NAEP: What you’ve always wanted to know, with Chester Finn, Jr.
Transcripts and additional resources:
Meet Our Guest(s):
Chester Finn, Jr.
Scholar, educator and public servant Chester Finn, Jr. has devoted his career to improving education in the United States. A native of Ohio, he holds an undergraduate degree in U.S. history, a master’s degree in social studies teaching, and a doctorate in education policy, all from Harvard University. He is now distinguished senior fellow and president emeritus at Fordham University, and a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. Finn was Fordham’s president from 1997 to 2014, after many earlier roles in education, academia, and government. From 1999 until 2002, he was the John M. Olin Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and at Hudson Institute.
Meet our host, Susan Lambert
Susan Lambert is the Chief Academic Officer of Elementary Humanities at Amplify, and the host of Science of Reading: The Podcast. Her career has been focused on creating high-quality learning environments using evidence-based practices. Susan is a mom of four, a grandma of four, a world traveler, and a collector of stories.
As the host of Science of Reading: The Podcast, Susan explores the increasing body of scientific research around how reading is best taught. As a former classroom teacher, administrator, and curriculum developer, Susan is dedicated to turning theory into best practices that educators can put right to use in the classroom, and to showcasing national models of reading instruction excellence.
Quotes
“For this to work, we need both great teachers and great curricula.”
“The single most important thing NAEP cannot do [is that] it cannot in any definitive way explain why scores are what they are or are rising or falling.”
Featured Episodes
Meet Our Guest(s):
Meet our guest: Chester Finn, Jr.
Scholar, educator and public servant Chester Finn, Jr. has devoted his career to improving education in the United States. A native of Ohio, he holds an undergraduate degree in U.S. history, a master’s degree in social studies teaching, and a doctorate in education policy, all from Harvard University. He is now distinguished senior fellow and president emeritus at Fordham University, and a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. Finn was Fordham’s president from 1997 to 2014, after many earlier roles in education, academia, and government. From 1999 until 2002, he was the John M. Olin Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and at Hudson Institute.
Meet our host: Susan Lambert
Susan Lambert is the Chief Academic Officer of Elementary Humanities at Amplify, and the host of Science of Reading: The Podcast. Her career has been focused on creating high-quality learning environments using evidence-based practices. Lambert is a mom of four, a grandma of four, a world traveler, and a collector of stories.
As the host of Science of Reading: The Podcast, Lambert explores the increasing body of scientific research around how reading is best taught. As a former classroom teacher, administrator, and curriculum developer, Lambert is dedicated to turning theory into best practices that educators can put right to use in the classroom, and to showcasing national models of reading instruction excellence.
Quotes
“It must be acknowledged that there is more scientific research, or there has been more scientific research, conducted with monolingual English-speaking children, and that additional research related to teaching literacy development for English learners and emergent bilinguals is needed to advance our understanding of their literacy development.”
“We have an underserved area that’s experiencing a massive growth in student population. And so it’s really important to then focus on it. Schools are adjusting, they’re quick, they’re doing the best they can, but we need to be having these conversations around research [and] best practices so that we can set schools up for success and students up for success.”
“I just think we have an exciting future in this country. I was in a classroom last week, I saw some of their writing. I saw them speaking, heard them speaking in two languages fluently, easily, excitedly. I just got very excited. These kids are going to be our doctors and our teachers and our engineers and they’re bilingual or multilingual.”
“Their language is an asset, whatever language it is and however much it is.”
Navigating the noise, with Claude Goldenberg
Transcripts and additional resources:
Meet Our Guest(s):
Claude Goldenberg
Claude Goldenberg is the Nomellini & Olivier Professor of Education, emeritus, Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. He received his A.B. in history from Princeton University and M.A. and Ph.D. from the Graduate School of Education at UCLA. He has taught junior high school in San Antonio, TX, and first grade in a bilingual elementary school in Los Angeles. A native of Argentina, his areas of research centered on promoting academic achievement among language minority students, particularly those from Spanish-speaking backgrounds. He currently works on promoting research, policy, and practices to enhance literacy and academic development among students not yet proficient in English.
Meet our host, Susan Lambert
Susan Lambert is the Chief Academic Officer of Elementary Humanities at Amplify, and the host of Science of Reading: The Podcast. Her career has been focused on creating high-quality learning environments using evidence-based practices. Susan is a mom of four, a grandma of four, a world traveler, and a collector of stories.
As the host of Science of Reading: The Podcast, Susan explores the increasing body of scientific research around how reading is best taught. As a former classroom teacher, administrator, and curriculum developer, Susan is dedicated to turning theory into best practices that educators can put right to use in the classroom, and to showcasing national models of reading instruction excellence.
Quotes
"You can think of literacy as a structure, as something that gets constructed in your mind."
Featured Episodes
Special interlude #1: Why the Science of Reading isn’t just about reading
Meet Our Guest(s):
Natalie Wexler
Natalie Wexler is an education writer and the author of The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America’s Broken Education System—And How to Fix It (Avery 2019). She is also the co-author, with Judith C. Hochman, of The Writing Revolution: A Guide to Advancing Thinking Through Writing in All Subjects and Grades (Jossey-Bass, 2017), and a senior contributor to the education channel on Forbes.com.
Natalie’s articles and essays on education and other topics have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, the MIT Technology Review, The American Scholar, and other publications. She has spoken on education before a wide variety of groups and appeared on a number of TV and radio shows, including Morning Joe and NPR’s On Point and 1A.
She holds a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University, a masters’ degree in history from the University of Sussex (UK), and a JD from the University of Pennsylvania. She has also worked as a reporter, a Supreme Court law clerk, a lawyer, and a legal historian.
Meet Our Host: Susan Lambert
Susan Lambert is the chief academic officer of elementary humanities at Amplify, and the host of Science of Reading: The Podcast. Her career, including classroom teacher, building administrator, and district-level leader, has been focused on creating high-quality learning environments using evidence-based practices. Susan is a mom of four, a grandma of four, a world traveler, and a collector of stories. Her professional quarantine accomplishments include the production of knowledge-based learning modules for kindergarten through grade-two students, available through Amplify’s free resources website and Wide Open Schools.
Quotes
“Here's the catch about writing: It's hugely important. It can help cement knowledge and long-term memory, and deepen knowledge.”
“Even if you as a teacher have doubts about the curriculum. It's really important to give it your best shot and approach it with enthusiasm.”
Featured Episodes
From the community, for the community: Grassroots organizing, with Naomi Peña & Akeela Azcuy
Transcripts and additional resources:
Meet Our Guest(s):
Naomi Peña
Naomi Peña is a community and education activist. She is currently president of New York City District 1, Community Education Council.
Akeela Azcuy
Akeela Azcuy has her doctorate in clinical psychology. She is also a board member for Dyslexia Alliance for Black Children and a trustee of the Winward School and Institute.
Meet our host, Susan Lambert
Susan Lambert is the Chief Academic Officer of Elementary Humanities at Amplify, and the host of Science of Reading: The Podcast. Her career has been focused on creating high-quality learning environments using evidence-based practices. Susan is a mom of four, a grandma of four, a world traveler, and a collector of stories.
As the host of Science of Reading: The Podcast, Susan explores the increasing body of scientific research around how reading is best taught. As a former classroom teacher, administrator, and curriculum developer, Susan is dedicated to turning theory into best practices that educators can put right to use in the classroom, and to showcasing national models of reading instruction excellence.
Quotes
“Leaders tend to forget that you get more out of parents if you collaborate with them, if you're honest.”
“With the level and degree of training, understanding, and privilege that I had, it was still—and still continues to be—an overwhelming battle to get your child the services that they need.”
Featured Episodes
Love at the center of literacy, with Dr. Nyshawana Francis-Thompson
Transcripts and additional resources:
Meet Our Guest(s):
Dr. Nyshawana Francis-Thompson
Dr. Nyshawana Francis-Thompson is an education leader who advocates for students with diverse academic, social, emotional, and behavioral needs. She is Deputy Chief of Curriculum and Instruction in Philadelphia, where she leads the Curriculum Equity Initiative. She previously led the development of an instructional guide for supporting students with disabilities. Her dissertation on Multi-Tiered System of Supports implementation has a focus on evidence-based reading interventions. She approaches the Science of Reading conversation from an equity lens, focused on all students having access to culturally and linguistically inclusive instruction.
Meet our host, Susan Lambert
Susan Lambert is the Chief Academic Officer of Elementary Humanities at Amplify, and the host of Science of Reading: The Podcast. Her career has been focused on creating high-quality learning environments using evidence-based practices. Susan is a mom of four, a grandma of four, a world traveler, and a collector of stories.
As the host of Science of Reading: The Podcast, Susan explores the increasing body of scientific research around how reading is best taught. As a former classroom teacher, administrator, and curriculum developer, Susan is dedicated to turning theory into best practices that educators can put right to use in the classroom, and to showcasing national models of reading instruction excellence.
Quotes
“I have never met a student that did not want to learn how to read or a family that did not understand the importance of their children knowing how to read.”
“We have to listen to our young people in order to be able to move with that sense of urgency.”
"Liberation is connected to our students being literate… In order for our students to truly be free, we [need to] understand the power that reading has in their future.”
“We have to remember who we are serving and why we are serving them.”
“A lot of times when you’re in a large system and you’re leading a large system, it can become very robotic, like a machine. You do this, you get this, you do this, you get this. But there’s a human aspect that if you have not considered that human aspect, you could very well end up in the same place that you’re trying to move away from.”
“And while it’s a five-year strategic plan, we do have a sense of urgency and I’m sure within that there are gonna be benchmarks and hundred-day plans and smaller plans to make sure that we are actually doubling down again on the things that truly matter, that are gonna lead, outcomes for our students here in the school district.”
“If we’re only in the business of educating some students, then what are we really doing? It’s important to look at the students that are not benefitting and really identifying the things that work for that population of students rather than continuing with practices that aren’t meeting the needs of the students we’re serving.”
