In 2004, I wrote an article about President Bush's half-baked ideas regarding reading instruction.
Gary Stager on Direct Instruction exposed the Bush Administration's cozy relationship with publishers destined to profit from Reading First. To say that my publisher and owner of District Administration hated the article would be an understatement. He took the unprecedented step of apologizing for the article in the very next issue, before any reader would have had time to object. In fact, the mail received was incredibly supportive of my opinion and the facts were checked prior to publication.
In 2006 I wrote an article,
Shocked! Shocked! Reading First Plagued by Corporate Welfare, Cronyism and Demonization, as a response to the revelations that Reading First was indeed a patronage program that had a lot more to do with ideology than helping children learn to read.
A couple of days ago, the Bush Department of Education released the results of a research study (you know how they LOVE research) on the efficacy of Reading First, a cornerstone of No Child Left Behind.
“Reading First did not improve students’ reading comprehension,” concluded the report, which was mandated by Congress and carried out by the Department of Education’s research arm, the Institute of Education Sciences. “The program did not increase the percentages of students in grades one, two or three whose reading comprehension scores were at or above grade level.”
Can you imagine how bad the results truly were if the spinmeisters in D.C. released conclusions this devastating to their phonics fixation?
Secretary Spelling's spokesperson said that the Secretary "planned to look at the study 'to inform our efforts,' and would 'look forward to reviewing the final report.'"
Spellings should resign and the President of the United States should apologize to every teacher and student for the bogus war of terror they reigned on America's public schools.
Labels: George W. Bush, nclb, Reading First
