ontario curriculum, this material stresses the important foundation of knowledge that preschool and kindergarten should provide in order to develop literate, responsible, and contributing citizens.
Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics
Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics: Teachers’ Understanding of Fundamental Mathematics in China and the United States. Liping Ma. In a very thorough and technical manner, this book describes the nature and development of the “profound understanding of fundamental mathematics” that elementary teachers need in order to be accomplished mathematics teachers.
From Hope to Harris
From Hope to Harris: The Reshaping of Ontario’s Schools. R.D. Gidney. The author traces the history of Ontario’s public schools from the Hope commission (1950) to the present, conclusively demonstrating that there’s nothing new under the sun.
The Academic Achievement Challenge
The Academic Achievement Challenge: What Really Works in the Classroom. Jeanne S. Chall. In this book, the late Jeanne Chall, Emeritus Professor of Education at Harvard University, analyzes a vast body of educational research, finding that teacher-centred approaches result in higher achievement overall, especially for disadvantaged children and those with learning difficulties.
No Excuses: Lessons from 21 High-Performing High-Poverty Schools
No Excuses: Lessons from 21 High-Performing High-Poverty Schools.Samuel Casey Carter. This book profiles 21 high-poverty schools that prove children of all races and income levels can take tough courses and succeed.
Market Education: The Unknown History
Market Education: The Unknown History. Andrew Coulson. Drawing on historical evidence, the author makes the case that competitive free-market systems of education have constantly done a better job of serving the public's needs than state-run school systems have.
Teach Your Child to Read in Just Ten Minutes a Day
Teach Your Child to Read in Just Ten Minutes a Day. Sidney Ledson. The author describes his fail-safe method, which he spent nearly 30 years creating, testing and refining, for teaching young children how to read.
Losing Our Language
Losing Our Language: How Multicultural Classroom Instruction is Undermining Our Children's Ability to Read, Write and Reason. Sandra Stotsky. The author analyzes the content of American readers over the years and shows how a requirement for political correctness and social justice content has resulted in debased readers and lower academic achievement.
Teachers Unions in Canada
Teachers Unions in Canada. Stephen B. Lawton, George Bedard, Duncan MacLellan, Xiaobin Li. The authors found that Canadian labour laws are overly favourable to labour. Consequently, in this book they advocate more balanced labour laws, most notably freedom for teachers to choose from a variety of unions all competing with one another to provide the best service.
The Case for School Choice
The Case for School Choice: Models from the US, New Zealand, Denmark, and Sweden. Claudia Rebanks Hepburn. The Fraser Institute. The author analyzes the measures taken by countries which are successfully reforming their public education system and finds that their success is due to charter schools, vouchers, tax credits and/or school accountability systems.
The Teaching Gap
The Teaching Gap: What Teachers Can Learn From The World's Best Educators. James W. Stigler and James Hiebert. The authors describe the Japanese system of teacher-led collaborative improvement which has resulted in the inspirational teaching found in virtually every Japanese classroom today.
Who Killed Canadian History
Who Killed Canadian History? Jack Granatstein. Written in the author's usual lively style, this book bemoans young Canadians' appalling lack of knowledge of their own country.
How to Get the Right Education for your Child
How to Get the Right Education for your Child. Malkin Dare. OQE/SAER Publications. This book provides practical strategies for the parents of children who are struggling in school. Each option is explained in a readable and information-packed manner. Read More
The Reformation of Canada’s Schools
The Reformation of Canada's Schools: Breaking the Barriers to Parental Choice. Mark Holmes. The author argues that only school choice can successfully address Canada's, particularly Ontario's, educational mediocrity. The details of practical choice are described and the necessary policies listed.
Teach Your Children Well
Teach Your Children Well: A Solution To Some Of North American's Educational Problems. Maureen Somers and Michael Maloney. Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies. This book tells the story of Quinte Learning Centre in Belleville, Ontario, where people of all ages were taught to read, write, spell, and do arithmetic in an impressively short time. The Centre's methods, despite being in the public domain and supported by the research, are being ignored by most educators.
Failure to Connect
Failure to Connect: How Computers Affect our Children's Minds - For Better and Worse. Jane M. Healy. Once a bedazzled enthusiast of educational computing but now a troubled skeptic, the author concludes that we are spending for too much money on computers.
Running on Ritalin
Running on Ritalin: A Physician Reflects on Children, Society and Performance in a Pill. Laurence H. Diller. The author wonders why only medical solutions are being proposed for behaviour problems that have many possible causes and solutions.
Implementing a Highly Specified Curricular
Implementing a Highly Specified Curricular, Instructional, and Organizational School Design in a High-Poverty, Urban Elementary School--Three Year Results. This report describes the introduction and maintenance of a highly-structured, academically-intensive, instructional program into a school in Baltimore, Maryland. Despite the fact that Barclay is an inner-city school, the students are doing spectacularly well. The report is short, easily-read and thrilling.
Why Schoolchildren Can’t Read
Why Schoolchildren Can't Read. Bonnie Macmillan. The Institute of Economic Affairs. This book provides insightful information on how children learn to read.
Available from The Institute of Economic Affairs
Why Our Children Can’t Read & What We Can Do about It
Why Our Children Can't Read & What We Can Do about It: A Scientific Revolution in Reading. Diane McGuinness. This book provides the scholarly underpinning for the excellent Phono-Graphix method of teaching children to read.
The Teacher Unions
The Teacher Unions: How the NEA and AFT Sabotage Reform and Hold Students, Parents, Teachers and Taxpayers Hostage to Bureaucracy. Myron Lieberman. The book shows how the teacher unions are bad for everyone concerned (except for their own leaders). The author recommends that teachers be represented by professional organizations instead.
Charter Schools: Creating Hope and Opportunity for American Education
Charter Schools: Creating Hope and Opportunity for American Education. Joe Nathan. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1996.
Break These Chains: The Battle for School Choice
Break These Chains: The Battle for School Choice. Daniel McGroarty. Empowering parents through school choice is the future of quality education. McGroarty's street-level account of America's first-ever voucher program captures the story perfectly - both the policy and the passion.
All Must Have Prizes
All Must Have Prizes. Melanie Phillips. The author charts the rocky course of educational reform in England, a journey which began in 1988 with the passage of the Education Reform Act.
The Schools We Need: Why We Don’t Have Them
The Schools We Need: Why We Don't Have Them. E. D. Hirsch, Jr. The author takes on what he terms "The Thoughtworld," the system of child-centred ideas which dominate Canadian and American elementary education. His "Critical Guide to Educational Terms and Phrases" alone is worth the cost of the book.
General Information
The Society for Quality Education works hard to provide individual parents and teachers with helpful information and tools. But at the same time, we are painfully aware that we can reach out to only a tiny fraction of the children who are struggling in school. There is an urgent need to modify the system to ensure that every child can succeed in school.
There are many myths and misconceptions surrounding public education and, in some cases, politicians have been guided by incorrect beliefs when making important decisions about school funding and other education policies. The links below lead to authoritative information that will facilitate excellent decision-making.
School Choice Mythbusters
Living in a Fool's Paradise? (Canada's performance on international testing)
The Role of School Boards
Tax Credit Mythbusters
Sunshine on Schools (Database of Ontario School Boards)
How Accountability Can Be Increased
Should there be Charter Schools?
Frequently-Asked Questions
Newsletter Articles, Organized by Topic
How to Start an Independent School
Should Small Schools With Low Enrollment Be Closed?
Why Public Schools Don't Adopt Proven Practices
Choosing School Choice
How Student Achievement Can Be Increased
Resources for Better Teaching
It is difficult to over-emphasize the importance of good teachers, especially kindergarten and grade one
teachers. The research is very clear that children who get off to a strong start, particularly in reading, get
a boost that lasts them all their lives. Children’s reading ability at the end of grade one is strongly predictive
of their future academic success and income in later life.
The links below lead to authoritative information about various aspects of children’s schooling, including ways
to help them learn more.
Free Remedial Reading Program
Free Remedial Math Program
List of Recommended Teaching Materials
How Can Teachers' Qualifications be Upgraded?
Professional Development
The Faculty of Education: History and Purposes
Learning to Read
Teaching Children to Read
Learning the Basics
How Can Beginning Reading be Improved?
What about Older Students' Reading?
How can Student Achievement be Increased?
Ten Keys to Success: Fundamental Principles of Teaching
Newsletter Articles, Organized by Topic
Resources for Parents Whose Children Need Help
In a perfect world, all children would be taught by first-class teachers, and all children would be first-class scholars. The Society recognizes, however, that we do not live in a perfect world. Some children are learning very little in school.
The last hope for these children is their parents. The links below lead to authoritative information concerning ways parents can help their children learn more.
Stairway to Reading - Free Remedial Reading Program
Stairway to Math - Free Remedial Math Program
How to Get the Right Education for your Child - Free Book
List of Recommended School-Proofing Materials
Learning to Read
Teaching Children to Read (Q & A)
Learning the Basics
How Can Beginning Reading be Improved?
What about Older Students' Reading?
What You Can do When the School Board Threatens to Close Your Community School
Newsletter Articles, Organized by Topic
Free Placement Tests
- Reading Test (the Part 2 passages correspond to grade level)
- Spelling Test
- Math Test
Canadian Foundations
Donner Canadian Foundation (www.donnerfoundation.org)
W. Garfield Weston Foundation (www.westonfoundation.org)
Free Reading Booklet
Putting Reading First: A booklet on how children learn to read. Commissioned by the US Department of Education, the booklet sets out state-of-the-art information in simple, easy-to-understand language.
Homeschooling Associations
Hamilton HomeSchool Resource Page
Ontario Christian Home Educators Connection
Independent School Organizations
Directory of private schools in Ontario
Accelerated Christian Schools Association
Associated Hebrew Schools of Toronto
Association of Christian Schools International
Canadian Association of Independent Schools
Canadian Association of Private Language Schools
Canadian Council of Montessori Administrators
Federation of Independent Schools in Canada
Hamilton-Wentworth Family Action Council
Ontario Alliance of Christian Schools. See also the section on the Ontario 2003 provincial election and school choice
Action Groups
Children First School Choice Trust is Canada's first privately funded program to help Ontario families improve their educational choices. Children First offers tuition assistance grants, so that parents who could not otherwise afford it can choose an independent elementary school for their children.
Ontario School Council Support Centre. Helping educators, parents and the community work better together for student success.
Parents for Educational Choice. A group of parents and supporters affiliated with many different schools across the province who believe in government supported school choice. The group promises to: (1) Empower parents by providing regular information on the issue of school choice and strategies to speak out of this issue on their own behalf. (2) Heighten public awareness about the contributions made by independent schools and their graduates to the public good in Ontario. (3) Exert influence to acquire government support for parental choice in education.
London Anti-Bullying Coalition is an independent non-profit, advocacy organization which strives to foster a culture of fairness, respect and equality for all students in every school, thus eliminating the problem of bullying in southwestern Ontario.
York Regioni Anti-Bullying Coaltion works to eliminate bullying in the York Region of Ontario.
Society for Advancement of Excellence in Education has the mission to develop new Canadian knowledge on school improvement and foster the understanding of its use
The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, based in Washington, D.C., supports research, publications, and action projects of national significance in elementary/secondary education reform. The foundation seeks to advance understanding and acceptance of effective reform strategies that address the need for dramatically higher standards, accountability, educational diversity and choice, and a solid curriculum taught by knowledgeable instructors.
UNICEF: A League Table of Educational Disadvantage in Rich Nations
Information Resources—Foreign
An
Educators' Guide to Schoolwide Reform found that only Direct Instruction, High Schools That Work, and Success for All
made the grade. Commissioned by five education groups-including the National
Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers-the report is the
most comprehensive rating of school reform programs.
Copies of the report, An Educators' Guide to Schoolwide Reform, are available
from the sponsoring organizations for $15.95 each for nonmembers and $12.95 each
for members. The full text of the report is also available
here
Educators Reference Desk is the mother of all education resources. It is sponsored by Syracuse University, the U.S. Department of Education and Sun Microsystems, of Mtn. View, California. AskERIC has been rated among the top 5% of all sites on the Internet by Point Communications.
For information about Direct Instruction, see the Association for Direct Instruction, which also has useful essays on mathematics, reading, grouping, and Project Followthrough.
The Center for Education Reform is a "spunky, non-blobby group", based in Washington, D.C., which operates as a clearinghouse for innovative reforms in public education, especially charter schools. The Center maintains a comprehensive database of education reform efforts.
Don Potter's site offers free phonics material and valuable essays.
Electronic Educational Excellence Network, a project of the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., features very knowledgeable articles and information about education reform in the U.S. Of particular interest is the Network's report "The State of State Standards," by Chester E. Finn, Jr., Michael J. Petrilli, and Gregg Vanourek, July 1998. Three Fordham staffers summarize the findings of the five previous state standards reports and tease out some lessons for American education
The Friedman Foundation, dedicated to the improvement in the quality of the education available to children of all income and social classes in the USA, whether that education is provided in government or private schools or at home. See Bill Robson and Claudia Hepburn's paper on this site, Learning from Success: What Americans Can Learn from School Choice in Canada.
PBS TV: The Battle Over School Choice.
Reading Reform Foundation, a UK-based group which promotes a type of phonics education.
UK Department for Education and Skills:
performance
tables.
Harvard Program on Education Policy and Governance contains research and information on school choice and school reform policy.
U.S. Charter Schools.
Parents for Evidence Based Education - a U.S. group that provides education information based on high-quality research.
Clackmannanshire, U.K. Reading Study - a long term study on the benefits of synthetic phonics instruction PDF version.
Knowledge is Power Program
National Reading Panel
Information Resources
The Schools We Need This is a new site that provides "information for parents by parents".
School Rankings
Quebec (Montreal Economic Institute)
Alberta, BC, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick (Fraser Institute)
Atlantic Canada (Atlantic Institute for Market Studies)
BC, Ontario, Alberta C. D. Howe Institute)
Canadian Education Association
Council of Ministers of Education, Canada
Fraser Institute
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
of the University of Toronto. Public
Attitudes Towards Education in Ontario
Atlantic Institute for Market Studies
C.D. Howe Institute
Canadian Moms Online
Canadian School Choice Issues
Children First School Choice Trust (www.childrenfirstgrants.ca)
Kids First Parents Association of Canada (www.kidsfirstcanada.org)
Links to Sites about Education Choice and Education Reform
Canadian School Choice Issues
Information Resources--Canadian
Information Resources--Foreign
Action Groups
Independent School Organizations
Homeschooling Associations
Free Reading Booklet
Canadian Foundations