Ending the Reading First Funding Limbo

States and school districts are starting to feel the impact of major funding cuts to the federal Reading First program. Congress cut Reading First funding by 61 percent in fiscal year 2008—the unfortunate result of a serious federal-level management scandal. On the ground, however, the Reading First program is producing results in many schools, and school administrators and teachers have praised it.

President Bush’s fiscal year 2009 budget request would return Reading First funding back to $1 billion annually. As school districts scramble to look for other funding sources to keep Reading First programs alive this year, Members of Congress should reassure them by making a commitment to restore funding in the fiscal year 2009 budget. Congress has made its point on the scandal and should end the political games.

The Administration did make grave errors in program management. But Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings has promised that the program is running cleanly, and she’s fighting to restore funding to the $1 billion level.

Of course, in order to restore funding, Congress will have to pass a fiscal year 2009 appropriations bill, instead of a continuing resolution (which would maintain funding at the 2008 level for the next fiscal year). Reading First is a prime example of why Congress should work on and pass a Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations bill—NOT postpone funding questions until fiscal year 2010. While some states and school districts may be able to produce one year of stop-gap funding to cover the Reading First cuts, most will have to significantly alter and downsize their Reading First programs if Congress maintains funding at $393 million for another year.

Schools Deal with Reduced Funding

Reading First funding supports a variety of reading initiatives, including professional development for teachers, additional reading coaches, and new curriculum, assessments, and diagnostic tools. These are intensive and costly interventions for low-performing children. This year’s drastic reduction in funding is putting these initiatives in limbo, as districts do not know if they can find enough supplemental funding to continue them.

Some states have funds remaining from last year that they can carry over and use to maintain the current programs for at least one more year. Others may have to raid other federal programs, such as Title I or IDEA, for additional support, but these funding streams are also limited. Schools will have to make tough decisions about which federally supported interventions to prioritize.

A lot of states and districts are simply going to have to cut grants or discontinue programs at certain schools. This will require more difficult decisions: Should districts give priority to successful programs, or to programs that need the most development, or to programs that serve the lowest-performing children…?

Appropriations Politics

Congressional Democrats have signaled that they may not try to pass most fiscal year 2009 appropriations bills. Instead, they may use continuing resolutions to maintain funding for federal programs at the 2008 level until fiscal year 2010, when they hope to have a Democratic president in office. The likelihood that Congress and President Bush can agree on a Labor-HHS-Education spending bill for fiscal year 2009 does appear slim. But Congressional Democrats could postpone the fiscal year 2009 appropriations bill until early 2009, in the hope that a new president and Congress will quickly pass a bill upon entering office.

Whether Congress passes a fiscal year 2009 education appropriations bill under Bush or a new President doesn’t matter to states and school districts, because they don’t get fiscal year 2009 funding until July 1, 2009, regardless of when the legislation passes. What matters for Reading First programs is that Congress passes a fiscal year 2009 bill, because a continuing resolution will likely maintain the 61 percent funding cut. (There is some room for changing funding levels in a continuing resolution, but that room is limited and unlikely to be used for a large funding restoration.)

Leading Democrats should recognize that the Reading First cuts have real, negative consequences for their constituents, and they should set aside their political bias against the program and restore funding. This requires sitting down at the appropriations table and doing the tough budget work for the next fiscal year. They can accomplish a lot, particularly for low-performing schools, if they don’t go the easier continuing resolution route.

“The Cure for Cancer”

Democrats must also continue Congressional scrutiny and assessment of Reading First’s implementation. When Spellings recently told Reading First State Directors at a conference in Washington, D.C., “if ever there was a program that was rooted in research and science and fact, this is it. This is [like] the cure for cancer,” she may have slightly exaggerated Reading First’s results.

Reading First has produced promising achievement gains in many individual school studies. The first large-scale federal evaluation using achievement data has not been released yet, but according to the Office of Management and Budget’s ExpectMore.Gov it “yielded positive results” and should be out soon.

There are many critics of the Department of Education’s claims about Reading First’s success, and they make good points. Reading First is not perfect and we need more evaluation to ensure that schools are using the funding in the scientifically based manner most effective for their students.

Promising to restore funding does not mean accepting Reading First as flawless. But Democrats should recognize that, on the whole, Reading First has been a positive federal investment, and there is room for program improvement with continued evaluation (and tighter management controls). If federal funding remains low, states will not be able to sustain the number or intensity of Reading First programs, and schools may lose reading achievement gains for low-performing children.