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In
discussing politics many pundits describe a
political “Twilight Zone,” where the far-left
and far-right come together. This year’s
“Twilight Zone” is where you’ll find the
federal No Child Left Behind law, scheduled for
reauthorization this year.
Conservatives
hate the increased federal involvement in
education; liberals hate the proscriptive emphasis
on results. And thoughtful policymakers on both
sides find NCLB’s practice of lumping schools
into the same “in need of improvement” pot,
whether they miss one target or 20, badly in need
of improvement itself.
But
there is a very real risk that the stampede
against NCLB may overlook important
accomplishments that could have a profound effect
on educationally underserved children.
NCLB
took the federal government into the nation’s
“Reading Wars.” NCLB’s “Reading First”
program spent about $1 billion a year (two percent
of federal education spending) to encourage states
and local school districts to utilize reading
programs based on the best scientific research.
Funds became available for new textbooks, new
curricula and teacher training incorporating the
five commonly recognized elements of early reading
instruction: phonemic awareness, decoding,
vocabulary development, reading fluency, and
reading comprehension strategies.
What
made Reading First a radical notion wasn’t that
federal money was being offered. It was that, for
the first time, the feds were insisting that money
be spent on programs that actually had a track
record of success. Forty years of research on how
children learn to read had largely been ignored
when dollars were being handed out for reading
programs. This time, thanks to NCLB, taxpayer
funds were to subsidize successful efforts, not
failure.
That
riled up a good number of education ideologues who
are charter members in what Sol Stern, of the
Manhattan Institute, called, “a cult-like
attachment to a Romantic theory of reading
instruction called ‘whole language,’ which
recently morphed into ‘balanced literacy’ to
make it sound more reasonable to dubious
parents.”
Although
many schools and school divisions in Virginia did
not apply for the federal funds, 60 Virginia
schools have received Reading First grants since
the first awards were made.
The
Thomas Jefferson Institute recently released a
report, “Literacy
in Virginia: Observations on Reading First,”
evaluating the schools that used Reading First
grants with those that did not. It includes
comparisons with non-Reading First schools with
similar demographics.
While
it is still too early to draw final conclusions,
early observations are suggestive. Passing rates
at Reading First schools increased nearly three
times faster in the two years after the grants
than in the six years before the grants. Reading
First schools improved at a more rapid rate than
non-Reading First schools in the same school
division. And high poverty Reading First schools
improved more rapidly than similarly high poverty
non-Reading First schools over the two years of
the program.
Rural
Wythe County perhaps provides the best case study
of reading success. It’s six elementary schools
had been struggling for more than five years to
improve their third grade reading scores and meet
state accreditation standards. At one school,
fewer than 41 percent were reading on grade level
in third grade; only one school saw more than 70
percent of its students pass the third grade
reading exam.
Five
of those six schools used “Reading First”
grants to restructure their entire reading
program. Third grade reading gains after two years
ranged from 19.8 percentile points to as high as
40.5 percentile points.
Given
its success, renewal of the Reading First program
this year ought to be a slam-dunk. But it may get
caught in a double cross-fire, opposed in the
political wars by those seeking to undercut the
signature domestic issue of an embattled President
Bush and resisted in the “Reading Wars” by
those stuck in yesteryear’s ideology of whole
language reading theories.
Without
vocal support from those educators who have
witnessed its benefits, Reading First may stay
stuck in “another dimension … a land of shadow
and substance, of things and ideas.” And kids,
who must learn to read in order to be successful,
will lose.
--
April 2, 2007
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