Bush’s reading plan is no help, study finds

WASHINGTON – From the beginning, President Bush’s Reading First program has had problems – charges of conflicts of interest, bruising budget fights. Now perhaps the worst of all: The Education Department says it doesn’t work any better than approaches already in place.

Democrats called Thursday for a new look at the $6 billion reading program after a federal study showed it had no special impact on reading comprehension.

The program is at the heart of Bush’s signature education law, No Child Left Behind, which is designed to help boost student performance in low-income elementary schools.

But there was no difference in comprehension scores between students who participated in Reading First and those who did not, says the new study from the Institute of Education Sciences, which is part of the Education Department.

The findings released Thursday threw the program’s future into doubt.

“We need to seriously re-examine this program and figure out how to make it work better for students,” said California Democrat George Miller, chairman of the House education committee.

Reading First was created as part of the 2002 No Child Left Behind law, which aims to get all children doing math and reading at their proper grade level. Bush and Education Secretary Margaret Spellings have championed the reading program as an important part of the law.

The study by the Institute of Education Sciences focused on comprehension rather than other aspects of reading such as whether kids grasp phonics, because comprehension is the ultimate goal, said institute director Russ Whitehurst.

The study did find that Reading First led to more time being spent by teachers on the various aspects of reading judged to be important by a federal reading panel.

The study also found that among schools participating in Reading First, higher levels of funding led to some improvement in scores.

Congress recently cut funding to the program – over Bush’s objections – because of budget constraints and controversies surrounding it.

“It’s no surprise that Reading First has been a failure,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis. He led the fight to cut the program’s budget following reports about management and potential conflicts of interest.

Spellings hailed the program as a success last year when she released data showing scores in Reading First schools were up. However, those scores weren’t compared to scores from schools where Reading First wasn’t in place. The new study compares those using the program with those not using it.

So, while elementary school students appear to be improving in reading across the board, there’s no difference in the gains being made by students participating in Reading First and those who are not, according to the study.

Amanda Farris, deputy assistant secretary for policy and strategic initiatives at the Education Department, said Reading First remains popular.

“Secretary Spellings has traveled to 20 states since January. One of the consistent messages she hears from educators, principals and state administrators is about the effectiveness of the Reading First program in their schools and their disappointment with Congress for slashing Reading First funds,” she said in a statement Thursday.

Jim Herman, Tennessee’s Reading First director, said he thinks the program works. He said a potential flaw with the latest study is that it doesn’t measure the degree to which schools not receiving Reading First money may be using Reading First practices.

He noted that Memphis was studied as part of the new report, and he said it was a district where Reading First methods were used in schools not getting Reading First money.

This isn’t the first time supporters of the program have been dealt bad news.

Congressional investigators and Education Department Inspector General John Higgins previously found that federal officials and contractors didn’t adequately address potential conflicts of interest. For example, contractors that gave states advice on which teaching materials to buy had financial ties to publishers of Reading First materials, according to the investigations.

Higgins also testified to Congress that the department didn’t comply with the law when setting up panels that would review grant applications and in establishing criteria for teaching materials.

Said Rep. Miller: “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.”

The new study itself has been the subject of conflict-of-interest questions, because a contractor that worked on it was also among those who helped implement the Reading First program.

RMC Research Corp. was hired by the federal government to help with Reading First at the outset of the program under three contracts worth about $40 million. The contractor was subsequently criticized in an inspector general’s report for failing to adequately address conflict-of-interest issues. For example, it did not sufficiently screen subcontractors for relationships with publishers of reading programs, the report said.

RMC was involved in the study released Thursday, developing ways of measuring what was taught in classrooms and training classroom observers. Critics have said the company was, in effect, involved in judging its own work.

Whitehurst said he didn’t think the contractor’s involvement resulted in an actual conflict of interest but might have created the appearance of one.

“If we had to do it all over again,” he said, “we would have avoided the appearance issue.”

The report released Thursday was an interim report. The final version is due by the end of the year.