Scandal is Easy, Curriculum is Hard

Sol Stern seems to be in a bomb-throwing mood lately. Earlier this year he set the school choice world abuzz with a City Journal piece arguing that “school choice isn’t enough,” because improving student performance demands better curriculum and instruction, too—a sentiment with which we couldn’t agree more, but one that alienated lots of Stern’s pro-voucher friends. Now Stern’s written a fiery report on the Reading First program for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

For those of you who’ve been living under a rock the past year—or who simply aren’t education policy junkies like we are: Reading First, created as part of the 2001 No Child Left Behind legislation, is a federal program that provides funding to states and school districts to support early elementary reading programs grounded in “scientifically-based reading research” (SBRR). As defined under NCLB, SBRR programs must include explicit instruction the five components of effective reading instruction—phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary development, reading fluency, and reading comprehension strategies—identified by the National Reading Panel. Last year the program came under intense media and Congressional scrutiny following allegations of management problems and conflicts of interest on the peer review panels evaluating state Reading First applications.

Stern’s report seeks to offer the “other side” of the story—the one that didn’t get reported in the press but deserves to be heard. Stern argues that Reading First’s problems began even before the program was enacted, when Congressional drafters decided to not to require programs funded with Reading First dollars to be “scientifically proven”—ie, to have evidence from rigorous experimental trials that they improve children’s reading skills—as the program’s architects initially proposed. Instead, Congress adopted a “scientifically based” standard, which allowed programs to pass muster if they reflect scientific evidence on how children learn to read, but did not require the programs themselves to have undergone experimental evaluations. It did so because only two reading curricula—Direct Instruction and Success for All—met the “scientifically proven” standard (since then, the Reading Recovery program has also met this standard). Stern argues that this “softer” standard made problems inevitable, because it required the Reading First program office to apply discretion in determining whether or not programs were scientifically based, and created an opening for purveyors of ineffective curricula to attempt to label their wares.

There’s plenty to take issue with in Stern’s report—In particular his attacks on the Education Department’s Office of Inspector General and House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller for performing the oversight functions that are a part of their jobs. Stern and Fordham are clearly and, to their credit, forthrightly aligned with one pole of the ongoing wars over curriculum and pedagogical approaches. And their defense of Reading First director Christopher Doherty may be too personal to gain credibility beyond their immediate sphere.

Smart readers should look at the evidence and judge for themselves. But no matter what you think of its overall approach, Stern’s report illustrates several important points: First, it remains extremely rare for Congress to tie federal funding to requirements that funded programs show evidence of effectiveness—in part because there’s often too little research to guide key policy or instructional decisions, but also because some educators resist research-based practices. Second, much as we want to believe that the National Reading Panel report brought peace to the Reading Wars, they continue to rage, especially in education schools and at the local level. Third, the appearance of scandal in bureaucratic and process terms is much more salacious, and easy to write about, than the complexities of curriculum or scientifically based research.

Most important, while Reading First is still a relatively new program, all evaluations to date—by the Office of Management and Budget, the General Accounting Office, and even the liberal Center on Education Policy—suggest that Reading First is working, that it’s helping disadvantaged kids learn to read. And Congress’ response to last year’s scandals—slicing Reading First funding by nearly two-thirds—ultimately hurts these kids, not the people responsible for the programs’ problems.

The Bush administration’s fiscal year 2009 budget proposal requests a restoration of $1 billion in funding for Reading First, and recounts the steps the administration has taken to address program management issues identified by the Department of Education’s Office of the Inspector General. We believe that Congress should not only return Reading First funding to its previous levels, but should also expand the program to support scientifically based reading instruction in pre-k, as well as grades k-3. Perhaps increasing availability of Reading First funding for pre-k youngsters could even be part of a compromise to restore Reading First funding.

Ultimately, however, the Reading First controversy raises important questions for the broader debate about the federal role in setting standards and improving instruction. There’s something cart-before-the-horse about the feds advancing a national definition of quality reading programs when we don’t even have national standards for what children should know and be able to do in reading. That’s not a criticism of Reading First, but it does suggest we need to think beyond Reading First. There are two ways to respond to issues raised by the Reading First controversy: One is to advocate that the federal government remove itself entirely from trying to improve the quality of standards, curricula, or instructional approaches in public schools, and leave these issues entirely in the hands of states and local school districts. The other is to support an unprecedentedly stronger federal role in setting national standards and supporting effective curricula. We're on record in supporting rigorous national academic standards to address the disparities in expectations for children in different states under the current system. It's increasingly looking like NCLB won't be reauthorized until we have a new Congress and President--these are questions they'll have to take up then.