Richard
L. Allington
National Research
Center on English
Learning and
Achievement and
The University
of Florida |
|
For
most of the past decade, there have been rumblings in the NRC membership
around the question: Should NRC be involved in attempting to influence
educational policy making? This question has been posed at Town Meetings,
in campaign statements, committee reports, conference forums, symposia,
and papers. It has been debated at board meetings, Vital Issues, and
in NRC publications. The debate continues, but that debate often seems
grounded in one or more unwarranted assumptions. In this article,
some of those assumptions are challenged, primarily through the use
of descriptive case studies of educational policy making in two states
– Texas and California. |