Re: Dear Mr. President - Thanks!

[aburke5054@aol.com]

The National Reading Panel was convened at the direction of Congress 
when Bill Cllinton was President.  NRP finished its work and issued its 
report before George Bush was elected. So unless you believe that 
George Bush and his band of merry misinformers exercised their 
conspiratorial magic (pardon me, I mean their plan) before he was 
elected, you should throw this nonsense (and the other Campbell-Garan 
nonsense on this string) in the trash with the rest of their loony 
paranoia.

Art

-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Campbell <campbellp@mail.montclair.edu>
To: ARN State <ARN-state@yahoogroups.com>; ARN-L List 
<arn-l@interversity.org>
Sent: Mon, 22 May 2006 11:26:06 -0500
Subject: [arn-l] Dear Mr. President - Thanks!

 Dear Mr. President,



The National Reading Panel --- your hand-selected group of literacy 
experts -- makes the need for less critical thinking abundantly clear. 
As you know, the National Reading Panel had the nerve to use "research" 
and "analysis" to come to the conclusion that "phonics instruction 
appears to contribute only weakly, if at all, in helping poor readers 
apply [decoding skills] to read text and to spell words." (quoted in 
Garan, Elaine. 2002. Resisting Reading Mandates: How to Triumph with 
the Truth. Heinemann. Portsmouth, NH., p. 47; taken from the NRP Report 
of the Subgroups, Chapter 2, p. 116) But, thanks to those wonderful 
public relations people from Widemeyer Communications, the Washington 
PR firm hired by McGraw-Hill to promote Open Court in Texas and to 
write the Summary Booklet and produce the promotional video that 
explains the NRP's "research," phonics has become (once again!) The 
Next Big Thing.