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'Reading First' Flunks the Test, Part One |
Bill Hudson | 5/5/08
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During recent budget discussions at Pagosa Springs Elementary School, a reading program called 'Colorado Reading First' was salvaged from being cut, after Principal Kate Lister asked school staff to vote on whether the keep the program in place for the 2008-2009 school year.
The reading program — which involves sometimes-intrusive classroom monitoring by state officials — is not popular with all teachers at the school, but it may provide some additional funding during a tight budget year, if Pagosa Elementary qualifies for the program again this coming year.
According to a recent USA Today article, however, the $6 billion federal program is something of an underachiever.
 A long-awaited federal study, issued Thursday, could mean the end of the 6-year-old Reading First program. Last year, a congressional investigation looked into whether top advisers improperly benefited from contracts for textbooks and testing materials they designed, and whether the advisers kept some textbook publishers from qualifying for funding.
Congress has already slashed program funding 60%.
According to the USA Today article, advocates of Reading First — an integral part of the Bush Adminstration’s 2002 No Child Left Behind law — have long maintained that its emphasis on phonics; scripted instruction by teachers; and regular, detailed analyses of children's skills, would raise reading achievement, especially among the low-income kids it targets.
But the new study by the U.S. Education Department's Institute of Education Sciences (IES) shows that children in schools receiving Reading First funding spent more time studying reading basics — but had virtually no better reading skills than those in schools that didn't get the funding.
A summary of the new study, published in the IES website, states, “The evaluation found that Reading First did have positive, statistically significant impacts on the total class time spent on the five essential components of reading instruction promoted by the program. The study also found that, on average across the 18 study sites, Reading First did not have statistically significant impacts on student reading comprehension test scores in grades 1-3.”
The large-scale study looked at over 30,000 students in first through third grade from 2004 through 2006. The study found that Reading First students' reading scores on standardized tests were nearly indistinguishable from those of students in other schools.
"For all intents and purposes, the kids read at the same level in each grade," noted IES Director Russ Whitehurst.
Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., who presided over the April 2007 hearings, said the report, "coupled with the scandals revealed last year, shows that we need to seriously re-examine this program and figure out how to make it work better for students… Because of the corruption in the Reading First program, districts and schools were steered toward certain reading programs and products that may not have provided the most effective instruction for students."
Thursday's results are part of an interim study; a more complete analysis that followed students through the 2006-2007 school year could show more promising results when it's released in November.
U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings says Congress should wait until then before making decisions about the program.
"Moving the needle on reading is a hard thing to do,” Spellings says. “I don’t think anyone is going to assert that the cure will be less focus and fewer resources.
Read Part Two |
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