Reading First, miracle worker
While Americans feel no particular love for the U.S. Department of Education (see this graphic from Sunday’s New York Times Magazine), I have found that, in education circles at least, particular scorn is heaped upon state departments of education and their civil service employees. Colonized (in Paul Hill’s term) from federal programs above, and distant from the real action of schools and districts below, they are the consummate middle-men (and women) of America’s education system. Conventional wisdom says they are capable of little more than pushing paper: performing audits, writing regulations, and filing reports.
What sweet relief it is, then, to read Shepard Barbash’s Education Next piece about the implementation of the Reading First program, and the heroic role played by state departments of education.
The most enduring achievement of Reading First may be that it has nurtured a group of state leaders who have developed deep expertise in the science of reading instruction and have been able to get steadily better at helping the districts teach more children how to read. In states where Reading First is working, districts look not to their long-standing networks of consultants and colleges for expertise, but to their state administrators. This is a bureaucratic revolution.
Imagine that: state bureaucrats turned instructional leaders. Regardless of what you read about the program’s effectiveness (and if you must read something about that, read this or this), its implementation marks a milestone in the annals of federal-state relations. It’s a prescriptive, top-down, micro-managy program that states and districts love. Wonders never cease.
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May 13th, 2008 at 8:26 am
To read more about the origins of Reading First see Reid Lyon’s guest blog today over at http://jaypgreene.com/2008/05/13/ask-reid-lyon/ .
The more I read about this the more convinced I am that the basic science is right but the implementation fell short. Of course, we now need to ask why implementation fell short and whether that failure is inherent in the incentives of the current system or something that can be fixed by trying harder next time.
May 13th, 2008 at 10:17 am
Hmmm. Of course the other possibility is that Reading First doesn’t work. It’s seems a bit of a stretch to call something heroic when the result is a massive waste of taxpayer dollars and corruption that truly boggles the mind.
May 13th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
HERE FOLLOWS A BRIEF ESSAY ON A VITAL, THOUGH JOURNALISTICALLY TABOO SUJECT:
I have set up a free Internet listserv and invited 40 kindergarten teachers to join it in order to explore classroom experiences in testing the thesis that all kindergarten students, irrespective of ethnicity or socioeconomic status, will learn to read well before they enter first-grade. If you would like to monitor the message traffic on this listserv, I believe you will wind up having a very newsworthy story. To join the group, simply send any message to k1writing-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
It seems ironic to me that lay people I talk to seem to have no trouble at all understanding that teaching five-year-olds to write would naturally lead to their learning to read. It is only with people who “have studied literacy” that won’t accept what I’m saying, or have any interest in doing the simple observations that would prove or disprove this idea, which Maria Montessori discovered about one hundred years ago.
I had thought the reason for their reluctance was simply that the “conventional wisdom” of today’s educators and school psychologists does not agree with this idea. Instead, they read that the answer lies in “learning to break the code”, and “overcoming inborn learning disabilities”.
However, since Barack Obama’s speech on Tuesday, I have come up with another theory to supplement the fact that educators do not want to examine the relationship of teaching kindergartners fluency in printing and their learning to read spontaneously.
The fact is that in order to show that all kindergarten kids can learn to print fluently, and therefore can easily learn to read (showing that conditions like “dyslexia” and “specific learning disabilities”, as well as “cognitive deficits” and “central auditory processing disorder” actually do not even exist), one would in effect be doing a study to test another idea which is completely taboo. This helps explain why the reading gurus don’t want to “go there”.
Because observing whether all minority and disadvantaged children can or cannot learn to read and print fluently early in life is tantamount to doing a study to see in African-American children actually are culturally and/or genetically inferior to white children.
True, if it turns out that ALL kids can learn to read and write in kindergarten, irrespective of race, ethnicity or socioeconomic status, it will prove that the Declaration of Independence is actually correct, and all men are, indeed, “born equal”.
But if it turns out otherwise, and reading and scholastic problems persist even in racial-minority children who are given oodles of printing practice, then it will turn out that certain groups of kids actually are inferior, and that Diane Ravitch was correct in writing, a few years ago, that “if this is correct, then democracy is wrong.”
It is now clearer than ever why education professors, school psychologists, education administrators and journalists do not want to learn the truth about the failure of American schools. It just is too politically incorrect.
essay by Bob Rose, MD (retired), Jasper, Georgia; rovarose@aol.com
May 13th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Bearing in mind the enormous differences in vocabulary that Hart and Risley have shown result from environment rather than genetic endowment, (see “The Early Catastrophe” at http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/spring2003/catastrophe.html) it will be difficult for a study begun at kindergarten age to demonstrate what Bob Rose suggests. In an interview about his research, Risley points out that both the variability in vocabulary and the IQ of the three year-olds in his study were strongly correlated with the amount their parents talked to them; they were not correlated significantly with race or socio-economic status. Even more strikingly, the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test scores of these children at age nine still had a correlation of .77 with parental loquacity.
May 13th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
The Risley interview to which I referred is at http://www.childrenofthecode.org/interviews/risley.htm
May 13th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
Bearing in mind the enormous differences in vocabulary that Hart and Risley have shown result from environment rather than genetic endowment
Parental loquacity is a function of parental IQ is it not?
As is a child’s IQ regressed to the mean.
So the the environmental effect is not exactly independent of IQ effects. Adoption studies seem to confirm this with child IQ being a function more of the biological parents and not the adoptive parents by age 17.
May 13th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
Nate Stearns comments about Reading First being a waste of taxpayer money and corruption that boggles the mind is a pretty strong conclusion in the absence of evidence. Let me address the corruption issue first. I do not know about Nate, but I have yet to read anything in the OIG reports that have claimed any actual conflict of interest among the parties involved in implementing the RF program. Because congressional members fail to mention that fact in their demonizing of the program does not mean that they are accurate. It is incumbent on those charging corruption to demonstrate with evidence where the actual conflicts of interest existed and whether their was anything unethical or illegal being carried out by the Reading First program officials or their contractors. I sure agree that the Department of Education botched the implementation phase of Reading First - including not providing contractors any guidelines for conflict of interest which obviously led to perceptions of conflict - as well as putting the program in place in may states and districts without providing adequate technical assistance, and evaluation capacity and so on.
But I believe it is important for Mr. Stearns to name names and provide the actual evidence of corruption, not just echo congressional statements or the National Enquirer blog comments that slander individuals.
I would disagree that Reading First is a massive waste of taxpayer dollars. The recent Reading First Impact Study interim report did some thing s correctly (employed a strong design for the questions they asked) , but appeared to miss some very important confounds, leading me to have difficulties interpreting the results. First, the evaluation did not address all of the evaluation targets established in the law, thus narrowing the scope and comprehensive of the evaluation congress intended. Second, and most importantly, the sample of states selected for inclusion in the study was not sufficient to test a number of variables that are critical to interpreting the data. As hard as I try, I cannot see how the sample would be considered representative. Third the evaluation examined the effect of resources (Reading First funding) on a single measure of reading comprehension. As Steve Raudenbush has argued convincingly, an evaluation study comparing a group that received the resources versus another group that did not answers very little about the programs actual effectiveness or the ability of a study to inform improvements in the program or guide policy.
There are many factors at the implementation and instructional level that have to be examined and studied to refine any interpretation of the main effect of no significant difference. As Mr. Stearns probably knows, many school districts that implemented Reading First in some schools implemented the same programs in non-Reading First schools. Professional development activities funded through Reading First were available to all schools in a district, not just Reading First schools. Most of the states that Mr. Barbash highlighted in his article where not included in the sample drawn for the impact study. Approximately 60 percent of Reading First and non-Reading First schools were implementing the same programs by the thrid year of implementation according to Tim Shanahan. There was a significant degree of contamination from the “bleeding” of programs and resources across Reading First and non-Reading First schools. Believe me, if the final impact study report clarifies all of these issues, that would be very helpful.
To be sure, I am not a neutral observer of the Reading First program. I was significantly involved in helping to develop the research underpinnings for the program and the drafting of the legislation. I am suspicious of anyone’s agenda, most often my own. I realize that any comments I make on the implementation of Reading First or its evaluation will be considered self-serving by many. That is life. To protect myself against any biases I may have, it is essential for me to rely on strong trustworthy evidence. If the evidence is there, I will be the first to admit I was wrong, or off the mark, or uninformed. On the other hand, it is only fair and appropriate to be presented the evidence in full by someone who is willing to take responsibility for the veracity of the allegations they put forth. Allegations, insinuations, and slander are mainstays of the dialogue in education. Let’s move it to a higher level. Provide the evidence that will substantiate your charges and go on the record with the actual evidence. That will sure help to cut through the gossip mongering.