EdWeek: The Gift of Bleak Research

The opening two paragraphs of this opinion piece certainly made me want to read more. So, I'll post the two paragraphs, encourage you to click the link and read the entire article, and further encourage you to come back here and comment on it. It could be the door to a fruitful conversation....if not here, then perhaps somewhere else....

How the Pianta classroom study can help schools improve immediately.

By Mike Schmoker & Richard Allington

Let’s not squander the moment made possible by an important new national study, “Opportunities to Learn in America’s Elementary Classrooms.” In it, the University of Virginia scholar Robert C. Pianta and his colleagues report, in painful detail, the most vital if overlooked fact about our schools: Most teaching is “mediocre,” or worse.

Published in the March 30, 2007, issue of the journal Science, the Pianta study is based on observations of 2,500 classrooms in 400 school districts across the United States. It shows that the typical child in these classrooms has a 1-in-14 chance of learning in a rich, supportive environment. Fifth graders spend 91 percent of their time listening to the teacher or working alone, usually on low-level worksheets. Three out of four classrooms are “dull, bleak” places, the researchers report, devoid of any emphasis on critical reasoning or problem-solving skills.