Quoting from an email from Susan Ohanian:

“Although I have operated a website of resistance to NCLB and high stakes testing for 7 years, I set up www.stopnationalstandards. org with the hope that it might be able to get educators and parents to focus on a specific target. My hope is that people will submit information and opinion about the Common Core national standards. I’d like to see Q&A, Talking Points, & Research that help educators and parents engage in activism. I’ve been trying to post little acts of activism that will encourage other people to go forth and do likewise.
Not that it’s easy to be heard. NEA told Philip Kovacs and me in PDK that they’ll do ‘whatever’ to keep a seat at the corporate-politico table. This seems to be the general response from the professional organizations. A leader at IRA told me ‘We never tell members of Congress what they don’t want to hear.’
Well, it’s past time for us to tell IRA, NCTE, and all the rest what they seem reluctant to tell Congress.
I asked NCTE to announce in INBOX, their weekly electronic newsletter to their 100,000+ members, the existence of www.stopnationalstandards.org, as “news” of what a member is doing. Just a news item. I was told that INBOX is assembled in-house and they don’t solicit contributions. So far, two issues after my request, they have not seen fit to print any notice of the website.”

And then she provides the following:

“On July 18, Stephen Krashen and I sent a letter to NCTE and IRA Currently, this is “in press” at Reading Today, no word from NCTE.”

A Seat at the Table: Capitulation to the National Standards Movement?
by Stephen Krashen and Susan Ohanian

Sent to The Council Chronicle (NCTE) and Reading Today (IRA) .

To the Editor:

According to an article that appeared in Education Week on June 15, NCTE and IRA both want a “seat at the table” to create national standards along the lines proposed by Education Secretary Arne Duncan.
Apparently, both organizations agree that spending billions developing national standards and national tests is a good idea, and are upset only because they have not been invited to join the party.
Apparently, both NCTE and IRA agree that our major priority in education is more precise and uniform measurement, that all children should know where they are “on every step of their educational trajectory” (Arne Duncan) in all subjects.
Apparently they agree that this assembly-line rigid approach is in tune with the way children learn.
Apparently, some of the leaders of the two major literacy organizations have not spent much time with children, and are unfamiliar with the vast research literature that says this approach is all wrong.

— Stephen Krashen & Susan Ohanian

A recent article in The Telegraph describes, in a nutshell, that simply talking to children before bedtime “could be up to six times more effective than reading to them” in terms of literacy development. Now as someone who is in celebratory mode after just finishing reading The Fellowship of the Ring to my five-year-old and seven-year-old, this seemed like disheartening news. But, really, as writing teachers, we should feel good about this study’s findings. After all, they further reinforce what we as compositionists advocate for all the time in terms of writing and literacy development: the value of an active learning environment, of conversational dynamics in the classroom, of exchanges of language.

Reading to your children is a good thing. But breaking out of the monologue and engaging them in dialogue is even more valuable. Let’s extrapolate. Talking to your students is a good thing. But having a conversation with them is even more valuable. We need to keep reminding people that literacy develops best in an active environment, but that type of teaching takes the proper resources and support.

A June 15 Chronicle of Higher Education article by Josh Keller describes the “Stanford Study of Writing” and how this massive, longitudinal study of the writing lives of students might “settle the argument” about the way Internet writing affects/inflects writing ability.  The article also mentions a smaller study of the writing habits of Michigan State first-year students and other efforts to launch similar longitudinal studies.

So many people are interested (and invested) in this question of how the Internet changes the way we write. These studies have the potential of putting composition work into the mainstream media–and focusing attention on the deeper writing and communication potential of these environments and away from the most recent versions of the old “these kids today can’t write!” attitudes.

Writing specialists Linda Adler-Kassner and Susanmarie Harrington encourage educators to move away from the language of accountability and toward the language of responsibility. While accountability often connotes failure, responsibility frames educators as responsible for their curricula and responsible to their students. Read more about the language–and practices–of engaged educators:

http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2009/04/23/adler

With the Kindle 2 on the market, our reading and writing habits are bound to change, says Wall Street Journal writer Steven Johnson:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123980920727621353.html

Reality TV may highlight teaching practices that have fallen by the wayside, says Thomas Benton. A Hell’s Kitchen fan, Benton discusses how Chef Gordon Ramsay’s exacting standards may be missing in today’s college classrooms. More often than not, says Benton, teachers must treat students like “snowflakes” who are unique in their accomplishments and unaccustomed to receiving criticism. 

http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2009/04/2009041701c.htm

Elements of Style celebrates its 50th Birthday this week. Some, however, won’t be celebrating its grammatical advice:

http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i32/32b01501.htm

Faculty and students at Fort Hays State University are objecting to the university’s arrangement with StraighterLine. So might the university’s accreditor, the North Central Association of College and Schools. Read more at Inside Higher Ed:

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/04/10/accredit

A new for-profit service could potentially allow students to satisfy their first-year composition requirement–and other Gen Ed courses–for $99 a course: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/03/31/forthays

But what are the costs of this purported bargain?

Would colleges and universities be able to develop writing cultures, with curricula that build from first-year writing to WAC and WID courses? Would students have the rich peer interaction and collaboration that are essential to their development as writers?

This story reports findings presented by the TYCA at CCCC recently. It says administrators are not paying attention to increasing class sizes.
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/03/16/comp