- Teachers have been complaining about it for years: American students are just too hopelessly infatuated with Sophocles, Shakespeare, and George Eliot to buckle down and read nonfiction. Oh wait, no one ever actually complained about that. But schools are nonetheless attempting a shift in reading instruction away from fiction and toward journalism, essays, legislation, and speeches. The move is a signature feature of the Common Core State Standards, which set out to shift the classroom focus to the kinds of informational texts that students will be faced with in college and beyond. Though pairing Romeo and Juliet with articles about teen suicide may seem quixotic, the new method has its proponents. Susan Pimentel, who helped author the standards, claims that “there is enough great literary nonfiction out there that there shouldn’t be a forced fitting” between novels and newspapers. And traditionalists can take heart in the fact that eighth graders will hate reading the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as much as they used to hate reading Silas Marner.
- When it comes to all the really sweet gigs, high school ends up being a little like Highlander—there can be only one prom queen, one first-chair piccolo, one class treasurer, one Jordan Catalano. But this year, Dublin, Ohio’s three high schools graduated some 222 class valedictorians. That figure represents about one-fifth of the district’s seniors. This pell-mell valedictorian inflation came as the result of new eligibility criteria, first instituted a few years ago, that confer the title’s waning cachet on any student who achieves a GPA above 4.0. Dublin locals are split on their town’s new status as the pointy-head capital of the Midwest, with some predictably grumbling that the “everyone-gets-a-trophy” approach devalues genuine academic excellence. As of yet, however, commentators remain silent about what this development holds for the fate of the endangered American salutatorian.
- To the cavalcade of reform-minded superintendents who have headed for the exits over the past year, we can now add one more name: Cami Anderson, the departing Newark schools chief. Anderson’s “One Newark” reorganization initiative has often been a bone of contention, though the city’s schools have made some impressive gains during her time in office. Aspiring reformers have some reason to rejoice, though—Anderson’s most likely successor is apparently New Jersey education maven Chris Cerf, often the subject of star-struck encomiums by Fordham’s own Andy Smarick. And though they’re probably happy to collect a scalp, the former superintendent’s adversaries will now have to go without the exquisite pleasure of spontaneously hopping on buses and hounding her at sedate D.C. education conclaves. The horror!
Topics:
