NCTE Resolutions / Positions
Related to Professional Decision Making

Members often contact the NCTE headquarters for information on particular topics or programs. While NCTE does not endorse or recommend specific programs, the membership has passed resolutions related to many current issues. This resource site is a compilation of NCTE resources, support materials, and excerpts from teacher commentary on frequently requested topics.

Accelerated Reader

Open Court

Success for All

NCTE Resolutions

• 1999 On Government Intrusion into Classroom Pedagogy
• 1997 On Government Intrusion into Professional Decision Making
• 1998 On Continued Government Intrusion into Professional Decision Making
• 1986 On Mandated Language Arts Instruction

NCTE Positions and Guidelines

• Guidelines for the Selection of Materials in English Language Arts Programs
• Features of Literacy Programs: A Decision-Making Matrix

Fact Sheets

Additional Resources

Allington, Richard L., Sean A. Walmsley.  No Quick Fix: Rethinking Literacy Programs in America's Elementary Schools. New York, NY: Teachers College Press/Newark, DE: IRA, 1995. 
The book employs two case studies that explore the complex, interrelated, and interactive dynamics that combine to provide less than equal educational opportunity for some. The book also presents two models for transforming the inequity in U.S. schools.

Garan, Elaine M.  Resisting Reading Mandates: How to Triumph with the Truth. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2002.
Elaine Garan dejargonizes the research and takes us behind the curtain of the National Reading Panel Report, using her own research and analysis of the issues and applying them to us as real teachers in real classrooms in an easy-to-read format we can use. Her book further reveals the true findings of the NRP's report on commercial programs and isolated phonics instruction and the strong financial links that are connected to its "science."

Ohanian, Susan. One Size Fits Few: The Folly of Educational Standards. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1999. http://www.heinemann.com/product/E00158.asp
Susan Ohanian—a teacher, author, and frequent contributor to the Atlantic, Education Week, and other publications—recounts her quest to make sense of the overblown Standards movement.