Study: $6B Reading Program Failed

(WASHINGTON) — A reading program at the center of President Bush's signature education law hasn't added to children's understanding of what they read, a federal study has found.

The federal government has spent about $6 billion on Reading First, which was created as part of the 2002 No Child Left Behind law and brings extra reading instruction, based on recommended practices, into low-income elementary schools.

The report out Thursday from the Institute of Education Sciences, an independent arm of the Education Department, finds no difference in reading comprehension scores among students who participated in Reading First and those who did not.

One of the main goals of the No Child law is to get all children reading at their proper grade level, and the Bush administration has made Reading First a key part of that goal.

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings has been among the program's biggest champions and defenders.

IES director Russ Whitehurst said the study focused on reading comprehension, rather than other aspects of reading such as whether kids grasp phonics, because comprehension is the ultimate goal when teaching reading.

The study did find Reading First led to more time being spent by teachers on 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 due to budget constraints and controversies surrounding it.

Last year, Spellings called the program a success — releasing data showing scores in Reading First schools were up. However, those scores weren't compared with schools where Reading First wasn't in place. The study out Thursday compares those using the program and those not using it.

So, while reading gains among elementary school students appear to be on the rise across the board, there's no difference in the gains being made by students participating in Reading First when compared with students who are not participating, according to the new study.

It's not the first time backers of the program have been dealt bad news.

Investigations by Congress and Education Department Inspector General John Higgins previously found that federal officials and contractors didn't guard against conflicts of interest in the program. For example, officials that gave states advice on which teaching materials to buy had financial ties to publishers of such materials, according to a congressional report.

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

RMC Research Corp. was the contractor 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.

With regard to the new study, RMC helped assess how reading is taught in classrooms and also trained 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 in the study resulted in an actual conflict of interest but perhaps created the appearance of one.

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

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