Top all-time · #19490
Paul Thomas
Personal blog · radicalscholarship.compoliticsculture
Paul Thomas writes dr. p.l. (paul) thomas, a personal blog at radicalscholarship.com about politics and culture. Since 2023, 4 different Hacker News readers have linked it 4 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-30, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (3) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Education writing by Paul Thomas on reading instruction, test scores and the reading wars. HN commenters cite his posts as sources on Mississippi score gains and the science-of-reading debate, without judging them.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 3 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
educator, public scholar, poet&writer - academic freedom isn't free
What Hacker News says?
There’s a lot of manipulation states do to specifically juice these scores, this is widely written about for Mississippi: https://radicalscholarship.com/2019/12/06/mississippi-miracl... http://hechingerreport.org/repeating-third-grade-good-kids/ Another good example of how the standardized tests are incredibly poor indicators of actual success on a wholistic basis. These gains you pointed out actually disappear (in…
Comment linking /2019/12/06/mississippi-miracle-or-mirage-2019-naep-reading-scores-prompt-questions-not-answers/
on “Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics”Submitted The Danger of Delegating Education to Journalists (2012) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThere are plenty of academics who oppose or have reservations about the capital-letters Science of Reading https://radicalscholarship.com/2022/05/23/nyt-blasts-calkins... . Of course they, too, could be ideologically motivated or stubbornly attached to their existing beliefs, for all I know, but it's clearly not a clean split between academics and teachers.
Comment linking /2022/05/23/nyt-blasts-calkins-with-science-of-reading-propaganda/
on “Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong”Educational researcher here. There's no such thing as a "science of reading." It's part of the highly politicized "reading wars" (see also the "math wars" which has been going on for decades). It's no coincidence that Republicans are pushing phonics as the end all be all solution to teaching reading, and you can cherry pick educational research studies that support or disconfirm various teaching strategies. Phonics…
Comment linking /2023/01/14/does-the-science-of-reading-fulfill-social-justice-equity-goals-in-education/
on “Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong”