Leftist Identity Politics Claim Another Victim: Laura Ingalls Wilder

As we’ve all heard, Laura Ingalls Wilder was a racist. At least that’s what the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), determined when they removed Mrs. Wilder’s name from The Laura Ingalls Wilder medal, “…an honor bestowed on an author or illustrator whose books, published in the United States, have made, over a period of years, a substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children.” The ALSC stated, regarding their decision to change the name to the Children’s Literacy Legacy Award, “This decision was made in consideration of the fact that

This Anti-Trump School Librarian Embodies Everything Wrong with Gov’t Education

Last week, an obscure school librarian from an obscure elementary school in Cambridge, Mass., took a calculated risk that, in hindsight, is really better described as a miscalculated risk. Liz Phipps Soeiro decided to play politics at the expense of the pre-K through 5th grade students at the school where she is employed. Leading up to the fateful day, First Lady Melania Trump sent a gift of books to one school in every state to celebrate National Read a Book Day. The schools were selected based on their high standards of excellence in English/Language Arts, and the gift contained ten

Why Common Core’s Lack of Literature Is Setting Kids Up for Failure

Recent research shows the average 12th grader reads at a 7th grade level. This finding isn’t terribly surprising. According to Renaissance Learning, developer of the popular Accelerated Reader, in 2015-16, the most frequently tested fiction book for grades three through seven was Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Categorizing the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series as fiction requires a certain elasticity in the definition — along the lines of categorizing the Sunday comics as literature. Nonetheless, this is problematic considering first year college textbooks have complexity levels of 13.8 (one year and eight months post-secondary), and the same research found