While working on another story this morning, I kept checking Wisconsin Eye?s live coverage of the first meeting of Gov. Scott Walker?s blue ribbon task force on reading.
….Unfortunately, as far as I could tell from the portions of today’s conversation that I saw online, there wasn’t representation from the education schools at the table in the Governor’s conference room. In the future, it would be useful to hear from people like the UW’s Julie Underwood, dean of the School of Education, or from researchers who are studying the remarkably complex business of learning to read. Until these folks responsible for teacher training and curriculum speak up and contribute their voices to the discussion, I’m not sure there’s much hope of changing the status quo.