Moats, Louisa C. “Teaching Decoding.” American Educator 22 (1 & 2), 42-49, 95-96. Print.

“Teaching Decoding” by Louisa C. Moats— a researcher, graduate school faculty member, psychologist, and most importantly, a teacher—is an article that addresses the processes by which young children learn how to interpret and understand words in the broader context of reading. In her article, Moats advises the implementation and correction of new and current teaching methods that she advocates will effectively help children learn to read. For instance, Moats points out that most phonic programs, specifically traditional ones, tend to teach children the alphabet by first introducing the letter and then attaching the correct sound with said letter, but this is glaringly wrong seeing as alphabetic writing was made to represent speech, not the other way around. The article points to numerous other teaching methods such as teaching pattern recognition, being systematic and explicit when teaching the alphabet, and encouraging constructive exploration. The overall point of this article is to challenge the way in which the American education system goes about teaching children how to read by addressing the major flaws that exist within the system.

I find this source to be very reliable seeing as it is an article that was published by the American Educator/American Federation of Teachers. The American Federation of teachers is a union of skilled educators that promotes a high standard of public education, economic opportunity, and public services for students across the United States. Dr. Louisa Moats, the author of the article, is a licensed psychologist, former consultant advisor for Literary Research and Professional Development, and President of her own consulting company. At the time that she wrote this article, she was a Professional Development Director at the Greenwood Institute, an intensive summer program that trains teachers in language, reading, and spelling instruction.

I personally find that due to the credentials of Moats, this article is very informative and reliable. Although, Moats is biased seeing as she is a big advocate for change in the public education system, especially in how the current education system approaches teaching children with dyslexia, . The audience for this article in particular consists of educators across America as well as administrators who implement regulations as they pertain to the education system.

The strength of this article lies in the amount of research and evidence the author presents in her argument for a more effective approach to teaching children how to read. Unfortunately, seeing as this article’s intended audience is that of an educator, I as a student can only relate only so much to the material. I am not an educator myself and don’t have a comprehensive understanding of phonographic programs. In spit of some of the material being very specific to that of educators, Moats does a great job of breaking down her revisions to the current approach.

In the case of this article, the information it presents both counters are argument that Cartoonclopedia is a very efficient tool at helping children learn and comprehend words as well as supports the idea that the more senses that a child utilizes when interacting with something such as a illustration of a word the more likely the child will be to understand it. Overall, there is a lot to take away from this article in how Cartoonclopedia can be implemented in a way that aligns with the strategies and programs that Moats advocates for. Therefore, I would consider this article to be very relevant to our proposal for Panache and our overall research on determining how effective Panache would be if implemented.

NCLD Editors. “What Is FAPE? | Free Appropriate Public Education.”National Center for Learning Disabilities. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Nov. 2014. <http://www.ncld.org/checklist/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=187&Itemid=293>.

In the course of researching the United States’s education system I found an article published by the National Center For Learning Disabilities which elaborated on the right that every U.S. taxpayer has, FAPE. As the article states, FAPE stands for Free Appropriate Public Education, a regulation that came into effect with the signing in of the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA). Essentially, FAPE requires that the department of education provide taxpayer’s and their children the right to a free specialized education in the case that they have a learning disability. One of the problems with the act though, as the article points out, is that there is a lot of confusion surrounding the act and what it in fact entails. The article clarifies what FAPE does and does not provide for individuals. The main point that NCLD wants the reader, in the case of this article the intended demographic being parents, to take away is that the IDEA is not a entitlement program that provides students who suffer from learning disabilities with a better education than someone who does not have a disability. Therefore, students with disabilities should have equal access to a adequate education as one would get if they did not have a disability.

The National Center For Learning Disabilities is a product of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act 1973 which gave Americans with disabilities, specifically disabilities that effect one’s ability to learn, rights that insured fair educational treatment towards them. The organization was founded by Pete and Carrie Rozelle with the mission of insuring that each individual in America is able to acquire necessary educational skills. The authors of this article consist of the NCLD editorial staff, which is comprised of  professionals that are required to have a comprehensive understanding of the IDEA. Therefore, I find this article to be very reliable and is one of the most trustworthy sources one can tap into in order to acquire disability-related information.

The article is not biased because its information is derived from information that can be found in the IDEA. Therefore, it is a objective source. The strength of this article lies in that it effectively conveys important information that pertains to the IDEA and the larger United States education system as a whole. It clearly points out what rights FAPE does and does not award children with disabilities. One major weakness is that the article is mostly limited to information pertaining to FAPE in particular and not the rest of the IDEA or the way it has been enacted in the public education system .

The information provided by the article gave me a stronger understanding of the United States education system and how it addresses children with learning disabilities. Unfortunately the article didn’t really touch on how hard it is for Americans to fight for the right to have a FAPE for their child. The article neither supports or contradicts are proposal for the implementation of Cartoonclopedia in schools, but it does provide us insight into how it could be implemented in specialized programs that public schools are required to have due to the signing in of the IDEA. Therefore, the article has only a limited degree of relevance to the proposal of Cartoonclopedia.

Pelto, Jonathan and Lecker, Wendy. “Connnecticut Public Schools Woefully Underfunded by State.” Hartford Courant. N.p., 23 Nov. 2012. Web. 05 Dec. 2014. <http://articles.courant.com/2012-11-23/news/hc-op-pelto-lecker-connecticut-schools-underfunded-20121123_1_adequate-education-schools-amount-school-finance-reform>.

The article “Schools Woefully Underfunded, Formula Broken”—published by the Hartford Courant— was written by both Wendy Lecker, a columnist at the Stanford Advocate and parent of three children who attend Stamford schools, and Jonathon Pelto who is a former member of the Connecticut House of Representatives. Elected in 1984, Pelto was able to rise through the governmental ranks over his five terms in the House eventually assuming the role of Deputy Majority Leader. Pelto also was on the Appropriations and Education Committee. Now, Pelto works as a communications strategist. Therefore, I would say that both these people are qualified to address the issues facing public schools in Connecticut. The two argue that the state of Connecticut has an overall poor quality of education because of how grossly underfunded the public school system is. In specific, they point to a report issued by the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities which determined that there is a need of major reform as the report states that the current public education system in place is underfunded by upwards of $763 million. Also, the pair draws on the consistent assessment made by courts in other states across the United States that there is a correlation between the underfunding of public schools and a poorer quality of education.

The target audience of the piece is taxpaying citizens of the state of Connecticut, specifically that of Stamford. The piece also targets Mayor Malloy of Stamford who the article points at as supporting resolutions that do not adequately address the underfunding of public schools. The article, for the most part, is objective because the authors corroborate all of their combined claims with evidence provided by state courts and other objectively-based sources. With that said, I still think it could be construed as being biased slightly seeing as Wendy Lecker, one of the co-authors, is a parent to three children who attend Connecticut public schools. Therefore, she could be a hardline advocate for the need of additional funding towards public schools because she wants her children to get the best education they possibly can. The one major weakness I would point to in the article is that it only addresses the Mayor of Stamford very briefly at the end of the article. I think they could of elaborated more on the Mayor’s failure to take into account the recent report by the CCM, also I think they could have proposed ways in which Mayor Malloy could help provide or direct additional funding towards public schools. Despite these weaknesses, I think that overall the article is well supported by research-based reports and effectively conveys its argument. The information brought forward in this article helps support Panache’s argument for the extreme need of the free educational tool in public schools seeing as public schools are looking for any help they can get to provide an adequate education for their students as the article indicates. Panache will help compensate for the lack of resources available to public schools, which are due to a lack of funding, because Panache is a free education resource. All in all, I would say that this article is very pertinent to our overall argument, specifically that of our target audience, which is public school students, particularly LD-students which the article addresses as being a group that suffers the most from the underfunding of public institutions.