What+is+the+background+of+the+NLP?

=What is the background of the National Literacy Panel?=

Chronology leading to the appointment of the NLP
(a) challenging standards for what student should know and be able to do; (b) align policies for testing, teacher certification, & professional development; (c) restructure governance system to overtly delegate to school districts. ||
 * **Key Events, Commissions, Agencies, Organizations, Legislation** || **Contribution to Standards Movement** ||
 * National Commission on Excellence in Education (NCEE), 1983 || The federal report, “A Nation at Risk,” appealed to American public, business leaders and policy makers who saw an improved educational system as essential to the economic well-being of the United States in a global economy. ||
 * California State Department of Education, 1986 || Provided curriculum frameworks that served as models for future national standards. ||
 * National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), 1989 || Produced a set of standards that provided a model for national content standards, “Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics”. ||
 * National Education Goals Panel (NEGP), 1991 || Key goals of report called for students to demonstrate competence in challenging subject matter. ||
 * Consortium for Policy Research in Education, 1990-1996 || Recommended:
 * Business Round Table (BRT), 1990 || Business professionals, membership that did not include educators/academics, issued a policy agenda for accountability, “Essential Components of a Successful Educational System.” ||
 * National Council on Education Standards and Testing (NCEST), 1992 || Bipartisan group of educational experts established by Congress to determine how best to measure progress toward National Educational Goals. Recommended alignment of assessments with standards. Defined “content standards, performance standards, and opportunity-to-learn standards.” ||
 * Secretary of Education, Lamar Alexander, 1991 & 1992 || Designated federal monetary support voluntary standard-setting efforts for identified subject areas (mathematics, science, history, the arts, civics, geography, foreign languages, and English language arts [ELA]). ||
 * Goals 2000: Educate America Act, 1994 || Legislation called for “world class” standards of what students should know and be able to do. ||
 * Reauthorization of Title I Act, 1994 || Required states wishing to receive federal funding to develop and implement challenging standards and assessment for all students. ||
 * National Education Standards and Improvement Council (NESIC), 1994 || As part of Goals 2000 Act, to certify national content, performance, and opportunity-to-learn (OTL) standards and state assessments. ||
 * Congressional elections caused set backs to the national standards movement at the federal level, 1994 || Conservative candidates were highly critical of federal efforts to control education. History standards and the OTL standards in particular were under criticism. Called for disbanding the NESIC as a federal agency. ||
 * National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and the International Reading Association (IRA), 1996/2003 || Professional teacher organizations combined efforts to propose national standards for ELA in lieu of failed federal government attempts. ||
 * National Educational Summit, 1996 || Recognized that the pursuit of national standards had failed and that the states would be the primary vehicle of standards development and implementation. ||
 * ACHIEVE, 1998 || In the wake of the demise of the NESIC, the nation’s governors created this organization to help states benchmark their academic standards and assessments. ||
 * Presidential elections resurfaced education as a national agenda, 1996 || Incumbent Presidential Candidate Clinton made federal legislation for education a central focus of his campaign. ||
 * National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 1997 || Reported reading assessments as 40% of students in 4th grade reading below “basic” levels of proficiency ||
 * America Reads program, 1997 || Proposed a new, voluntary national test of reading to gauge whether students had met “national standards of excellence” not under the control the federal government. ||
 * Reading Excellence Act, 1999 || Legislation based on the research of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and endorsed by NCTE, IRA, and the National Educational Association (NEA) initially called for “reliable, replicable research”, but later was negotiated to use the language “scientifically based reading research”. It served to promulgate one set of values and ideas for a national definition of “reading research and effective instruction”. ||
 * National Reading Panel (NRP), 2000 || Publish findings and conclusions based on “scientifically based reading research” in “Teaching Children to Read”. The research base represented a cognitive theoretical foundation. ||
 * Presidential elections, 2000 || President elect Bush’s educational platform called for national standards and assessment. Conservative leaders that were highly critical of national educational reform in the 1990s became proponents of national reforms. ||
 * Reading First initiative, 2001 || Established current national reading standards and practices. ||
 * No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), 2002 || Required that states adopt “scientifically based” reading programs that are sanctioned by the federal government. Programs must include content standards for phonics-oriented and heavily scripted curriculum. Encouraged states to adopt annual testing of reading and mathematics grades 3-8 as well as standards and benchmark at each grade level that are skill-based in nature. REA was repealed. ||
 * NATIONAL LITERACY PANEL REPORT (NLP), 2006 || Panel members deliberated for four years before completing their work, “Developing Literacy in Second-Language Learners: Report of the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth”. The report they prepared analyzed existing evidence on teaching reading and writing to language-minority students and identified gaps in the available research. The research base included studies with both a cognitive and a social theoretical foundation. ||