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President
Bush’s “Reading First” grant program, designed
to reverse years of ineffective “whole
language” reading pedagogy, has awarded some $1
billion annually over the last four years to
states and school divisions. The research-based
reading initiatives use all five essential
components of reading instruction: phonemic
awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and
comprehension.
But
the man who administers those grants forgot the
first rule of political bureaucrats: “Never put
anything in writing that you don’t want to see
on the front page of The Washington Post.
In
a series of emails, Reading First Director Chris
Doherty aggressively and inartfully advocated a
select group of instructional programs that met
the research criteria established by the
Department of Education. The dust-up
resulted in his resignation, an arms-length
reprimand from Secretary of Education Margaret
Spellings, and a great deal of huffing and
puffing by Democrats seeking another issue in the
mid-term election.
Lost
in the conflict is the answer to the question:
“Does the program work?”
Based
on a recent report issued by the Center for
Education Policy and results from the most recent
round of Virginia SOL tests, the answer
unequivocally is: “Yes.”
For
Virginia, the issue is an important one. A May
2006 report by economist Dr.
Christine Chmura notes that a ten-point
increase in a region’s literacy score
corresponds to an increase of four percentage
points in employment growth over a 14-year period.
Since a majority of Reading First subgrants were
distributed to local school divisions and schools
with high poverty and high concentrations of
children in grades K-3 who read below grade level,
a successful literacy program could have a
profound impact on regional economic growth.
Ninety-seven
percent of grant-funded school districts reporting
increases in achievement, notes the Center on
Education Policy report, “Keeping
Watch on Reading First,” credit the new
phonics-based programs as “an important or very
important cause of this improvement.” Ninety-two
percent cited the Reading First assessment program
as an important or very important cause.
These
improvements came despite the fact that 60 percent
of the school districts had to do something they
are loathe to do: change their reading program.
This, in turn, generated another change: spending
more time in the early grades devoted to reading.
More than 86 percent of Reading First school
districts required elementary classes to spend a
specified amount of time on reading (usually about
90 minutes per school day); only 57 percent of
non-Reading First school districts had the same
requirement.
Jack
Jennings, president of CEP and a lifelong Democrat
who is former staff director for Congress’
Education Subcommittee on Elementary, Secondary,
and Vocational Education, noted “Reading First
is causing changes in instruction and assessment
because the program has strict requirements backed
up by substantial funding.” And those changes
are both significant and positive.
What
has been the result in Virginia?
More
than 65 elementary schools in Virginia have
received Reading First grants since the
program’s inception in School Year 2004. Nearly
every one has seen a significant improvement in
its third grade reading (English) SOL scores.
For
example, more than two-thirds of Westmoreland
County’s Cople Elementary School are low-income,
and 70 percent of its children are minority. In
2003, the year before initial Reading First grants
flowed to the school, only 37 percent of its
students pass the third grade English SOL. A year
later, their pass rate rose to 50 percent, and a
year after that nearly 72 percent of its third
grade students passed. This year, 90 percent of
its students passed the third grade SOL.
The
program affects more than just individual schools.
Because a portion of Reading First grants can be
used for teacher training and technical
assistance, the grants can have a ripple effect
throughout a school division. Waynesboro Public
Schools officials, for example, have said that
Reading First not only helped turn around Cople
elementary, it also positively affected the
district-wide reading program.
There
is no question that illiteracy has huge societal
costs. Only 35 percent of adults below the basic
literacy level are employed full-time, creating an
economic drag on a region, and the challenges of
teaching adults to read are far greater than those
of teaching a child to read.
As
gov. Timothy M. Kaine has pointed out in promoting
his Universal Preschool program, if a child passes
Virginia’s third grade reading SOL, that child
has a 95 percent chance of passing the fifth grade
reading SOL test. Conversely, if a child fails the
third grade exam he or she has a 50 percent chance
of failing the fifth grade reading test.
But
the evidence of Cople Elementary School and more
than 65 others across the state suggest that the
answer to illiteracy in children may well lie in a
research-based reading program in grades K-3.
Before
moving forward with a hugely expensive Universal
preschool program, the Governor might want to look
across the river at the Bush Administration’s
Reading First program, and replicate it here in
the Old Dominion.
--
October 9, 2006
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