Too Good to Last the

By

SSOOLL SSTTEERRNN

Foreword by CChheesstteerr EE.. FFiinnnn,, JJrr.. and MMiicchhaaeell JJ.. PPeettrriillllii

M A RC H 2 0 0 8

Too Good to Last: the

of Reading FirstTRUE STORY

By

SSOOLL SSTTEERRNN

Foreword by CChheesstteerr EE.. FFiinnnn,, JJrr.. and MMiicchhaaeell JJ.. PPeettrriillllii

MARCH 2008

Too Good to Last: the

of Reading First

TRUE STORY

2

The True Story of Reading First

CONTENTS

3 FOREWORD

9 INTRODUCTION

13 Reading Science and Reading Wars

17 Designing Reading First

20 From Gold to Silver

22 The Backlash

28 Media Frenzy

31 Shark Bait

35 CONCLUSION: Let Reading First Be Reading First

To the casual observer, the Reading Firststory is just another complicated, ugly, and

utterly familiar Washington scandal: Ethically-challenged political appointee overrides the“merit” process and steers millions of federal dollarsto preferred companies, including one that employshis wife, all the while foiling those who wouldfavor a different outcome. The program’s intendedbeneficiaries – poor, illiterate children – lose out.A courageous federal watchdog investigates, pro-ducing an exposé-style report that brings down thearrogant official, who resigns in disgrace and en-gages an attorney. The opposition party and mediaexploit the opportunity, score many points, andhold the incumbent administration accountable.

A compelling tale, of course, and one that fitsnicely into the dominant “narrative” of theGeorge W. Bush years. Call it the unholy trinity:Jack Abramoff, Halliburton, and Reading First.

Yet when it comes to Reading First, this tale isalmost entirely fiction. As City Journal con-tributing editor Sol Stern reveals in these pages,the true Reading First story is much less sala-cious – and vastly less formulaic – yet muchmore interesting. Certainly it’s more important.There were scandals all right, just not the onesthat grabbed national headlines.

� � �

We at Fordham have been disciples of scientif-

ically based approaches to reading since JeanneChall published Learning to Read: The GreatDebate, back when at least one of us was study-

ing education in graduate school. We’veproudly published two reports by reading ex-pert Louisa Moats on the phenomenon of“whole language” programs masquerading as“balanced literacy,” and we’ve gladly infused cri-teria involving scientifically based reading in-struction into our reviews of stateEnglish/language arts standards (reviews led byChall disciple Sandra Stotsky). When it comesto the “reading wars,” we’re proud partisans –and battle-scarred veterans.

Four decades of rigorous scientific studiesdemonstrate that most young children need ex-plicit instruction in phonics and phonemicawareness in order to learn how to read. This isespecially true for disadvantaged youngsters. In-deed, there’s not one iota of evidence that little

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Too Good to Last

FOREWORDCHESTER E. FINN, JR. AND MICHAEL J. PETRILLI

Four decades of rigorousscientific studiesdemonstrate that mostyoung children need explicitinstruction in phonics andphonemic awareness inorder to learn how to read.This is especially true fordisadvantaged youngsters.

girls and boys learn to read “naturally” as theylearn to speak, that teaching them to “soundout” words somehow harms their intellectualdevelopment or deadens them to the joys ofreading, or that guessing at word cues is an ef-fective approach for struggling readers.

Yet most ed school professors and many of theeducation system’s curricular experts cling to“whole language” dogma with ferocity. In a re-cent column, Lake Wobegon iconoclast – andunabashed political liberal – Garrison Keillorexplains this well:

Liberal dogma says that each child is inherently gifted andwill read if only he is read to. This was true of my grandson;it is demonstrably not true of many kids, including mysandy-haired, gap-toothed daughter…. Grown-ups whostick with dogma even though it condemns children to sec-ond-class lives should be put on buses and sent to NorthDakota to hoe wheat for a year.

It was this flawed dogma that the Reading Firstprogram was designed to overturn. The pro-gram gave the force of law to the mountains ofevidence on effective reading instruction; itasked recipients of federal dollars to choose

reading programs that work. It didn’t say theyhad to do that – but it said they had to do thatif they wanted to share in this particular bucketof money.

At the program’s outset, we were hopeful butguarded enthusiasts. Finn knew from experi-ence as a former federal official the long oddsof getting states and school districts to followUncle Sam’s lead, yet he was also impressed bythe attention that newly-elected PresidentGeorge W. Bush invested in the issue and hope-ful that the recent report of the National Read-ing Panel would finally prove dispositive.Petrilli, then serving in the Bush Education De-partment himself, became friends with ReadingFirst director Chris Doherty and was awed bythe long hours and sincere, selfless commitmentthat Doherty put into making this new pro-gram work. There was a sense of possibility andof (pre-Obama) post-partisanship. Almosteveryone on both sides of Capitol Hill hadvoted for the program as an element of NoChild Left Behind. Perhaps the reading warsmight finally draw to a close, science might tri-umph over ideology, and childhood illiteracymight be relegated to the pages of history.

For several years it appeared that our optimismwas well-founded. One by one, state educationdepartments embraced Reading First. Thou-sands of poor schools signed on enthusiasti-cally. The annual program conferences turnedinto love-fests, with educators giving testimo-nials about the dramatic gains their disadvan-taged students were making. And earlyimplementation studies showed that teacherswere in fact altering their instructional prac-tices in positive ways. Research-based readingwas on a roll.

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There was a sense ofpossibility and of (pre-Obama) post-partisanship. Almosteveryone on both sides ofCapitol Hill had voted forthe program as an elementof No Child Left Behind.

However, it was too much to hope. We watchedin horror as Reading First was attacked, de-fanged, and eventually brought to its knees. Theprogram went from a top White House priorityto victim of one of the biggest budget cuts ever,all in seven years. We protested and editorial-ized, but our pleas fell on deaf ears. Few wantedto know the truth about a much-maligned fed-eral program that was once so full of potential.

So we sought out one of the most effectivetruth-tellers we know, Sol Stern, to put thistragic tale into plain English. He has been writ-ing for the Manhattan Institute’s respected CityJournal for a dozen years, focusing on educationreform primarily through the lens of New YorkCity’s public schools, which his own childrenattended. Stern also contributes to EducationNext, on whose editorial team we both serve, sowe knew about his tenacity, his ability to clarifycomplex material, and his passion for gettingthe story right. He agreed to dive into this tan-gled swamp and figure out what really hap-pened to Reading First.

His story may leave you angry or despairing –perhaps both. Almost nothing you’ve heardabout the Reading First “scandal” turns out tobe true.

What about the Washington-style shenanigansthat landed the program repeatedly on the frontpages? The conflicts of interest, the law-break-ing, the Halliburton-style self-aggrandizement?False, false, false.

Stern painstakingly reconstructs what reallyhappened. Let us summarize:

� President Bush, his domestic policy advisorMargaret Spellings (then LaMontagne), and hisreading czar Reid Lyon originally conceived

Reading First as a strict federal program whosefunds would only flow to states and districtsusing reading curricula whose effectiveness hadbeen validated by scientific studies. Plenty ofearlier federal reading initiatives had been toolax, had allowed unproven reading schemes toqualify for funding, and had wound up makingno difference. Insisting on validation was theway to change that. But there was a problem:just two existing primary reading programs (Di-rect Instruction and Success for All) would ini-tially qualify. So under pressure fromcommercial textbook publishers, whole lan-guage advocates and others, Congress made thefateful decision to ease the eligibility criteria sothat programs “based” on scientific researchcould qualify too. That opened the door to thepossibility that all manner of nonsense mightget funded – as it had under the Clinton-eraReading Excellence Act – unless executivebranch officials held the line and hewed to theprogram’s intentions.

� This heavy responsibility fell to youngChristopher Doherty, the Reading First pro-gram’s new director. Chosen because of his suc-cess in using Direct Instruction to turn aroundfailing schools in inner city Baltimore, Dohertywent to work to ensure that states and districtslived up to the principles of scientifically basedreading research. His charge – from PresidentBush, Spellings, Lyon, and then-Secretary ofEducation (now Fordham trustee) Rod Paige –was to ensure that Reading First schools usedonly programs proven to work and shunnedthose that don’t.

� The inevitable backlash swiftly followed. Ag-grieved vendors of whole language programscomplained bitterly that their wares couldn’t be

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Too Good to Last

purchased with Reading First funds. Theyfound a receptive ear in the Department of Ed-ucation’s Office of the Inspector General(OIG), a bastion of green eyeshade and Dragnettypes who weren’t the least bit knowledgeableabout the ins-and-outs of reading instructionor the intent of the Reading First program.Even with its softer criteria, a faithfully imple-mented and rigorously managed programwould create winners (vendors of proven read-ing strategies) and losers (vendors of snake oil).But the OIG chose to give the squeaky wheels– many of them purveyors of ineffective pro-grams – some undeserved grease.

� Meanwhile, Bob Slavin, developer of thephonics-based reading program Success for All,thought he saw a federal conspiracy because fewReading First dollars flowed his way. But ratherthan blame Congress for softening the pro-gram’s eligibility criteria, or states and schooldistricts for not choosing his program, he set hisgaze on an easier target: the executive branch.He charged the Bush administration with tilt-ing the program in favor of the big commercialpublishers, some of which were now peddlingscientifically “based” basal textbooks developedwith the help of assorted experts, some ofwhom had ties to Direct Instruction.

�The Office of Inspector General failed to findany evidence that the Department of Educationacted against Slavin’s Success for All, though itdid allege that Doherty worked to promote Di-rect Instruction (a dubious charge consideringhow few Reading First schools adopted thatprogram). Importantly, the OIG did not chargeDoherty with any financial conflicts of interest.The press fabricated that part from whole cloth.The inspector general found only that Doherty

placed individuals with “professional” connec-tions to Direct Instruction on panels that re-viewed state Reading First applications. Nevermind that those panels never saw the names ofthe reading programs the states planned to use;never mind that virtually every qualified read-ing expert in the land has some connection tothe few programs that work. The inspector gen-eral invested several years and thousands ofman-hours in his investigation and seemed de-termined to issue a harsh report – and to feed amedia frenzy by implying that there was “moreto come.”

� And that he did. With little to go on besidesa potential appearance of conflict of interest (not

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Yes, the emails areunflattering and ill-considered. No, Dohertyshouldn’t have sent them.But all they really show isan impassioned officialdoggedly trying to ensurethat the federal dollars forwhich he was responsiblewere spent on readingprograms that worked –and not on whole languageprograms that he knewwould keep millions of poorchildren illiterate.

the financial kind, mind you, but those “pro-fessional ties”), he published several titillatingemails from Doherty that OIG investigatorsunearthed after combing through voluminousarchives. Yes, the emails are unflattering and ill-considered. No, Doherty shouldn’t have sentthem. But all they really show is an impassionedofficial doggedly trying to ensure that the fed-eral dollars for which he was responsible werespent on reading programs that worked – andnot on whole language programs that he knewwould keep millions of poor children illiterate.For this, Doherty, a loyal lieutenant in the Busharmy if there ever was one, was forced to resign.As for the rest of the OIG’s case, it fizzled intothin air over the course of his next five reports.But the damage had been done.

� By her actions (or inaction), Secretary Mar-garet Spellings may have hoped that throwingDoherty under the bus would resolve the mat-ter and save the program. More likely, shethought that in sacrificing her soldier she wouldprotect herself. After all, she had micromanagedReading First from her West Wing office sinceday one (she was, in essence, Doherty’s supervi-sor), and her invisible fingerprints were all overthe very decisions that the OIG was question-ing. But after the “scandal” broke, her advocacy(and the president’s) on behalf of Reading Firstall but disappeared. And when ChairmenGeorge Miller piled on with his own unjust in-vestigation, hoping to discredit the Bush ad-ministration, Spellings retreated further. Iraq,this battle of illiteracy is not.

� Meanwhile, Slavin was still aggrieved thatnothing (not the media circus, not the OIG’s re-port, not the Congressional hearings, not Do-herty’s firing) had altered the facts on the

ground, and he was angry that most school dis-tricts still weren’t using Reading First funds topurchase Success for All. So again he cried wolf.One surmises that he pushed his old friendDavid Obey, chairman of the House appropri-ations committee, to slash the program’s budget.Whether that was Slavin’s doing or not, it wasdefinitely Obey’s doing. And as a result ReadingFirst is but a mere shadow of its former self.

What can we learn from this travesty? There’sone major policy lesson that nobody’s talkingabout – namely, Congress’s error in softeningReading First’s language to allow funds toflow to programs based on rather than vali-dated by science. That fateful decision openedthe gates to ineffective programs and put theexecutive branch in an untenable position,trying to navigate the murky waters of thereading program marketplace and discerngood ones from bad.

If Uncle Sam wants to continue telling schoolshow to teach reading in ways that work, thenhe should do it right: set clear, narrowly-definedcriteria, and empower the Department of Edu-cation with enforcement authority. He shouldcertainly amend the section of the current lawbarring the Department from “prescribing” cur-ricula – if indeed prescribing curricula, or atleast prescribing a list of acceptable curricula, iswhat he wants to do.

If this sort of heavy-handedness makes Con-gress skittish (and we can understand why itmight), then it should get the government outof the reading business altogether. Many wisefolks doubt that Washington can or should tryto do anything so complicated and ambitiousas select among programs with rival claims to

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Too Good to Last

instructional effectiveness. They say that Con-gress should focus instead on getting NCLB’saccountability system right. With strongenough incentives to get kids to read profi-ciently, perhaps schools will choose reading pro-grams that work. Then Washington can focuson results rather than curricula.

Whether to ramp up the federal government’s

oversight of reading instruction or get rid of it

entirely is a tough call, worthy of full debate. Yet

no one in Congress is talking about it, nor is the

fading Bush administration (though the White

House recently made the gesture of boosting

Reading First back to a billion dollars in its FY

2009 budget request). It’s easier to trade “scan-

dal” barbs than to address a policy failure with

big implications for millions of children.

So let us do our part. The Reading First saga re-

counted here by Sol Stern indeed reeks of scan-

dal. We see five of them:

1. It’s a scandal that an influential “progressive”

lawmaker, Chairman David Obey, would slash

funding for one of the few effective programs

for poor children in the federal government –

the only No Child Left Behind program that

has received the stamp of approval from both

the Government Accountability Office and the

Office of Management and Budget.

2. It’s a scandal that President Bush and Secre-

tary Spellings hung Chris Doherty out to dry,

even though he was following their orders and

acting aggressively (and heroically) to ensure

that only effective programs received funds

under Reading First.

3. It’s a scandal that Chairman George Miller

(another celebrated “progressive” and an “ac-

countability hawk” to boot) would haul Do-

herty before his committee and accuse him of

being a “criminal” when Miller himself signed

off on the very policy decision that cast Doherty

in his thankless gatekeeper role.

4. It’s a scandal that the Department of Educa-tion’s inspector general can pursue a reckless,one-sided investigation and not be held ac-countable for his actions. Who inspects the in-spectors in today’s Washington?

5.Most of all, it’s a scandal that millions of poorchildren are suffering from the political gamesof adults – toying with the Reading First pro-gram, its implementation, and its budget.

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It’s easier to trade “scandal”barbs than to address apolicy failure with bigimplications for millions ofchildren.

After reading the OIG report in September 2006, many editorial writers expressed “outrage”at what had happened. After reading our report, we hope they do the same.

During the 2000 presidential campaignGeorge W. Bush seemed as passionate

about achieving fundamental education reformas he was about lowering taxes or combatingterrorism. He appeared genuinely moved whenhe spoke about reducing the academic achieve-ment gap between white and black children andending what he called “the soft bigotry of lowexpectations.” He often noted that two thirdsof the children in inner city schools were unableto read proficiently by fourth grade, and hepromised that as president he would finally dosomething about that devastating failure. Themeans would be a new federal initiative to en-courage the use of evidence-based approachesto teaching reading in the early grades. The ini-tiative was to be called “Reading First.” Thename turned out to be prescient.

On the morning of January 21, 2001, less than12 hours after the bands stopped playing at theinaugural balls, the new president convened ameeting on reading in the White House’s Roo-sevelt Room. Present were some of the country’sleading cognitive scientists and reading re-searchers, including Reid Lyon, Louisa Moats,Barbara Foorman, and Claude Goldenberg –plus first lady Laura Bush and President Bush’sdomestic policy advisor, Margaret LaMontagne(who later remarried and took the name Mar-garet Spellings). The participants discussed howrecent advances in reading science might helpsolve America’s biggest education problem: thefact that 40 percent of all children and twothirds of black children were not reading profi-

ciently by fourth grade, an almost certain pre-dictor of academic failure in the upper grades.

President Bush opened the meeting and statedthat under his proposed reading legislation theDepartment of Education would be able toleverage its spending power to prod state educa-tion agencies and local school districts to choosereading programs backed by science and evi-dence – a historic first for the federal govern-ment. As one of the meeting participantsrecalled, Bush said there was “no need to throwgood money into programs that don’t work.We’ve tried that before.”

The president then turned the meeting over toDr. Lyon, the federal government’s chief read-ing scientist. Lyon’s official title was a long one– Chief of the Child Development and Behav-ior Branch of the National Institute of ChildHealth and Human Development, a division ofthe National Institutes of Health (NIH). Lyonhad served on the Bush transition team and wassoon to become a White House reading advisor,while continuing his NIH duties. An ex-para-trooper and special education teacher with aPh.D. in psychology, Lyon had spent almost hisentire professional life promoting the scientificstudy of reading. A Democrat by party registra-tion, Lyon had previously advised both theClinton administration and Congress on read-ing science. But he had also worked withGeorge W. Bush on reading reform well beforethe 2000 election. In 1996, Lyon received anunexpected call at his NIH office from the first-year Texas governor. “I have lots of kids who are

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Too Good to Last

INTRODUCTION

not reading well,” Bush said. “What’s the sci-ence on this that can guide us?” Dr. Lyon thenvisited Texas several times to advise state edu-cation officials on the best approaches to im-prove reading instruction.

The scientists at the White House meeting werenot only looking for a radical change in federaleducation policy, but also hoping for an end tothe “reading wars” that had obstructed progresson classroom instruction for the better part ofthe past century. It wasn’t just that the new pres-ident was an enthusiast for the science of read-ing. Optimism was also fueled by the fact thatCongress was now on the science bandwagon.In no small measure this was due to Dr. Lyon’sefforts during the Clinton years to keep con-gressional leaders briefed about new develop-ments in reading science, including the findingsfrom a generation of research studies supportedby NIH, the U.S. Department of Educationand the National Science Foundation.

Those studies were conducted at the nation’smost prestigious universities by highly qualifiedscientists using randomized field trials – the“gold standard” for scientific research design.Over 40,000 children were followed for at leastfive years by teams of educators, psychologists,neuroscientists, linguists, and physicians – in-vestigating how children learn to read, and test-ing intervention strategies designed toremediate reading failure. Some of the medicalresearchers even used magnetic resonance im-aging to measure differences in brain functionbetween strong and weak readers.

In his 1998 testimony before the House Com-mittee on Education and the Work Force, Lyonsummarized the most significant conclusionfrom the research: “While the fundamental pur-

pose of reading is to derive meaning from print,the key to comprehension starts with the rapidand accurate reading of words. In fact, difficul-ties in decoding unfamiliar words and learningto recognize words rapidly are at the core ofmost reading problems. These difficulties canbe traced systematically to initial difficulties inunderstanding that the language that is heardby the ear is actually composed of smaller seg-ments of sound.”

Congress eventually affirmed its own supportfor reading science by creating the NationalReading Panel (NRP) and commissioning it tomake recommendations about the best meth-ods for teaching reading. After the most com-prehensive review of scientific, peer-reviewedreading research ever undertaken, the 2000NRP report concluded that beginning readers –especially those from disadvantaged homes –should be taught systematically and explicitlyto hear and identify the different speech soundsincluded in spoken words (phonemic aware-ness), move on to learning the symbols that rep-resent the speech sounds and how to blendthem to sound out whole words (phonics), and

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It wasn’t just that the newpresident was an enthusiastfor the science of reading.Optimism was also fueledby the fact that Congresswas now on the sciencebandwagon.

then build fluency, vocabulary and comprehen-sion. The panel also reported that reading sci-ence had developed effective new technologiesto monitor students’ progress in decoding writ-ten language. To make an analogy with medicalresearch, reading science developed not only theeducational equivalent of a treatment for dia-betes but also the diagnostic tools to assess howthe treatment was working.

With the scientific consensus now also repre-sented in an official congressional report, anagreement in principle on the administration’snew reading legislation was achieved fairlyquickly. Dr. Lyon partnered with Robert Sweet,a senior education staffer on the House Com-mittee on Education and the Workforce (and aformer official in the Reagan and first Bush ad-ministrations) in drafting the Reading First bill.As part of the No Child Left Behind Act, itpassed the Congress by overwhelming majori-ties and was signed into law by President Bushon January 8, 2002. The total authorization forReading First was almost $1 billion per year forsix years, less than 2 percent of all federal edu-cation spending. The funds were eventually dis-tributed to all of the state education agencies,and then to 5,700 high poverty elementaryschools nationwide.

A comprehensive independent study to assessReading First’s impact on participating schoolsand their pupils isn’t due until later this year.Still, as the following analysis makes clear, thisrelatively modest investment in federal fundshas already paid significant dividends for at-riskchildren in a number of states and school dis-tricts. According to the Government Account-ability Office (GAO), the program is extremelypopular in the states and has the potential to

narrow the black-white achievement gap. That’smore than can be said about most previous fed-eral education programs. Hundreds of billionsof dollars in compensatory Title I funds sent tothe states and local districts, with no strings at-tached, have brought little academic progressover the past 40 years.

Reading First has already fulfilled its drafters’hopes in another respect. Every state educationagency in the country signed on for the newfederal reading grants, and each pledged tomake sure that the NRP-recommended in-structional principles were followed in the1,500 districts that eventually participated inthe program. Close to 100,000 elementaryschool teachers have been trained in scientifi-cally based reading instruction, thus accom-plishing an end run around the nation’sscience-resistant education schools. It’s highlylikely that most of those teachers have im-proved the ways they teach reading.

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Too Good to Last

According to theGovernment AccountabilityOffice (GAO), the programis extremely popular in thestates and has the potentialto narrow the black-whiteachievement gap. That’smore than can be saidabout most previous federaleducation programs.

Yet all that good work is now in danger of beingnullified because of a sustained political assaulton the Reading First program by an unlikely tri-partite coalition. First the program was attackedby organizations representing the nation’s edu-cation schools and public school English/lan-guage arts teachers. Then a wide-ranging seriesof complaints was leveled at Reading First’s im-plementation by Robert Slavin, the developerof Success for All, a phonics-based reading pro-gram. Angered that his program was not widelyselected by Reading First schools, Slavincharged that this was due to bias and financialconflict of interest by Reading First’s top offi-cials. His complaints prompted an investigationand a series of unfavorable reports on ReadingFirst by the U.S. Department of Education’sOffice of the Inspector General. Finally, afterthe 2006 midterm elections, key Democraticlawmakers swooped in for the kill when theysaw an opening to discredit President Bush.

Unfortunately, the Bush administration alsofailed the test of fidelity to a program that wasonce the apple of the president’s eye. The ad-ministration committed a handful of blundersin organizing this complex new program, in-cluding being insufficiently vigilant against theappearance of conflict of interest in the pro-gram’s grant review process. But those mistakeswere compounded when the Bush administra-tion capitulated to media and political pressuresat the first whiff of a potential scandal involvingseveral consultants and the program’s first exec-utive director, Christopher Doherty. The ad-ministration forced Doherty’s resignation in2006 – despite ample evidence that he was sim-ply following the president’s orders and the law’smandate. But even worse, it then refused to ex-pend any of its diminishing political capital todefend the still-valid principles of Reading First,

just when the program had grown more popu-lar than ever with its participants.

Indeed, after the midterm elections the pro-gram was left defenseless as key DemocraticCongressional leaders hyped the conflict of in-terest charges into a virtual criminal conspiracy,then slashed Reading First funds by almost twothirds. The $670 million cut from the success-ful reading initiative is now being used to boostspending on other education programs with nocomparable track record of success favored bythe Democratic leadership.

In the pages that follow, I describe the trials thatReading First has been forced to endure. It’s acautionary tale that raises the question ofwhether the federal government, which we allknow is good at writing checks, is also capableof nudging states and school districts to do theright thing in education – even when the rightthing is backed by a broad scientific consensus.President Bush was undoubtedly sincere whenhe said in the first White House meeting onReading First that there was “no need to throwgood money into programs that don’t work.”But his administration did little to protect itssignature reading program when it came underattack. It remains to be seen how many of

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Unfortunately, the Bushadministration also failedthe test of fidelity to a program that was once theapple of the president’s eye.

America’s schools, absent some form of externalpressure and guidance, can ever be convincedto use evidence- and scientifically based prac-tices to help the millions of children betrayedby unproven teaching methodologies.

Reading Science and Reading Wars

Americans have been arguing about thebest way to teach reading almost since the

beginning of the republic. In the early 19th cen-tury, millions of children were taught to readthrough the phonetics exercises in Noah Web-ster’s classic Blue Back Speller. The method wasso successful that Alexis De Tocqueville andother visitors to the United States were amazedby the growth of mass literacy in the new na-tion. The famous McGuffey Readers, mixingphonics lessons with morally instructive chil-dren’s literature, then became the textbooks ofchoice in half of the country’s classrooms.

The anti-phonics backlash began in the mid-19th century with the intervention of HoraceMann of Massachusetts, acknowledged to bethe founder of the U.S. public school system.Anticipating the complaint of progressive edu-cators in the next century, Mann believed thatteaching children to read by repetitive phoneticdrills was drudgery and referred to the letters ofthe alphabet as 26 “bloodless” and “skeleton-like” figures. Instead, he argued (and was ex-tremely influential in this) that children couldbe taught to recognize and memorize wholewords before moving on to deciphering themeaning of whole sentences.

The progressive approach to reading instructioncame into its own in the 1920s, under the tute-

lage of John Dewey. Progressive educators be-lieved that children could start out reading byrecognizing whole words, or pictographs.(Dewey also recommended that children not betaught to read until they were eight years old.)From Dewey on, the progressives dominatedthe nation’s education schools, tilting readingpedagogy away from the unloved phonicsmethod and toward one variant or another of“whole word” instruction.

The whole word reading method was a philos-ophy of child development as much as class-room pedagogy. It was based on the assumptionthat learning to read was an inherently naturalprocess, similar to the manner in which childrenlearn oral language, and therefore did not re-quire a great deal of explicit and direct instruc-tion. In reading, as in other subjects, progressiveeducators came to believe that the teachershould be “a guide on the side” instead of “a sageon the stage.” In fact, it was argued that in theright classroom environment and with justenough helpful guidance by teachers, most chil-dren could make progress towards derivingmeaning from print. This pedagogical approachrelies heavily on the child’s use of so-called con-text cues (such as the first and last letters in theword, the length of the word, the other wordsin the sentence, and even pictures on the page)to identify unknown words. It emphasizes mem-orizing words as wholes instead of piecing themtogether from a fixed set of component parts.

The Dick and Jane readers, incorporating thewhole word approach, were the most popularreading texts in the public schools from the1930s on. But proponents of phonics began tomake a comeback in the 1950s because of agi-tation by parents who believed their childrencouldn’t wait to guess the meaning of words.The phonics camp received a huge boost with

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Too Good to Last

the publication in 1955 of Rudolf Flesch’s anti-whole-word best seller, Why Johnny Can’t Read.The pendulum then swung back and forth be-tween whole word (also sometimes known as“look-say”) and its successor, “whole language,”and phonics for the next half century. In 1987,whole language was officially adopted by theCalifornia Board of Public Instruction andmandated to be used in every school in thestate. By 1994, California’s reading scores hadplummeted to near the bottom in the nation,according to the National Assessment of Educa-tional Progress (NAEP). The state educationboard then did an almost complete about-faceand returned to a mainly phonics-based ap-proach to teaching reading in the early grades.

But while the reading wars continued in stateand local school boards, serious researchers werebeginning to look closely at the evidence. In themid-1960s, the Carnegie Corporation of New

York commissioned Harvard education profes-sor Jeanne Chall, widely regarded as the nation’sleading reading scholar, to review all of the em-pirical research on the most effective methodsof teaching reading in the early grades. Her con-clusions were published in 1967, in the classicLearning to Read: The Great Debate.While ac-knowledging that there was no one best methodfor all beginning readers, Chall punctured thetheory embraced by progressive educators thatlearning to read was natural for children. All theavailable evidence, according to Chall, sup-ported the notion that most children, and par-ticularly children from disadvantaged homes,benefited from being taught the phonetic codeof the English language. Chall also recom-mended that such instruction be systematic andexplicit, with teachers using direct instruction,as opposed to being “guides on the side.”

More evidence on the superiority of a decodingapproach for early readers came in 1977 withthe results from Project Follow Through, whichwas sponsored by the federal government aspart of President Johnson's War on Poverty.Project Follow Through remains to this day thelargest experimental study ever conducted tocompare the effectiveness of different instruc-tional methodologies. The $500 million re-search project examined the effects on studentacademic progress of 22 discreet instructionalprograms operating at over 180 high-povertyschools around the country. It concluded thatonly one of the models raised the academic per-formance of low-income children, the little-known Direct Instruction programheadquartered at the University of Oregon anddeveloped by Siegfried Engelmann, one of theunsung heroes of American education.

Direct Instruction today refers to a set of morethan 100 curricula and instructional practices

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In 1987, whole languagewas officially adopted by theCalifornia Board of PublicInstruction and mandatedto be used in every school inthe state. By 1994,California’s reading scoreshad plummeted to near thebottom in the nation,according to the NationalAssessment of EducationalProgress (NAEP).

that incorporate Engelmann’s tightly-designed,systematic and highly-empirical approach toteaching a range of academic subjects. Its read-ing program begins with systematic and explicitinstruction in phonemic awareness and phon-ics. Success for All, developed by Robert Slavinat John Hopkins University, is yet anotherphonics-based reading program that, in numer-ous studies since the 1990s, has repeatedly beenfound to be effective in raising reading achieve-ment. In 1999, the American Institute for Re-search (AIR), one of the nation’s leadingbehavioral and social science research organiza-tions, named Direct Instruction and Success forAll as the only two commercial reading pro-grams to have significantly improved readingoutcomes in repeated empirical studies usingrandomized field trials and reported in peer-re-viewed professional journals.

Despite accumulating evidence from all the sci-entific studies, whole language purists neverthe-less still insist that learning to read is a naturalprocess and that most children can intuit thealphabetic principle and the meaning of printedwords with some guidance (on the side) from ateacher and through pleasant cooperative class-room activities such as “shared reading” and“reading circles.” Basically, this approach saysthat kids learn to read by reading – by immers-ing themselves in print.

Yet the whole language movement is unable topoint to any consistent scientific evidence back-ing its claims. In response to the overwhelmingbody of scientific studies confirming the effec-tiveness of a decoding emphasis in early readinginstruction, whole language advocates have in-stead argued that its theories of how childrenlearn to read cannot be assessed by “positivist”science. Ken Goodman, one of the leaders of

the whole language movement, rejects scientificresearch in education, arguing that it sets up“artificial experiments.” (It was Goodman whodefined the process of learning to read as a “psy-cholinguistic guessing game.”) Instead of exper-imental studies, whole language advocates favorresearch models based on subjective or “ethno-graphic” classroom observation. The educationschools call this “qualitative” research, to distin-guish it from the empirical methods used by sci-entists. In 2003, the whole-language-dominatedNational Council of Teachers of English(NCTE) passed a resolution attacking ReadingFirst for favoring only “one model” of science.Instead, NCTE called for “implementation ofdiverse kinds of scientific research, includingteacher research.” Translation: teachers are com-petent to evaluate instructional methods by ob-serving their own classrooms. Not surprisingly,qualitative research and teacher observations al-ways seem to validate progressive educators’ fa-vorite classroom practices.

The progressives’ attack on reading science be-came overtly and unapologetically political.Goodman regularly referred to phonics as thetool of right-wing Christian fundamentalists, thisdespite the fact that the reading research com-munity, like the rest of academia, is dominatedby Democrats. Writing recently in Teachers Col-lege Record, Pennsylvania State education profes-sor Patricia Hinchey argued that forcingclassroom teachers to subject children to “drilland kill” phonics instruction is part of a conser-vative plot. Its ultimate purpose, says Hinchey,is to make sure that students will become “in-creasingly valuable ‘human capital,’ available foruse in business and industry,” yet never attain the“critical literacy” necessary for active participa-tion in the democratic process. In her presiden-

15

Too Good to Last

tial address to the 2002 NCTE convention, Ari-zona State University professor Carole Edelskyattacked the National Reading Panel report andNo Child Left Behind: “It’s no accident. There’san agenda at work here, and it’s not ours. It be-longs in part to the religious right, but mostly itbelongs to the Business Roundtable.”

Such fantasies notwithstanding, the whole lan-guage movement was eventually forced to paysome lip service to science and the concerns ofeducation consumers. It accomplished this bychanging the labeling on its products. Moreoften than not, whole language reading pro-grams in the schools are now called “balanced

literacy.” It’s a deceptive marketing slogan, asLouisa Cook Moats has shown in Whole Lan-guage Lives On: The Illusion of “Balanced” Read-ing Instruction. According to Moats, “It is tooeasy for practitioners, while endorsing ‘balance’to continue teaching whole language withoutever understanding the most important researchfindings about reading or incorporating thosefindings into their classroom practice.”

Moats wrote those words in 2000. They turnedout to be prophetic in describing the whole lan-guage/balanced literacy coup that occurredthree years later in the New York City schooldistrict, the largest in the country.

16


Gotham’s schools came under the control of Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2002. Bloombergthen picked Joel Klein, a former Justice Department official, as chancellor of NYC schools.Because neither Bloomberg nor Klein had an education background, the most fateful deci-sion they made as they organized their new administration was the selection of Diana Lamas Deputy Chancellor for Teaching and Learning. Chancellor Klein gave Lam control overmost of the early pedagogical decisions, while he himself focused on structural reforms. Itsoon became clear that Lam was a fervent advocate for the whole language reading ap-proach. She elevated Teachers College professor Lucy Calkins to become the system’s mostimportant staff developer and teacher trainer. Calkins is perhaps the nation’s leading cham-pion of the doctrine that almost all children are natural readers and writers, and that there-fore it is criminal for them to be drilled in soul-deadening phonics lessons and through“teacher centered” instruction.

Deputy Chancellor Lam’s first instructional decision was to ditch the aforementioned Successfor All program that had been in use in dozens of low-performing schools, despite the factthat the program was responsible for steadily raising reading scores among thousands ofpoor, minority children. The core reading program for almost all of the city’s schools nowbecame balanced literacy (with a small dollop of phonics to justify the word “balanced” inthe product label). The reading program was practically taken off the shelf from Calkins’sReaders and Writers Project at Teachers College and it was then enforced in near dictatorialfashion in almost all classrooms in the lower grades. Calkins’s institute has received over$10 million in contracts from the city to spread the gospel of balanced literacy to teachers.

Designing Reading First

As mentioned earlier, the authors of the firstdraft of the Reading First legislation were

Dr. Reid Lyon, the head of all reading sciencestudies at the NIH, and Robert Sweet, a veteraneducation staffer at the House education com-

mittee. Lyon and Sweet accepted as a given thatthe law would be opposed by the overwhelmingmajority of education school professors whoseinstructional doctrines determine the way fu-ture K-12 teachers are trained. Those doctrineshave been aptly described by E.D. Hirsch Jr. asthe “thoughtworld” of American education. It isnot a force to be easily moved by one more fed-eral reading program.

17

Too Good to Last

It is not altogether surprising that the 2007 federal NAEP tests showed that New York Citystudents made no improvement from 2003 to 2007 in fourth- and eighth-grade reading (de-spite the fact that 25 percent of the city’s test takers received accommodations meant for dis-abled youngsters, the highest percentage in the nation). However, not a single public officialor editorial writer at the city’s major newspapers thought to connect the dismal NAEP readingresults with the education department’s pivotal decision in 2003 to abandon Success for Allin several dozen low-performing schools and impose balanced literacy on all the schools. Asthis episode shows, making instructional choices that fly in the face of the evidence for whatworks remains all too common among educators. That it happened in the nation’s largestschool district and with little public comment also reflects the cultural and political resistancethat the Reading First program eventually faced.

Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein fully backed Lam’s choice, despite being warned byscientists from the National Reading Panel that the city’s curriculum did not contain a “core,scientifically based reading program.” Chancellor Klein not only brushed off these criticismsbut disparaged the claims for science in the NRP report and the Reading First legislation.“It’s being done in the name of science,” he told the New York Times. “And the question is:where’s the science?”

Nevertheless, by giving the appearance of using some traditional phonics instruction, bal-anced literacy disarmed many of the city’s parents and elected officials. Even after Lam’sdeparture in 2004, Bloomberg and Klein continued to impose the same approach to theteaching of reading – science be damned. The city has so far spent upwards of $100 millionto re-educate its teachers in the pedagogical doctrines of whole language masquerading asbalanced literacy.

Interests other than pedagogical were also atstake in the coming struggle over Reading First.A few years ago, the National Council onTeacher Quality surveyed the nation’s educationschools and found that 85 percent of their ele-mentary education classes didn’t even teach fu-ture teachers the principles of phonics andscientific reading instruction. If a major shiftwere to occur in teaching methodologies in thenation’s primary schools, pressure for changewould mount on the colleges of education,which presently have few professors capable of –let alone inclined toward – teaching phonics andreading science. Professional development con-tracts from the $500 billion-plus education in-dustry would suddenly be up for grabs as well.

Lyon and Sweet were also acutely aware of theprecedent of the last bungled effort to use fed-eral funds to promote scientifically based read-ing instruction, a Clinton-era reading initiativethat was triggered by the publication of a reportsupporting reading science issued by the Na-tional Research Council. In 1998, Congress

18


If a major shift were tooccur in teachingmethodologies in the nation’sprimary schools, pressure forchange would mount on thecolleges of education, whichpresently have few professorscapable of – let aloneinclined toward – teachingphonics and reading science.Professional developmentcontracts from the $500billion-plus educationindustry would suddenly beup for grabs as well.

“We knew we were battling a culture of hostility to science in the education industry,” recallsSweet. “Reading First was created to be a catalyst, to provide a financial incentive for schoolsfinally to start doing the right thing for the millions of kids left behind in reading.”

Reid Lyon recently expounded on this point:

“Our analysis of the conditions under which science could inform educational policies andpractices indicated that many barriers existed – including, but not limited to, an anti-scientificspirit that pervaded mainstream education, a lack of accountability for results, a tendency towardpostmodern and other philosophical positions on teaching and learni.ng, a tendency toimplement instructional strategies and programs on the basis of tradition, anecdotes, untestedassumptions and a lack of attention to evidence-based instruction in teacher colleges. And wealso found that educational practices were rarely changed to any discernible degree by widelyread policy papers and reviews and policy studies carried out by major think tanks anduniversities. The gaps between what we knew scientifically and what was implemented in schoolsremained. This gap was not a function of difficulties in implementing proven instructionalpractices. The gap remained because science could not compete with the status quo.”

passed the Reading Excellence Act (REA) witha budget of $270 million. The language of thelaw required that the funds be spent on readingprograms that produce “measurable, positive re-sults” supported by “scientific research.” Train-ing in reading instruction funded by the REAwas also supposed to be based on “reliable,replicable research on reading.” At the time,reading science advocates believed that the law’slanguage would be sufficient to begin changinginstructional practices in the classrooms. Butthe legislation had no real teeth, no mechanismto ensure that the schools receiving federal read-ing grants actually implemented the scientificreading approach. Many school districts tookthe federal money, but in the classrooms it wasbusiness as usual. Though well-intentioned,REA sometimes ended up sending more federalmoney to whole language reading programs.

Aware of the REA debacle, Lyon and Sweet con-sciously designed Reading First to circumventteacher training institutions that could be ex-pected to resist any new federal program promot-ing the systematic teaching of phonemicawareness and phonics as the foundation of read-ing instruction. “We knew we were battling aculture of hostility to science in the education in-dustry,” recalls Sweet. “Reading First was createdto be a catalyst, to provide a financial incentivefor schools finally to start doing the right thingfor the millions of kids left behind in reading.”

One might say that Reading First was a $1 bil-lion per year federal bribe to get school districtsfinally to begin doing what they should havebeen doing all along. Obviously, there was noexpectation by the legislation’s authors that fed-eral money alone could reverse decades of oppo-sition to scientifically based instruction in thenation’s classrooms. However, Lyon and Sweetwere convinced that this time around they not

only had the right language in the law, but alsothat the President of the United States was per-sonally committed to reading science as themeans of narrowing the black-white achieve-ment gap. Under such circumstances, the Read-ing First planners believed that theadministration would be proactive, that itwould try to prevent gaming of the system bylocal education officials keen to use the federalfunds to maintain the instructional status quo.

Note that Reading First was not an actual man-date. No state or school district was ever forcedto join the program or use a particular readingprogram. But Lyon and Sweet assumed that acritical mass of schools would apply for theReading First grants and actually implementthe general principles of reading science as re-quired in the law. Districts were going to be of-fered significant funding to change the readinginstruction in their lowest performing schools.This would show that scientifically based in-struction was lifting reading achievement inpreviously struggling schools. Such a real-lifedemonstration would then, they hoped and ex-pected, ignite a counter-cultural educationmovement of teachers, administrators and par-ents who would trumpet the effectiveness ofclassroom reading instruction shaped by thefindings of science.

19

Too Good to Last

Note that Reading First wasnot an actual mandate. Nostate or school district wasever forced to join theprogram or use a particularreading program.

The Reading First legislation provided a thicklayer of contractual benchmarks and a two-tiered review process to guarantee that thesefederal grants would be spent only for readingprograms that conform to the principles of“scientifically based reading research,” orSBRR. (The acronym appears dozens of timesin the legislation.) In order to qualify for areading grant, a state education agency was re-quired to submit a detailed proposal to theU.S. Department of Education. States were notrequired to list the specific reading programsthey would use. But a grant proposal had to at-test that the state would make sure the princi-ples of SBRR were followed in the schoolsreceiving the funds. State education agencieswere then required to conduct their own reviewprocess for grant proposals submitted by eachschool district hoping to qualify for ReadingFirst funds. Each state had the responsibility tomake sure that districts receiving funds contin-ued to maintain fidelity to SBRR and to dis-approve proposals by districts to use programsthat did not conform to the principles of

SBRR. The law granted the Department of Ed-ucation the authority to step in and cancelreading grants if it found that the purpose ofthe legislation was being undermined by a stateor school district.

Ultimately, the success and integrity of ReadingFirst would hinge on state officials making wisejudgments about whether programs selected byschool districts met the standards of scientifi-cally based reading instruction. It was obviousthat the federal government couldn’t just sendmoney to states and districts and expect ele-mentary teachers to follow the recommenda-tions of the NRP on teaching reading. The vastmajority of classroom instructors were ignorantabout reading science and unequipped to beginteaching the NRP-recommended approach ofphonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocab-ulary and comprehension. Teachers would haveto receive extensive training in the protocols ofreading science. Since the underlying rationalefor Reading First was President Bush’s pledgethat the federal government would no longerfund instructional programs that “don’t work,”the big program implementation question washow to make sure that the reading programsschool districts purchased with their federal dol-lars really worked – i.e., that they were basedon science.

From Gold to Silver

In crafting the legislation, the dilemma forReid Lyon, Robert Sweet, and other congres-

sional negotiators was clear: if the criterion forfunding were that each approved reading pro-gram had to show proof – through “gold stan-dard” experimental studies – of its effectiveness,only Direct Instruction, Success for All and per-

20


Ultimately, the success andintegrity of Reading Firstwould hinge on stateofficials making wisejudgments about whetherprograms selected by schooldistricts met the standardsof scientifically basedreading instruction.

haps one other program (Open Court) wouldqualify. In the early stages of drafting the bill,according to Lyon,

we recommended that federal funding shouldbe contingent on program-specific evidenceof effectiveness derived from studies employ-ing appropriate research designs and meth-ods.… We felt that this straightforwardcriterion would honor the science and stimu-late the publishing industry and other educa-tional developers to develop proven programsfor the kids that Reading First was designedto help. To be sure, there were few readingprograms that would have met the criteria.On the other hand, we predicted that by set-ting the higher standard, vendors would havea clear effectiveness goal to achieve in orderto be competitive.

Lyon’s program-effectiveness criterion was re-flected in early Reading First drafts. However, itsoon became clear that key leaders on theHouse and Senate education committees as wellas higher-ups in the Bush administration fearedthat sticking with the “gold standard” require-ment would be too restrictive. Some of the ne-gotiators argued that such narrow criteria mightalso violate a section of the 30-year-old Depart-ment of Education organization law that pro-hibits it from requiring states and local districtsto adopt a particular curriculum or instruc-tional program. Meanwhile, some reading ad-vocacy groups were also pushing for the widestpossible criteria for schools to receive fundsunder the law. “Congressional members werebeing lobbied heavily by developers of non-SBRR programs who did not want to be ex-cluded from funding despite no evidence ofeffectiveness,” recalls Lyon. That’s exactly whathad happened under the older Reading Excel-

lence Act, as school districts favoring whole lan-guage simply submitted boilerplate applicationsfor federal reading funds and assumed (cor-rectly, as it turned out) there would be littleoversight over how the funds were spent.

Lyon and Sweet eventually had to back awayfrom their preferred “gold standard” proof ofeffectiveness. A looser definition of what wouldqualify as an acceptable reading program wasestablished. Instead of restricting the funds toprograms that had themselves been tested sci-entifically, the final bill specified that whatmade a reading program effective and thereforeeligible for funding was whether it was “based”on the general findings from scientific readingresearch as outlined in the National ReadingPanel report. In this regard, the key section of

21

Too Good to Last

In this regard, the keysection of the bill definedscientifically based readinginstruction as follows:“explicit and systematicinstruction in – (A)phonemic awareness; (B)phonics; (C) vocabularydevelopment; (D) readingfluency, including oralreading skills; and (E)reading comprehensionstrategies.”

the bill defined scientifically based reading in-struction as follows: “explicit and systematic in-struction in – (A) phonemic awareness; (B)phonics; (C) vocabulary development; (D)reading fluency, including oral reading skills;and (E) reading comprehension strategies.”

That compromise language (a retreat of sortsfrom President Bush’s original insistence thatonly programs proven to work should befunded) was agreed on by the summer of 2001.By the time the president signed the bill sixmonths later, the big commercial publisherswere racing to produce new basal readers thathad never been tested in randomized field trials,but that seemed to incorporate the general prin-ciples of SBRR.

Reid Lyon recently reflected on the decision byCongress and the administration to settle forthe looser definition of a “scientifically based”program: “Both Bob Sweet and I were con-cerned when the criterion for receiving ReadingFirst funding was modified from what we hadrecommended – which was that funding shouldbe provided for programs with proven effective-ness – to a softer criterion that programs had tobe based on Scientifically Based Reading Re-search. We predicted that this change wouldstimulate a number of unintended conse-quences ranging from many programs claimingthat they were based on SBRR when they werenot and, related to this, states and local districtshaving difficulty identifying which programswere actually effective with the kids in their dis-tricts and schools.”

This change to a “softer criterion” in the lan-guage of the Reading First legislation provedfateful. In the early days of the program, it gen-erated confusion in many state education de-

partments about which reading programs wouldqualify for federal funding. In a broader sense, itopened up a Pandora’s box that eventually cameback to haunt the Bush administration.

The Backlash

Even under the best of circumstances (i.e.,without the ideologically motivated push-

back that would come from the ed-school profes-soriate), Reading First was certain to be acomplex and difficult program to implement.Department of Education officials in Washing-ton were being tasked with supervising 50 sepa-rate state Reading First programs, each with itsown procedures for getting approved readingmaterials and teacher training protocols intoqualifying schools. Each of the states, in turn,was required to review the proposals of dozensof school districts and then monitor how the tar-geted schools were using a host of different read-ing programs. In addition, the Reading Firstoffice in Washington had to oversee regionaltechnical assistance centers set up under the lawthat, among their other tasks, were expected toprovide guidance to the states about the manyreading programs available on the market andwhether they qualified under the law’s SBRR cri-teria. The central staff also had to make sure thateach state conducted initial training in readingscience and then continued professional devel-

22


This change to a “softercriterion” in the language ofthe Reading First legislationproved fateful.

opment for the frontline teachers who were ex-pected to deliver instruction in the classroom.Since U.S. education law required that non-pub-lic schools be included in most federal compen-satory programs for economically disadvantagedstudents, the Reading First staff also had to makesure that eligible private schools (mostlyCatholic) received their fair share of programservices, were properly consulted on the districts’choice of reading programs, and then were in-cluded in the teacher training.

With the “softer criterion” in the law definingan acceptable reading program, Reading First’sWashington staff had to take on still more ofthe burden of guaranteeing that the federalgrant money was used (as intended) to changeclassroom teaching practices, rather than to un-derwrite the status quo. In carrying out thismission, Reading First officials had to walk apolitical tightrope. On the one hand, theyneeded to make sure that the bad precedent ofthe Reading Excellence Act wasn’t repeated,with districts sneaking in programs that tiltedtoward whole language. On the other hand,they had to guard against accusations from sus-picious members of Congress – Republicansand Democrats alike – that federal bureaucratswere improperly “dictating” to district officialswhich instructional programs to use in theclassroom. Nothing of such complexity andwith so many political minefields in its pathhad ever been tried before by the U.S. Depart-ment of Education.

The Bush administration appointed a 35-year-old former Foreign Service officer namedChristopher Doherty as Reading First’s execu-tive director. Doherty was handed this dauntinglogistical and political challenge with little guid-ance, few precedents to follow, and just oneother professional to assist him. Doherty’s im-

mediate previous position was running the Bal-timore Curriculum Project, which merged twoeffective elementary school instructional pro-grams, E.D. Hirsch’s Core Knowledge and Di-rect Instruction, in five of the lowestperforming schools in Baltimore. Prior to thatposition Doherty was director of the BarakaSchool in Kenya, a unique boarding school fordisadvantaged Baltimore 12-year-olds.

There was no question about Doherty’s passionfor education and his concern for helping disad-vantaged children. From first-hand experience,Doherty was steeped in reading science and the

23

Too Good to Last

In carrying out this mission,Reading First officials hadto walk a political tightrope. . . Nothing of suchcomplexity and with somany political minefields inits path had ever been triedbefore by the U.S.Department of Education.

There was no questionabout Doherty’s passion foreducation and his concernfor helping disadvantagedchildren.

SBRR protocols. He had seen the Direct In-struction (DI) program lift reading scores insome of the lowest performing and poorestschools in Baltimore. He knew that the instruc-tional program was backed by a mountain ofscientific studies showing it had successfullyraised the reading proficiency of disadvantagedchildren in school districts all over the country.Since Doherty’s wife Laura was also a DItrainer, one might even say the Dohertys werepart of the DI family.

Virtually every education official in the admin-istration was aware of Doherty’s professionalties to DI, as well as his wife’s work for one ofthe DI programs. They didn’t see it as a prob-lem. In fact, it was one of the major reasons hegot the job. After all, President Bush himselfwas convinced that programs like DI could raisereading scores in the nation’s schools and nar-row the black-white academic performance gap.When the new president made school visits todrum up support for the pending NCLB andReading First legislation, his staff looked forclassrooms that could show the efficacy of sci-

entifically based reading programs. That’s why,in a scene observed around the world on themorning of September 11, 2001, PresidentBush was in a second grade classroom in BookerElementary School in Sarasota, Florida observ-ing a scripted reading lesson (number 60) fromthe DI instruction manual. Before Bush re-ceived the news about the terrorist attacks, hewas observing the children reading a storycalled “The Pet Goat.” The story was writtenby DI program designers to serve as an explicitphonics drill on word pairs and syllables thatchildren often confuse.

Later events would show, however, that the Bushadministration was naïve to assume that Do-herty’s ties to the DI program would present nopolitical problems, though no one could make acase that either Doherty’s DI connections or hiswife’s constituted a true conflict of interest. Sim-ply put, the DI connection became a lightningrod and seemed to add weight to the politicalattacks directed at Reading First and the Bushadministration after the midterm elections.

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When the new presidentmade school visits to drumup support for the pendingNCLB and Reading Firstlegislation, his staff lookedfor classrooms that couldshow the efficacy ofscientifically based readingprograms.

On September 11, 2001, President Bush received wordof the terrorist attacks while observing a DI lesson.

There’s an incredible irony in this – one thatseems to have escaped the administration’s crit-ics on Capitol Hill and the media. The fact isthat Direct Instruction gained hardly any cus-tomers because of Reading First, despite theprogram director’s ties to the program and hisawareness of the scientific consensus that theDI approach was a proven way to lift readingscores for at-risk students. Nor were there anyfinancial benefits for Success for All, the onlyother reading program shown by several scien-tific studies to have raised reading achievement.These two highly effective but tightly scriptedreading programs are more expensive andharder to implement in the classroom than thebasal readers put out by the big publishers thatclaim to incorporate the principles of SBRR intheir lessons. When the language in the ReadingFirst law was changed to allow such commercialproducts to qualify for funding, despite nothaving been scientifically tested for effective-ness, those publishers gained an enormous mar-keting advantage over both Direct Instruction

and Success for All: their products were bothcheaper and easier to deploy.

This did not please Sigfried Engelmann, devel-oper of the Direct Instruction program. He crit-icized the change in the Reading First law thatallowed untested programs to be funded so longas they were “based” on the principles of SBRR.“This reasoning,” Engelmann wrote, “seems tobe based on the idea that it is morally importantto have a large number of programs available,whether or not they have been demonstrated towork.” As a result, according to Engelmann,“the increases in DI sales from new implemen-tations funded by Reading First was not morethan 2 percent.”

Success for All’s founder and president, RobertSlavin, was even more unhappy when he real-ized that the big publishers’ untested basal read-ers were getting the lion’s share of the sales toReading First schools. But Slavin didn’t attrib-ute this to the language in the Reading First lawthat allowed basal readers to be funded. Instead,he issued a long formal complaint to the De-partment of Education and congressional com-mittees, alleging that biased federal ReadingFirst officials were responsible for Success forAll’s failure to be selected by more states anddistricts. Slavin charged that Reading First offi-cials had financial conflicts of interest that ledthem to favor the products of some of the com-mercial publishers. For good measure, Slavinaccused Reid Lyon of interfering in the programselection process to help out his own favoredreading programs, a charge that Lyon has vehe-mently denied.

Unlike Engelmann, Slavin was a significant fig-ure in Washington education circles, with readyaccess to high-ranking members of key Congres-sional committees. He was particularly close to

25

Too Good to Last

The fact is that DirectInstruction gained hardlyany customers because ofReading First, despite theprogram director’s ties to theprogram and his awarenessof the scientific consensusthat the DI approach was aproven way to lift readingscores for at-risk students.

Congressman David Obey (D-Wisconsin), theranking minority member of the House Appro-priations Committee when Reading First waswritten and now the committee’s chairman. Inthe 1990s, Obey and former Representative JohnPorter (R-Illinois) had sponsored the Compre-hensive School Reform Demonstration Program,which distributed funds for schools to adopt“whole-school reforms,” research-driven ap-proaches intended to strengthen entire schoolsand make their curricula more rigorous. Slavin’sfoundation received a significant share of thosegrants and also of the funds set aside for researchprojects tied to the whole-school initiative.

Given Slavin’s stature and his Capitol Hill con-nections, it was that much more likely that hislong list of complaints would be fully probed bythe Department of Education’s Office of Inspec-tor General (OIG). The results of the OIG’s six-part investigation were released, starting inSeptember 2006. However, it was only the firstof the reports that received widespread media at-tention and began the undoing of Reading First.(The other five reports, while critical, mostlydealt with relatively minor issues of program im-plementation that came up in a few states.)

Remarkably, OIG didn’t even mention RobertSlavin or his catalogue of charges in the Sep-tember report, or any that followed. However,the report did allege that there had been seriousimproprieties in implementation of the Read-ing First law. Doherty was held responsible forthe fact that a few reading experts with “profes-sional ties” to Direct Instruction were ap-pointed to peer review panels that evaluatedstate applications for Reading First funds.While the OIG conceded that Reading First of-ficials actually went beyond what was requiredin the law and drew up protocols for weeding

out financial conflicts of interest in appointingreading experts to the review panels, it never-theless concluded that those procedures did notflag résumés of some reviewers who had “profes-sional links” with some reading programs, in-cluding Direct Instruction, and therefore theprocedures were not “effective.” These reviewershad no financial interest in Direct Instruction,however, and the panels they served on neversaw the names of reading programs that mightbe chosen by states or school districts.

The OIG investigators had little understandingof the reading wars or the scientific research that

26


While the OIG concededthat Reading First officialsactually went beyond whatwas required in the law anddrew up protocols forweeding out financialconflicts of interest inappointing reading expertsto the review panels, itnevertheless concluded thatthose procedures did not flagrésumés of some reviewerswho had “professional links”with some readingprograms, including DirectInstruction, and thereforethe procedures were not“effective.”

prompted the Reading First legislation in the firstplace. Thus the report’s charge that it was im-proper for Reading First to hire reviewers withties to Direct Instruction because their résumésproved that they had “significant professionalconnections to a teaching methodology that re-quires use of a specific reading program,” seemsentirely strained and violates common sense. Ofcourse Reading First encourages use of “specificreading programs” that have been shown towork. That was the point of the legislation andthat’s what the President of the United States be-lieved when he started all of this.

The section of the OIG report that received themost media attention was its criticism of Do-herty for intervening in the review process inseveral states to prevent some programs he be-lieved did not follow the required SBRR guide-lines from being selected for federal grants.These programs included Reading Recoveryand Wright Group Literacy, both containing abalanced literacy flavor. (At the time Dohertytook this action, he had significant expert opin-ion at his disposal indicating that Reading Re-covery didn’t meet the SBRR standardestablished in the legislation. Several years later,however, the government’s What Works Clear-inghouse accepted Reading Recovery’s claimthat there was research backing the program’seffectiveness.) Doherty was well aware of howthe Reading Excellence Act had fallen apart inthe previous administration because the De-partment of Education failed to prevent pro-grams with no scientific research base frombeing funded. He believed that the ReadingFirst office had to be particularly vigilant tomake sure that school districts that pledged tofollow the principles of SBRR actually did so.In exercising that vigilance, Doherty was show-ing fidelity to the mission of Reading First as

stated first by President Bush repeated by Sec-retaries Rod Paige and Margaret Spellings, aswell as by the principal authors of the legisla-tion, Reid Lyon and Robert Sweet.

Still, Doherty did not help himself or the Bushadministration by the manner and language inwhich he communicated his views to variousparties. Probably the most sensational part ofthe OIG report was its citation of emails Do-herty sent to indicate his displeasure when pro-grams that did not follow the principles ofSBRR (but pretended to) were about to befunded. In one such message, Doherty in-structed a staff member to resist funding forWright Group Literacy: “Beat the s. .t out ofthem in a way that will stand up to any level oflegal and [whole language] apologist scrutiny.Hit them over and over with definitive evidencethat they are not SBRR never have been andnever will be.” When this email became publicin the OIG report and then in hundreds of

27

Too Good to Last

In exercising that vigilance,Doherty was showingfidelity to the mission ofReading First as stated firstby President Bush repeatedby Secretaries Rod Paigeand Margaret Spellings, aswell as by the principalauthors of the legislation,Reid Lyon and RobertSweet.

newspaper stories, Doherty’s fate was sealed.Under pressure from the administration, hetendered his resignation.

Media Frenzy

The OIG’s charge that Doherty had exhib-ited “a lack of integrity and ethical values”

in pressuring local officials regarding the selec-tion process was certainly damaging to ReadingFirst and the Bush administration. But it wasthe publication, in flagrante, of Doherty’s emailsthat sparked a firestorm of scathing criticism inthe media of a program that the same mediahad, until then, hardly known existed. For ex-ample, a widely circulated Associated Pressstory on the OIG report stated that Doherty“repeatedly used his influence to steer moneytoward states that used a reading approach hefavored, called Direct Instruction, or DI, aphonic-centric program that was developed bya researcher associated with the University ofOregon.” Almost nothing in this sentence istrue, either as a description of what the OIG re-port said or what Doherty did. There is notonly no record of intervention by Doherty in

favor of Direct Instruction, but as indicated ear-lier, that program received only a tiny share ofReading First funds.

Among the worst of the media offenders wasthe New York Times’s national education corre-spondent, Diana Jean Schemo. A longtimecritic of President Bush and No Child Left Be-hind, Schemo’s coverage of Reading First andof Reid Lyon was consistently hostile. Shecouldn’t seem to grasp that Reading First wasnot a mandate, that no school districts saw theirbudgets cut if they didn’t choose to participatein the program. Several weeks after release ofthe OIG report, Schemo penned a front-pageTimes story that carried the headline: “In WarOver Teaching Reading, a U.S.-Local Clash.”Her reportage started with a visit to an elemen-tary school in Madison, Wisconsin that usedwhole language reading instruction and that re-fused Reading First funds once its leaders weretold that they would have to change their in-structional approach in return.

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There is not only no recordof intervention by Dohertyin favor of DirectInstruction, but asindicated earlier, thatprogram received only a tinyshare of Reading First funds.

Thus, through its nationaleducation reporter, the NewYork Times declared that,despite reams of scientificstudies proving the efficacyof early emphasis onphonemic awareness andphonics, whole language isat least as good andprobably a better method ofteaching children to read.

Schemo’s piece reflects an almost offended tone,suggesting that this wonderful school with aperfectly fine reading program was unjustly de-prived of federal funds by the rigid, phonics-obsessed Bush administration. Moreover,according to Schemo, the OIG report con-firmed that similar scandals were happening allover the country.

Schemo began the article with an anecdote thatany serious reading researcher would regard asa parody of whole language teaching methods.She described a first grade class in which theteacher was trying to get a student to correctlyread one word on a printed page. The child in-correctly guessed that the word was “pumpkin.”

The teacher urged the boy to “look at the word”and now offered him a clue. “Using a methodknown as whole language,” Shemo wrote, “sheprompted him to consider the word’s size. ‘Is itlong enough to be pumpkin?’”

With this hint that since the word is short, it mustrepresent something smaller than a pumpkin, theboy tried again. This time he correctly said “pea.”

Schemo then informed the reader that this ex-emplified the effective instructional methodwhich, according to Madison school officials, isproducing strong reading gains for the district.The subtext of the story was that Madison actedheroically by sticking to its beloved reading pro-gram out of principle, even though it meantbeing squeezed out of a $2 million ReadingFirst grant.

Schemo accepted district officials’ claims aboutthe efficacy of the whole language approach asfact, though she dutifully fulfilled her journal-istic obligation to include the other side’s pointof view via the following sentence: “Federal of-ficials who ran Reading First maintain that onlycurriculums including regular, systematic phon-ics lessons had the backing of ‘scientificallybased reading research’ required by the pro-gram.” In other words, forget about those threedecades of NIH sponsored research and theNRP report commissioned by Congress duringthe Clinton administration. It’s only the Bushcrowd that claims that instruction in systematicphonics is supported by science.

According to Schemo’s understanding, the OIGreport proved that “federal officials and contrac-tors used the [Reading First] program to pres-sure schools to adopt approaches thatemphasize phonics, focusing on the mechanicsof sounding out syllables, and to discard meth-ods drawn from whole language that play downthese mechanics and use cues like pictures orcontext to teach.”

Schemo neglected to inform her readers that “fo-cusing on the mechanics of sounding out sylla-bles” is exactly the method of reading instructionstipulated in the Reading First legislation to qual-ify for federal grants, as in Sec. 1208 (3): “…reading instruction means explicit and systematic

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Schemo’s piece reflects analmost offended tone,suggesting that thiswonderful school with aperfectly fine readingprogram was unjustlydeprived of federal funds bythe rigid, phonics-obsessedBush administration.

instruction in – (A) phonemic awareness; (B)phonics; (C) vocabulary development; (D) read-ing fluency, including oral reading skills; and (E)reading comprehension strategies.”

Thus, through its national education reporter,the New York Times declared that, despite reamsof scientific studies proving the efficacy of earlyemphasis on phonemic awareness and phonics,whole language is at least as good and probablya better method of teaching children to read.And if that is true, then it follows that the Bushpeople were behaving like bullies and fanaticsin refusing to fund a good school district’swhole language reading program that actuallyraised test scores.

An inspiring narrative, except that afterSchemo’s story appeared, a well-known Wis-consin education internet site published a dev-astating statistical summary of Wisconsin’s andMadison’s actual reading performance thatraised serious questions about her analysis. Likemany other states since No Child Left Behind,it turns out that Wisconsin has seen the diffi-culty of its tests drop under NCLB. It’s true thatMadison’s scores went up on the state tests butthey rose at the same rate as the rest of the state.Meanwhile, federal NAEP tests showed thatWisconsin’s fourth-grade reading performanceremained flat and there’s every reason to believethat’s true of Madison’s as well.

Like Schemo’s reporting in the Times, most ofthe mainstream media’s coverage of the ReadingFirst “scandal” left out the essential historicalcontext regarding advances in reading science,the support for science-based instruction in theNRP report commissioned by Congress, andany understanding of why the language in theReading First legislation made clear that grantsshould only be given to districts using reading

programs that maintained fidelity with theprinciples of SBRR. Washington Post staff writerMichael Grunewald read the first OIG reportand concluded unequivocally that “department[of education] officials and a small group of in-fluential contractors have strong-armed statesand local districts into adopting a small groupof unproved textbooks and reading programswith almost no peer-reviewed research behindthem.” In fact, neither the OIG reports norsubsequent investigations sustained this sweep-ing charge. Grunewald also neglected to pointout that it was Reid Lyon and Robert Sweetwho originally put language in the ReadingFirst bill that would have prevented funds fromgoing to “unproved textbooks,” but that theywere forced to back down by congressional De-mocrats and some Republicans.

Nor did the Post reporter pause to consider that,if the criterion for funding programs underReading First had been that such programs had

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An inspiring narrative,except that after Schemo’sstory appeared, a well-known Wisconsin educationinternet site published adevastating statisticalsummary of Wisconsin’s andMadison’s actual readingperformance that raisedserious questions about heranalysis.

to have been validated for effectiveness by “peerreviewed research”, there would have been two,perhaps three, programs approved. If that hap-pened, the subsequent howls by representativesof other reading programs claiming federal dic-tation would have been all the louder by manydecibels. And no doubt the Washington Post andthe New York Timeswould have published articlesreporting on and endorsing those complaints.

Shark Bait

Given such sloppy media coverage of theOIG reports, it’s little wonder that politi-

cians on Capitol Hill sought to use the pur-ported shortcomings of Reading First to get insome more licks against the Bush administra-tion. Rep. George Miller (D-California), chair-man of the House education committee,expressed his outrage at the OIG reports: “Thiswas not an accident; this was not an oversight.This was an intentional effort to corrupt theprocess.” Amazingly, neither President Bushnor Secretary of Education Margaret Spellingshad anything to say in defense of their oncecherished Reading First program. During hisfirst term, President Bush visited the readingscientists at the NIH. He congratulated themfor helping to lift reading achievement in thenation’s schools. But after publication of theOIG report, the president became almost muteabout his own reading initiative.

A few months after the release of the OIG re-ports, Chairman Miller hauled Doherty andfour Reading First consultants to a hearing inwhich he made big headlines by saying to Do-herty: “That sounds like a criminal enterpriseto me. You don't get to override the law. Butthe fact of the matter is that you did.”

The only law Miller could have been referringto was the provision of the 1978 Departmentof Education Organization Act, repeated in NoChild Left Behind, which prohibits federal of-ficials from requiring local school districts toadopt a particular curriculum or teachingmethodology. This language was originally

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Too Good to Last

During his first term,President Bush visited thereading scientists at theNIH. He congratulatedthem for helping to liftreading achievement in thenation’s schools. But afterpublication of the OIGreport, the president becamealmost mute about his ownreading initiative.

Despite a five-hour grilling by Miller and his staff,nothing emerged at the hearing to back up the reckless claim that Chris Doherty had violated the law.

crafted to assuage historic Republican fearsabout federal interference in local school gov-ernance. Miller was certainly aware of it in2001, when as the ranking Democrat on theHouse education committee he supported re-moving the language in Reading First thatwould have limited funding to programs vettedfor effectiveness by scientific studies. It was thischange in the criteria for Reading First fundingthat Miller originally signed off on that shiftedthe burden to officials like Chris Doherty to de-cide which reading programs do or do not fol-low SBRR. And when he made suchjudgments, Miller hammered him for it.

Despite a five-hour grilling by Miller and hisstaff, nothing emerged at the hearing to backup the reckless claim that Chris Doherty hadviolated the law. Indiscrete emails, yes. Butthere has been no evidence produced either byMiller’s committee or any other investigatorthat Doherty “strong-armed” a single state orlocal official to dump a reading program thatotherwise met the condition of fidelity toSBRR. Nor is there any evidence that Direct In-struction benefited financially as a result of Do-herty’s connections to that program.

It is true, as Robert Slavin has charged, that fewschool districts chose to use their Reading Firstdollars on his Success for All program. Butthere’s no evidence that this was because of ac-tions taken by the federal Department of Edu-cation. Both Direct Instruction and Success forAll are tightly scripted programs and manyteachers and administrators dislike them forthat reason, regardless if they work for kids.Once the rules of Reading First were changed topermit funding of untested basal readers pro-duced by the big commercial publishers, thosesame publishers gained a huge marketing ad-vantage. In retrospect, it now appears a weak-ness of the Reading First legislation that bothDirect Instruction and Success for All, the twoprograms that have shown to be most effectivein the classroom, lost market share to unprovenbasal readers. But it’s worth repeating that noevidence has been produced either in the OIGreports or in Congressman Miller’s hearing thatthere was anything criminal or corrupt aboutthe process that yielded that outcome.

Such subtleties seemed to escape the chairs ofCongress’s twin education committees, Rep.Miller and Sen. Edward Kennedy. Looking foreven more ammunition against the programthey once embraced so enthusiastically, theyasked the GAO, Congress’s investigative arm, toopen yet another investigation of Reading First.When the GAO report came out, Kennedy’sand Miller’s offices highlighted its call for betteroversight of the program and its criticisms ofReading First’s procedures for avoiding conflictof interest. Less attention was given by Kennedyand Miller – and by the media – to the GAO’sfinding that Reading First was making solidprogress toward its objective of lifting the read-ing achievement of economically disadvantagedchildren. The GAO found (according to its ex-

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Both Direct Instruction andSuccess for All are tightlyscripted programs and manyteachers and administratorsdislike them for that reason,regardless if they work forkids.

ecutive summary) that “nearly 70 percent ofstates reported that reading instruction has im-proved greatly or very greatly since the imple-mentation of Reading First.” Furthermore,“Every state reported improvements in profes-sional development because of Reading First,and at least 41 states reported that professionaldevelopment improved greatly or very greatly infive key instructional areas.”

It is now almost a year since CongressmanMiller publicly charged that Doherty and someReading First colleagues had engaged in a “crim-inal enterprise.” Not a shred of evidence has yetsurfaced to sustain that reckless charge, so I re-cently asked Miller through his press spokesper-son if he still stands behind the accusation ofcriminality. His answer: “It’s unacceptable thatthe Bush administration allowed a program withworthwhile goals to be completely underminedby severe mismanagement and conflicts of in-terest. As investigations by the Inspector Generaland our committee have found, some of the in-dividuals tapped by the Bush administration toserve as stewards of the program had financial,

personal and professional connections to specificreading products and inappropriately promotedthose products over others.”

I also asked Congressman Miller if he was trou-bled by the two-thirds cut in funding for ReadingFirst pushed through by his Democratic col-leagues in the House. Miller ducked the partabout the cuts and merely reiterated that he “sup-port[s] the goals of the Reading First program”but that “it must be run in the best interests ofschoolchildren, schools, the states and taxpayers.”

Despite the sturm and drang of the hearings (plussix OIG reports and a string of false accusationsof criminal conduct), the House education com-mittee, in its draft NCLB reauthorization pro-posal published in September 2007, suggestedonly minor modifications to the Reading Firstprogram. These tweaks include sensible provi-sions that would require the education secretary

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Too Good to Last

Despite the sturm anddrang of the hearings (plussix OIG reports and a stringof false accusations ofcriminal conduct), theHouse education committee,in its draft NCLBreauthorization proposalpublished in September2007, suggested only minormodifications to theReading First program.

Less attention was given byKennedy and Miller – andby the media – to the GAO’sfinding that Reading Firstwas making solid progresstoward its objective oflifting the readingachievement of economicallydisadvantaged children.

to provide greater guidance on how the ReadingFirst peer review panels should review state appli-cations, how feedback should be provided to thestates about their grant proposals, and how toimprove the process for making final determina-tions about which programs receive funding.Reading First backers were mildly optimistic thatthe storm had passed.

Then, like a bolt from the blue, the House ap-propriations committee, chaired by Congress-man Obey, slashed the Reading First budget bytwo thirds. "This [Reading First] cut will not berestored until we have a full appreciation of theshenanigans that have been going on," saidObey, even as he was also approving the distribu-tion of thousands of funding earmarks to his col-leagues. There was virtually no debate inCongress on the evisceration of a program thatlikely produced one of the rare examples of fed-eral education spending that could demonstratepositive results in student academic achievement.

A news report on NPR from July 2007 providesan unusual insight into the strange disconnectbetween what Reading First, with all its sup-posed shortcomings, was producing in the fieldand the politically driven animus toward theprogram on Capitol Hill. Reporter SteveInskeep first interviewed Nancy Grasmick, Su-perintendent of the Maryland Department ofEducation (one of the states where Doherty wasalleged to have improperly thrown his weightaround) about the effect that Reading First washaving on the state’s children. “The results arestunning,” said Grasmick. “We have learnedfrom it. We have accelerated the performance ofour students and the performance of our teach-ers. And we have all of the data to support that.”

The reporter next interviewed CongressmanObey, who had no apparent interest in the data

cited by the Maryland superintendent. “Theprogram is being manipulated and ripped offby the people who are running the program,”said Obey. “Why should a school district be pe-nalized if they want to use a program which isregarded as being among the most effective inthe country simply because it suits the interestsof the contractors running the program?”

It’s obvious which reading program Obey is re-ferring to, and which he claims school districtsare still being penalized for choosing (even afterDoherty’s departure). It’s Success for All, theprogram Obey lavished with funds throughoutthe 1990s. In fact, neither in the OIG reportsnor at the House education committee’s hearingon Reading First was there a shred of evidencethat any district was “penalized” for wanting to

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Shortly after thatastonishing public threatagainst a federal office froma dissatisfied privatepurveyor of a readingprogram, the chairman ofthe House appropriationscommittee set the wheels inmotion to carry out thethreat: Obey cut $670million in Reading Firstfunds from the fiscal 2008education budget.

use Success for All. Leaving nothing to theimagination, however, Robert Slavin also ap-peared on the NPR broadcast to echo the Con-gressman’s unsubstantiated charge and to up thepolitical ante: “With the current Education De-partment, I think that they have shown no in-tention whatever to try to fix the program,” saidSlavin, “and I don’t think Congress can forcethem to do it in any way other than cutting thefunding.” Shortly after that astonishing publicthreat against a federal office from a dissatisfiedprivate purveyor of a reading program, thechairman of the House appropriations commit-

tee set the wheels in motion to carry out thethreat: Obey cut $670 million in Reading Firstfunds from the fiscal 2008 education budget.

What about the president? Although his admin-istration made a pro forma objection to the pro-posed Reading First cuts, Bush declined to usehis bully pulpit to remind the public of howmuch was at stake for schools and for millionsof kids if Reading First is curtailed. However,the president has since restored $1 billion forReading First funding in the administration’ssubmitted fiscal 2009 budget.

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Too Good to Last

CONCLUSION:LET READING FIRST BE READING FIRST

In the case of the ReadingFirst program, it is worththinking about not only thefailed model of REA, theprevious federal effort toimprove reading in thenation’s schools, but alsowhat happens every daywhen school districts aroundthe country are left to theirown devices as they try toteach students to readproficiently by fourth grade.

In judging the value of new political institu-tions or governmental programs, we shouldwant to know not only whether they are runproperly, guard against corruption and conflictsof interest, and come close to achieving theiraims, but also what are the alternatives andwhat was it like before the institution in ques-tion was created. In the case of the ReadingFirst program, it is worth thinking about notonly the failed model of REA, the previous fed-eral effort to improve reading in the nation’sschools, but also what happens every day whenschool districts around the country are left totheir own devices as they try to teach studentsto read proficiently by fourth grade.

In that regard, a revealing lesson recentlyemerged in the nation’s capital, right under thenoses of the politicians who expressed such in-dignation about the administrative practices

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and alleged conflicts of interest of Reading Firstofficials. As reported by Washington Post inves-tigative journalist Joe Stephens, the District ofColumbia school district gave a soon-to-be-retired D.C. school principal named SheilaFord $2.9 million to bring better reading pro-grams into the city’s poorly performing schools.Ford received the money after a 30-minutepresentation to D.C. school officials. When shepicked up the first check for $1 million, therewas no contract defining the terms of thearrangement, and Ford was only asked to sub-mit a single page expense voucher. She then cre-ated a nonprofit called the Teachers Institutewhich paid her a salary of $150,000 (in addi-tion to her hefty pension from the district) plusunspecified expenses as the group’s executive di-rector. As I learned after the Washington Poststory came out, the money given to Ford camefrom federal Title I funds.

The new reading program that Ford brought tothe needy children of Washington’s falteringpublic schools was none other than ProfessorLucy Calkins’s Balanced Literacy, already en-trenched in New York City. As it turns out,Ford is a disciple of Calkins and used her pro-grams at DC’s Horace Mann ElementarySchool where she served as principal. Indeed,since New York is now considered the Mecca ofbalanced literacy programs, Ford has takendozens of D.C. teachers, principals and admin-istrators to Gotham for training sessions atCalkins’s institute at Teachers College. Therewas practically no accounting for the taxpayerdollars spent on the trips, the fees to Calkins’sinstitute, or the “‘vast quantity’ of books, sup-plies and electronics” that were stored in ware-houses and never made it to the D.C. schools.In all, $200,000 in federal funds went to

Calkins’s institute and another $100,000 waspaid to her for-profit consulting company. Onemight suppose that the disappointing resultsfrom the five-year trial of Calkins’s methods inNew York would have held a lesson for D.C.But as we have learned from the entire ReadingFirst saga, evidence counts for little when edu-cation politics and ideology take charge.

The D.C. story is seedy but hardly shocking inthe world of American public education, wherehundreds of snake oil salesmen hawk their nos-trums for getting poor children to read – a goalwe seem to have managed well enough in the19th century. It would be instructive for Con-gressmen Miller and Obey to look into theD.C. Balanced Literacy scandal (after all, it in-volves the misuse of federal Title I funds) andthen reflect on the harm they have committedto a federal program that was achieving some-thing rare: actually helping poor kids learn skillsthat will lift them out of poverty.

Perhaps it’s not too late for Congress to recon-sider. As with Maryland superintendent NancyGrasmick, who says that “the results [fromReading First] are stunning” and that “we haveall of the data to support that,” thousands of ed-ucation officials, administrators and teachersfrom all over the country would gladly come toWashington to describe to Congressmen Millerand Obey the promising turnaround in class-room reading instruction that has begun in theirstates and districts, a turnaround that will be un-dermined unless the two-thirds cut in ReadingFirst funds is restored. As the GAO report hasshown, this large, prescriptive, federal programhas been a veritable 5,000 school love-fest.

The educators in those districts and schools arenot interested in whether the program’s first ex-

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Too Good to Last

ecutive director sent out a couple of inappropri-ate emails. They are focused on the big prize –the hope that U.S. schools will finally accom-plish something that should not be beyond the

resources and ingenuity of the world’s leadingindustrialized nation: teaching children to readproficiently by fourth grade. Their message toCongress is to let Reading First be Reading First.

Documents

Too Good to Last the