Especially in the context of President Barack Obama’s education agenda—one that builds on the failed No Child Left Behind template begun under President George W. Bush—and against claims that teachers must earn their place at the education reform agenda, Whose Knowledge Counts in Government Literacy Policies? (Routledge, 2014)—edited by Kenneth S. Goodman, Robert C. Calfee, and Yetta M. Goodman—is both a powerful and needed collection that confronts “the political determination of school knowledge in the field of literacy instruction” (p. xv).
Calfee’s introduction subtitle gets right to the issue: “How the Federal Government Used Science to Take Over Public Schools.” But the entire collection offers a solid case for rejecting thirty-plus years of inexpert accountability and seeking instead the voices and expertise of the field of literacy to drive education policy.
I highly recommend reading and sharing this volume widely.
Table of Contents
Foreword: Joel Spring
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: Introduction: Knowledge, Evidence, and Faith: How the Federal Government Used Science to Take Over Public Schools, Robert Calfee
Part 1: The Political Realties
Chapter 2: Whose Knowledge Counts? The Pedagogy of the Absurd, Kenneth S. Goodman
Chapter 3: Re-reading Poverty; Reorienting Educational Policy, Patrick Shannon
Chapter 4: Neoliberal and Neoconservative Literacy Education Policies in Contemporary France, Jacques Fijalkow
Chapter 5: Flying Blind: Government Policy on the Teaching of Reading in England and Research on Effective Literacy Education, Henrietta Dombey
Chapter 6: Whose Knowledge Counts, For Whom, In What Circumstances?: The Ethical Constraints on Who Decides, Sue Ellis
Chapter 7: About the Dubious Role of Phonological Awareness in the Discussion of Literacy Policies, Renate Valtin
Part 2: Aspects of Literacy: The Knowledge Base
Chapter 8: The Role of Story and Literature in a World of Tests and Standards, Kathy G. Short
Chapter 9: The Staircase Curriculum: Whole-School Collaboration to Improve Literacy Achievement, Kathryn H. Au and Taffy E. Raphael
Chapter 10: Diversity in Children’s Literature: What Does It Matter in Today’s Educational Climate? Rudine Sims Bishop
Chapter 11: Examining Three Assumptions about Text Complexity: Standard 10 of the Common Core State Standards, Elfrieda H. Hiebert and Katie Van Sluys
Chapter 12: The Role of Literature and Literary Reasoning in English Language Arts and English Classrooms, Judith A. Langer
Chapter 13: Writing Teachers: The Roles Exploration, Evaluation, and Time Play in Their Lives, Jane Hansen
Chapter 14: What Do Children Need to Succeed in Early Literacy—And Beyond? William H. Teale, Jessica L. Hoffman, and Kathleen A. Paciga
Chapter 15: The Impact of Changing Conceptions of Language on Curriculum and Instruction of Literacy and the Language Arts, David Bloome and Melissa Wilson,
Comments: Nu!…. So!… Where do We Go from Here? Yetta M. Goodman
List of Contributors
dr. p.l. (paul) thomas 
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