Reading First Flop

Interesting news from the US Department of Education yesterday … The Reading First Program appears to be a flop. No Child Left Behind established the Reading First Program (as part of Title I), “a major Federal initiative designed to help ensure that all children can read at or above grade level by the end of third-grade.”

Here is what Margaret Spellings said about Reading First:

“Reading First helps our most vulnerable students learn the fundamental elements of reading while helping teachers improve instruction. Instead of reversing the progress we have made by cutting funding, we must enhance Reading First and help more students benefit from research based instruction.”

However, the final report released yesterday found that:

“There is limited evidence that students in RF schools improved their reading performance more quickly than their counterparts in non­-RF Title I schools.”

and

“There is little evidence of a relationship between schools’ implementation of RF­aligned activities and their levels of reading performance.” (p126)

Interestingly, the executive summary stated:

“While this evaluation found no statistically significant difference in reading comprehension, Reading First had a significant impact on students — decoding, phonics, and fluency skills — three of the five basic components of reading. This impact means that scores of students in Reading First schools were higher by the equivalent of 3 months in a 9-month school year.”

That reminds me of the Hooked on Phonics program that gleefully portrayed a toddler reading the Wall Street Journal. Fabulous – but haven’t we learned by now that decoding is just an aspect of reading? That the most critical component is comprehension? There’s absolutely no point in beautiful and fluid decoding if a student hasn’t a clue what they just read. (For more on this, check out, I Read It But I Don’t Get It)

Back to Reading First, the program and research surrounding it was heavily criticized by the Federal Advisory Committee, not to mention by educational publications in the US. However, Margaret Spellings stuck to it and the end result is over $6 billion spent on a program that resulted in “little evidence” that it impacted student reading performance.

Said Grover J. “Russ” Whitehurst, the outgoing director of the Education Department’s research institute: “I don’t think anyone should be celebrating the fact that the federal government invested $6 billion in a reading program that has shown no effects on reading comprehension.”

Hear, hear.

2 thoughts on “Reading First Flop

  1. As I read this post, I am listening to a presenter from PaTTAN tell all of our district administrators that oral reading fluency is the primary indicator that a child needs to receive Tier 2 or Tier 3 services. The State of PA seems to think that word callers are the exception and incredibly rare! They go on to say all comprehension can be taught in the classroom to all children, no need for small groups focusing on comprehension. But oral reading fluency should be at the top of our concerns and we should focus all of our resources and attention on fluency. UGH!

  2. Amazing, isn’t it? Do you think they bothered to check with teachers who know darn well that kids can be REALLY FLUENT and not have a clue? And the reverse is also true: great comprehenders who just don’t read out loud so well?!

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