21st Century Literacy

The authors bring their decades of classroom teaching experience, along with their research base, to a discussion of literacy spanning elementary through high school. They explore the prescriptions that hinder effective approaches to literacy instruction.

This book offers a call to all who are involved with literacy education. It explores the prescriptions that hinder authentic and effective approaches to literacy instruction. The scripts identified here include the Bureaucratic Script, the Corporate Script, the Student Script, the Parent and Public Script, and the Administrative Script. The authors bring their classroom teaching experiences (over thirty years combined) along with their research base to a discussion of literacy spanning elementary through high school. The discussion offers the reader practical and research-based lenses for identifying and overcoming the barriers to best practice while avoiding the inherent pitfalls found too often in our schools. The implied answer to the subtitle is a definitive "No", but the text goes beyond criticizing the current state of the field and seeks to empower both teachers and students seeking literacy growth beyond the scripts that plague twenty-first century commitments to accountability and testing.

Introduction
Part I. The Bureaucratic Script
Chapter 1: Standards, Standards Everywhere and Not a Spot to Think
* P. L. Thomas
Chapter 2: Rubrics, Scoring Guides, and Testing, Testing, Testing
* Renita Schmidt
Part II. The Corporate Script
Chapter 3: Marketing Child Readers: Ranking and Sorting
* Renita Schmidt
Chapter 4: English as a Scripted Language
* P. L. Thomas
Part III. The Student Script
Chapter 5: "When Are We Going to Do English?"
* P. L. Thomas
Chapter 6: How School Works: Raise Your Hands When You Want to Learn
* Renita Schmidt
Part IV. The Parent and Public Script
Chapter 7: "Why Don't You Mark the Errors on my Child's Papers?" -- Explaining Yourself Theoretically and Professionally
* Renita Schmidt
Chapter 8: "Why Aren't You Teaching C. S. Lewis?"--Challenges and Expectations from Outside School
* P. L. Thomas
Part V. The Administrative Script
Chapter 9: But Are They Ready To Do Best Practices?
* Renita Schmidt
Chapter 10: Building and Department Politics--Talking English
* P. L. Thomas
Part VI. Beyond Scripts to Literacy
Chapter 11: Literacy as Action--Empowering Students
* P. L. Thomas
Chapter 12: Assessing Our Way into Instruction: What Teachers Know and How They Know It
* Renita Schmidt
Conclusion: Implications for Literacy Classrooms in the 21st Century
References