Reading First's Christmas massacre

Shepard Barbash / January 3, 2008

Reading First, funded at $1 billion per year, is among the most promising federal efforts to help the poor. Title I, funded at $12 billion per year, is not nearly so effective. That President Bush has just signed into law a 2008 budget that gives the latter an 8.6 percent increase in funding and the former a 64 percent decrease confirms the wisdom of Lincoln, who observed, "In republican democracies, public sentiment is everything. With it nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed." Notwithstanding Reading First's success increasing early literacy rates among the poor, public sentiment for the program remains weaker than that of its enemies, who have proved more influential in Congress and more determined than Reading First's stewards in the administration.

Launched in 2002 as part of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), Reading First helps states help their districts improve reading instruction for poor students in low-performing elementary schools. Evaluations by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Congress's Government Accountability Office, the Center on Education Policy, and several states (e.g., Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, and Washington) have corroborated the U.S. Department of Education's (ED's) findings that the program is popular among educators and is improving student achievement. Indeed OMB singles out Reading First as the only component of NCLB with enough evidence to be judged "effective."

Unlike Title I, an entrenched entitlement that gives districts too much freedom to spend taxpayers' money, Reading First is controversial

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Reading First's Christmas massacre

Why ED in '08 won't sway Iowans tonight, or other Americans thereafter

January 3, 2008

Marc Lampkin--who runs the Bill Gates and Eli Broad-funded $60 million "ED in '08" initiative to make education a top-tier issue in the presidential campaign--doesn't believe that his purpose is to make education a top-tier issue in the presidential campaign.

An article last month in Education Week quotes Lampkin: "Making this [education] a top issue was not the end in itself. Ultimately, it's not about where you stand in the polls. It's about whether the candidates, and the next president, are adopting the right policies."

Really? ED in '08's website states, "Our goal is to ensure that the nation engages in a rigorous debate and to make education a top priority in the 2008 presidential election."

But don't blame Lampkin. As a paid political consultant, his job is to spin, and to contain expectations. And he's surely smart enough to see the writing on the wall: Education is not, nor will it be, a top priority in 2008, despite any organization's efforts.

The country, it seems, is right now uninterested in hearing candidates speak deeply about the subject. Evidence abounds. For example, of those Iowans surveyed in a November New York Times/CBS News poll, only 4 percent of Democrats and 3 percent of Republicans called education their most important issue when deciding for whom to vote for president (in New Hampshire, 5 percent of Democrats and 3 percent of Republicans named ed their top priority). Voters today are far

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Why ED in '08 won't sway Iowans tonight, or other Americans thereafter

Broccoli for your brain

January 3, 2008

We hear often about the decline of reading and what a nasty harbinger it is. But seldom do we hear the case made as convincingly as Caleb Crain puts it in the December 24th New Yorker. That's because Crain is not content, as are many defenders of the written word (Fordham included), to base his arguments on maintaining a shared literary culture and noting how much we all can learn from, say, old man Lear. Indeed, one could argue that Americans have long shared a culture, not of literature, but of TV shows and politics and sports (replace Lear with Barry Bonds). Crain, though, dispenses with philosophy and structures his essay around science--how reading (and other activities that distract from it, such as watching TV and surfing the web) affect the human brain. His article shows that more-literate people--and, one deduces, more-literate societies--have an altogether different way of interacting in the world. Literate folks are more likely to think abstractly, to eschew stereotype and embrace analysis, and to correct their own inconsistencies. Furthermore, the process of reading (scanning words and deriving their meaning), unlike watching TV, does not itself require much brain activity. That sounds like a bad thing, but it actually allows one to both receive information and consider that information simultaneously. Reading becomes, therefore, a sort of solitary conversation--an internal dialogue with others, that helps us better evaluate the outside world and ourselves. The dwindling number of

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Broccoli for your brain

Capital offense

January 3, 2008

Washington, D.C., parents could not have been pleased after reading about the haphazard way that curriculum decisions are made in their city. Two recent Washington Post articles paint a story of administrative incompetence and misplaced power. The first details how a former public-school principal received $3 million, authorized on a single day, to start a professional development organization for teachers--one that trained educators in a method of reading instruction that clashed with that one already in use in D.C. public schools. The second shows how Senator Mary Landrieu, who represents constituents in Louisiana, earmarked $2 million to implement in the District a reading program whose founder had held for her a $30,000 fundraiser. Both are pieces of substantial reporting and well worth reading. They raise questions. Why are curriculum decisions in Washington, one of the nation's worst school districts, being made by a U.S. senator from the bayou? Why are literacy programs that clash with those already used in D.C.'s schools (programs that have had dubious records of success in other cities) being approved and given $3 million of taxpayer money? Michelle Rhee, the District's new schools chancellor, may have more clean-up work to do than even she envisioned.

"A $2.9 Million Payout, With a Few Shortcuts," by Joe Stephens, Washington Post, December 20, 2007

"A Reading Program's Powerful Patron," by James V. Grimaldi, Washington Post, December 20, 2007

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Capital offense

Intervene smarter

January 3, 2008

No serious person thinks students who require special education should not get it. It's undeniable, however, that public schools have a history of shunting into special education classes many students who suffer from no learning disability but who may simply lag academically for one reason or another, or who have trouble behaving. That's why a move away from special education as an out for schools or an entitlement for parents (who often love its special services), and a move toward early intervention in the educations of at-risk students, is a promising sign. In the counties of suburban Washington, D.C., special education enrollments are dropping: since 1999, the special education enrollment in Charles County, Maryland, public schools has fallen to 8 percent from 12 percent, and in Frederick County, Maryland, it dropped to 11 percent from 17 percent. At least part of this change is a response to a 2004 rewrite of the federal special education law, which allowed districts more flexibility in using funding for early intervention techniques. (Some do this incredibly well.) John J. Lody, the diagnostic services supervisor in Loudoun County, Virginia, said he doesn't like to test for special education before trying such intervention tactics. "We try to make smart referrals," he said. Parents are upset by this approach, but when push comes to shove, it's the right thing to do.

"Waiting Too Late to Test?," by Michael Alison Chandler, Washington Post, December 31,

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Intervene smarter

Subcontinent envy

January 3, 2008

Some of the best food to be found in England has its origins in Delhi and Puducherry. Now, it seems, some of the best education to be found in Japan has its home in India, too. The New York Times reports that Japanese parents are experiencing a "craze for Indian education," and that the demand is being seen in a surge of applications for Japan's few Indian international schools. The Global Indian International School, for example, is building a second campus to accommodate the flood of applicants. Over the last several years, the Land of the Rising Sun has grown increasingly insecure about its future economic and educational clout--and fears were only exacerbated last month when the OECD reported that in math, Japan had fallen from first place in 2000 to tenth place. The country's scores in science fell, too. According to Professor Yoshinori Murai, who teaches at Tokyo's Sophia University, as Japan's educational prominence wanes "its attitudes toward Asia are changing. It has started seeing India and China as nations with something to offer." Thus the demand for spots at schools such as Little Angels Academy in Mitaka, where most of the teachers and textbooks are South Asian, and the curriculum is rigorous (5-year-olds learn to multiply and write one-page essays). Gadfly wonders: If the Japanese are scared about falling behind in international competitiveness in math and science, where, exactly, does that leave Americans?

"Losing

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Subcontinent envy

It's not about the kids

January 3, 2008

Can Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa catch a break? Not only does he have to battle with hardnosed politicians in Sacramento, intransigent school board members, tough union types, and angry parents--now he's catching flak from the kids! That's right, according to the Los Angeles Times, the city's public school students are the latest aggrieved group to demand a seat at the school-reform negotiating table. High school junior Ana Exiga wants more counselors and college advisors, fewer military recruiters on campus, and more classes about African-American and Latino history. "We want to see more kids going to college," she said. None of these complaints is original, and some are a little off-base. We know it may be unpopular to say so, and we know kids may know a lot about a lot of things (Barry Bonds?), but they don't know much about the best ways to fix their schools. Villaraigosa is quite aware that more of L.A.'s students need to go to college; the hard part is figuring out how to make that happen. Extra classes about Martin Luther King, Jr. and José de San Martin are worthless if youngsters don't show up to them or can't read. L.A. doesn't need another uninformed bunch clogging the education debate. Start a "Student Advisory Group" that meets at Pizza Hut twice a semester, and forget about it.

"Left out, students want a voice in reform," by Duke Helfand and Howard Blume, Los