Nominee's Background:
Alfie Kohn writes and speaks widely on human behavior, education, and parenting. His nine books include PUNISHED BY REWARDS (1993), NO CONTEST: The Case Against Competition (1986), THE SCHOOLS OUR CHILDREN DESERVE (1999), THE CASE AGAINST STANDARDIZED TESTING (2000), and, most recently, WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE WELL EDUCATED? And More Essays on Standards, Grading, and Other Follies (2004).
Kohn has been described in Time magazine as "perhaps the country's most outspoken critic of education's fixation on grades [and] test scores." His criticisms of competition and rewards have helped to shape the thinking of educators -- as well as parents and managers -- across the country and abroad. Kohn has been featured on hundreds of TV and radio programs, including the "Today" show and two appearances on "Oprah"; he has been profiled in the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, while his work has been described and debated in many other leading publications.
Kohn lectures widely at universities and to school faculties, parent groups, and corporations. In addition to speaking at staff development seminars and keynoting national education conferences on a regular basis, he conducts workshops for teachers and administrators on various topics. Among them: "Motivation from the Inside Out: Rethinking Rewards, Assessment, and Learning" and "Beyond Bribes and Threats: Realistic Alternatives to Controlling Students' Behavior." The latter corresponds to his book BEYOND DISCIPLINE: From Compliance to Community (ASCD, 1996), which he describes as "a modest attempt to overthrow the entire field of classroom management."
Kohn's various books have been translated into Japanese, Korean, German, Swedish, Dutch, Portuguese, Hebrew, Thai, Malaysian, and Italian. He has also contributed to publications ranging from the Journal of Education to Ladies Home Journal, and from the Nation to the Harvard Business Review ("Why Incentive Plans Cannot Work"). His efforts to make research in human behavior accessible to a general audience have also been published in the Atlantic Monthly, Parents, and Psychology Today.
Nominating Speech:
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Progressive Criteria:
The Education Department will
Support true academic standards and reject punitive standardized testing that deprives schools of funding solely because of low test scores;
Support not penalize school districts that need extra help because they have many poor, minority or immigrant students;
Work to restore public education as an effective vehicle for social mobility, as it has been for so much of our country's history;
Open up many routes to higher education;
Improve teacher pay, dignity and respect;
Reject voucher systems and other privatization schemes;
Protect our students from commercial influences and marketing in their schools;
Understand that in addition to training for good jobs, the public education system must educate responsible, engaged citizens.
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