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Voters
have an opportunity this year to put federal
candidates on notice that it's time to place
politics aside and fund a reading program that is
making a dramatic difference in the lives of
millions of at-risk children.
Late
last year, in a “Christmas Massacre” led by
Appropriations Committee Chair David Obey (D-WI),
Congress slashed funding for the federal
“Reading First” (RF) program by 64 percent,
leaving unfunded key elements such as reading
coaches, professional development for teachers,
core reading programs and interventions, data
analysis and accountability measures.
Obey
and Company claimed that Reading First was a
program riddled with scandal. But while RF
administrators were certainly guilty of
unflattering, ill-considered communications, they
did nothing more than try to ensure that Reading
First did exactly what it set out to do: Use
taxpayer dollars to fund only reading programs
that actually worked and taught children how to
read. Their actual offense was angering publishers
of ineffective course materials who found
themselves cut off from feeding at the federal
trough.
The
claim of “scandal” is more than adequately
refuted by a recent Thomas B. Fordham Institute
study demonstrating that the real scandal is the
political gamesmanship that slashed funding for
one of the few effective programs that gives poor
kids a chance to learn (see "Too
Good to Last: The True Story of Reading First.")
And
learn they did.
Educators
have not often lined up on the side of the Bush
Administration, but state directors of the Reading
First program are beside themselves over the
impact Congressional cuts will have on teaching
kids.
“Reading
First has allowed us to do the kind of
professional development that teachers need … to
get down in the trenches and work with them,”
notes Colorado’s Reading First director. “We
can’t do the kind of detailed work we want to do
without the kind of funding it provides.”
Jim
Ward, who works in the Kentucky Reading First
office, knows first-hand the impact RF has: “I
was a principal of a Reading First school in Crab
Orchard, Kentucky. I was eight years in that
building, and I saw more progress with Reading
First than anything I’ve seen in my 20 years in
education."
Indeed,
Reading First can claim a stamp of approval from
all evaluations to date – from the Office of
Management and Budget to the General Accounting
Office, and from the conservative Right to Read
Foundation to the liberal Center on Education
Policy.
But
with Congress more focused on earmarks and
“gotcha” games, the question of “Does it
Work?” rarely enters into legitimate debate.
How
well has Reading First worked in Virginia?
"We
think it's an excellent program,” says Mark
Allen, Virginia’s director of elementary
instruction. Reading First has helped fund reading
coaches, teacher training and uninterrupted
90-minute daily reading lessons – all using
instructional methods proven to work.
The
effects have been profound. A March 2007 Thomas
Jefferson Institute study
noted that in the Virginia public schools teaching
the highest poverty populations, the 3rd grade
reading failure rate was cut in half, from 41
percent to 21 percent, in just two years. The gap
in the passing rate between all Virginia schools
and high poverty Reading First schools fell from
23 percent to six percent. And in the years after
Reading First was used in Virginia schools, the
average annual increase in the reading pass rate
was nearly three times faster than for the same
period before Reading First.
In
Norfolk and Newport News, reading comprehension
scores have risen by 20 percent over the last
three years. Richmond City school officials credit
Reading First with having provided much of the
resources that resulted in Richmond’s black 3rd
and 5th graders scoring higher on the reading SOLs
than black 3rd and 5th graders in Fairfax County
(which refuses to use the Reading First program).
In
rural Wythe County, which has used Reading First
in five of its six elementary schools since 2003,
the percentage of black and/or low income
students passing the third grade English SOL
increased by more than 30 percentile points,
putting it among the highest improving school
divisions in the state.
Few
even try to dispute Reading First’s
effectiveness anymore, making it even more
scandalous that the program is victim to adult
political games.
President
Bush has proposed restoring Reading First to the
former funding levels of $1 billion per year, and
Reading First itself will likely be caught up in
debates over the future of the No Child Left
Behind Law, of which it is a part.
But
there are one million adults in Virginia with such
low reading skills that they are fundamentally
illiterate. Reading First was preparing children
in a way that would have whittled down that figure
in the decades ahead. Voters should push candidates
for the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives
should be pushed to put themselves on record
whether they will restore the funding and move
ahead with this program of demonstrated results.
--
April 21, 2008
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