Language Arts Education

Among the many areas of education specifically targeted by recent educational reforms, language arts instruction has been one of the most intensely affected, in part because reading was one of the first targets of mandated high-stakes testing. Curricular change in response to the legislation has savaged not only language arts classrooms and teachers, but students as well. Numerous scholars have challenged the National Reading Panel report findings, and many critics further charge that, in any case, the findings are far narrower than the government often claims. Not surprisingly, teachers report that when a phonics approach stressing sound asks children to "read" a group of letters that may or may not add up to a real word, the children often try to impose sense within the nonsensical pedagogy. Generally, No Child Left Behind and Reading First have had an enormous, and enormously harmful, effect on literacy education, especially in early years.