To:            Andrew Rotherham, Jonathan Schnur, Michael Johnston,
                 Robert Gordon
From:        Mike Petrilli
Re:            David Axelrod’s statements about Reading First

Good morning, gentlemen. As key advisors to Senator Barack Obama, as well as bona fide education reformers, I urge you to correct the statements made by campaign manager David Axelrod on Sunday’s Meet the Press, which were highlighted in yesterday’s Education Daily.

Although David Axelrod, an advisor for Democratic presidential candidate Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, did not specifically name the Reading First program when asked Sunday on Meet the Press about programs Obama would cut in light of the economic crisis, [Richard Long of the International Reading Association] said Axelrod alluded to it.

“We’re going to have to look at the budget, and Sen. Obama said he’s going to go through it line by line, and he’s going to get rid of things that don’t work,” Axelrod said on the TV show. “We have, for example, a reading program that was installed by the Bush administration that turned out to be a big boondoggle. It’s not helping any kids learn. We ought to say, ‘That doesn’t work, let’s get rid of it.’”

While taking a scalpel to ineffective federal programs is no easy trick, killing a program that is helping millions of children learn to read would be a national disgrace. Of course, thanks to Democrats on Capitol Hill, the wheels are already in motion for that tragic story to come to fruition. If anything, the Reading First saga is a great example of the Washington “politics as usual” that Sen. Obama has promised to change.

If you’ve read Sol Stern’s report about the program, you know the facts, but let me repeat them. Reading First is based on the tenets of scientific, non-partisan research. This research was shepherded for many years by Reid Lyon, who by all accounts is a liberal Democrat (as were most of the people involved in the implementation of the program). The program’s authorizing language was watered down during the legislative process, opening the door for non-scientific programs to be adopted by local districts–as had happened during President Clinton’s Reading Excellence Act initiative, which ended without much result. So officials in the Bush Administration had a choice: either let “anything go” or work to ensure that only rigorous programs be adopted. They chose the latter, and for this have been prosecuted with charges of favoritism and cronyism. When, in fact, all they wanted was for poor children to have access to good reading programs. But this is today’s Washington.

And what have been the results? Yes, the interim findings of one federal study raised concerns about the program’s effectiveness, but this study has been widely criticized, even by the director of the Institute for Education Sciences, which released the study. Meanwhile, the program is wildly popular with educators, evidence is mounting that state and local reading scores for the neediest children are going through the roof, and just the other day the Southern Regional Education Board issued a report crediting Reading First for the big gains being made by states throughout the South (a region with a disproportionate share of the African-American and Latino students targeted by Reading First).

It’s understandable why a non-education-expert such as Axelrod would believe Reading First to be a “boondoggle,” since that’s what’s been reported in the media. (Of course, by the same count, he might also think that charter schools are ineffective, because that’s what the New York Times has reported.) So I’m asking you to clarify for Axelrod and other key officials in the campaign–and perhaps even the candidate himself–that if they are looking for examples of failed programs eligible for elimination, Reading First should not be one of them.

No, I refer not to the failed bailout, but to the extension bill or “continuing resolution” needed now that Congress has failed to pass a 2009 budget prior to the end of the 2008 fiscal year (today). This summer, Mike offered “three cheers for broken government,” noting that a continuing resolution would at least let Reading First survive another year, defying its recent death. Unfortunately, Ed Week’s Alyson Klein reports that it might not be that simple:

But the stopgap bill doesn’t mean federal funding of the program will be continued. The money would not be allocated to school districts until July 1. If Congress decides to eliminate the program when it returns to the education spending bills in March, schools won’t receive any new Reading First money.

The extension “is essentially a moot point,” said Richard Long, the director of government relations for the Newark, Del.-based International Reading Association.

So Reading First may really be dead after all, unless our new president dares heed Mike’s plea to fund programs that actually work.

Sure, he was flawed, but he got a few big things right.

So writes guest blogger Richard Whitmire* in this phenomenal post that manages to leak Core Knowledge’s plan to release a bona fide reading program; calls for a “gut check” for Democrats scrapping the federal Reading First program; and backs up Sol “Marshall Plan” Stern to boot.

*Whitmire also weighs in on the “paternalistic” debate. And guess what: he doesn’t like the term either.

The insatiable Sol Stern is back with another broadside on the Bloomberg/Klein administration. This time he takes the Gotham group to task for poor decisions and faulty leadership on reading.

New York City’s 2002 shift to mayoral control of the schools created a unique opportunity…. Introducing his education-reform plan… Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that schools in the past had enjoyed too much autonomy, with “a baffling profusion of approaches to teaching the three Rs throughout the city.” Now, there would be “one, unified, focused, streamlined chain of command [and] the Chancellor’s office will dictate the curriculum and pedagogical methods.” The mayor promised that reading instruction in the early grades would “employ strategies proven to work,” including “a daily focus on phonics.”

But in a tragically mistaken policy decision, Klein went in the opposite direction on reading, franchising out most instructional decisions to a group of progressive educators who regarded it as a crime to teach children how to read through scripted phonics programs. Under the influence of his deputy chancellor for teaching and learning, Diana Lam, Klein chose an approach called Balanced Literacy for the system’s core reading program starting in September 2003. The city’s version of Balanced Literacy was crafted by Teachers College education professor and progressive-ed guru Lucy Calkins and included only a small phonics component, Month by Month Phonics. The rest of the program assumed, based on no real evidence, that children can intuit the meaning of printed words through context clues and through such activities as “shared reading” and “read alouds.” Champions of this approach believe that children can learn to read simply by reading-by immersing themselves in print. The city imposed the new program on virtually every elementary school in the city, even shutting down the special Chancellors’ District set up by one of Joel Klein’s predecessors, Rudy Crew, in which about 35 high-poverty schools were using a research-based reading program called Success for All and almost uniformly achieving higher reading scores.

Stern goes on to argue that neither New York City’s recent move toward school-level autonomy, nor Joel Klein’s remorse for picking Month by Month Phonics, have changed the situation; whole language still reigns supreme.

Stern wants a $150-million “Marshall Plan for Reading” for NYC; it’s too bad none of that tab will be picked up by the federal Reading First program, defunct as it is likely soon to be.

“Studies of Popular Reading Texts Don’t Make Grade”

Check out the war of words happening at USAToday.com in response to its editorial (and a ridiculous rebuttal by Stephen Krashen) on Reading First. Reid Lyon learned how to fight in Vietnam and it shows.

Word around Washington is that Congress is unlikely to finish its appropriations bills before the election and may choose to pass a yearlong “continuing resolution” for all of fiscal year 2009. That might sound arcane, but here’s the silver lining: such a move would save Reading First from its imminent demise. That’s because the program is receiving about $400 million this fiscal year and, with a continuing resolution, would receive the same next. That’s $400 million more than it would receive otherwise, as both chambers of Congress zeroed out the program in their appropriations bills.

Kudos to Education Secretary Margaret Spellings for taking to the pages of the Washington Post to defend DC’s endangered school voucher program. But I can’t help wondering, yet again, what’s up at 400 Maryland Avenue. I’ve never viewed Spellings as a strong supporter of school choice, though she continues to fight hard to protect this $13-million-a-year program. (Maybe it’s time I admit that she’s a voucher advocate, after all.) But what’s beyond doubt is that she’s a believer in scientifically-based reading programs (once claiming “phonics” as her religion). And yet, when it comes to the impending death of her beloved billion-dollar-a-year Reading First program, all she does is send letters and issue statements.

Madame Secretary and associates: may I suggest that the next time you place a Post op-ed, you make it about Reading First?

From: U.S. Department of Education [mailto:OPA@ed.gov]
Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2008 5:06 PM
To: U.S. Department of Education
Subject: FYI – Reading First Letter from Secretary Spellings

FYI – You may be interested in the following letter sent from U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings to Senator Robert Byrd, Senator Thad Cochran, Senator Edward Kennedy, Senator Michael Enzi, Congressman David Obey, Congressman George Miller, Congressman Howard “Buck” McKeon and Congressman Jerry Lewis.

June 25, 2008

Dear [NAME]:

Reading is the skill on which all other learning depends.  And so it is with disappointment I note recent Appropriations Subcommittee actions to eliminate critical funding for the groundbreaking Reading First program.

The program’s origins trace back to a historic and bipartisan Congressional vote to create the National Reading Panel.  The panel examined more than 20 years of scientific research to determine the most effective methods of reading instruction.

Reading First applies these findings to the classroom and to training teachers in the use of scientifically based reading research to improve the literacy skills of more than 1.6 million students.  State-reported performance data released this month indicates impressive gains in reading comprehension, with improvements seen by nearly every grade and subgroup of students.  For example, 28 of 37 States that reported data experienced increases in the percentage of students proficient in reading comprehension.  Of these, 25 States increased by five percentage points or more.

It is extremely regrettable, therefore, that the reading gains of our most vulnerable students would now be threatened by legislative action.  I would urge you to talk with principals and teachers in Reading First classrooms before making a final decision.  You may find, as I have, that the program has helped raise expectations and prepare students, including English language learners and students with disabilities, for academic success.

I would also like to make sure you are aware that the Reading First Advisory Committee, an independent panel of literacy experts nominated by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Institute for Literacy, the National Academy of Sciences, and the U.S. Department of Education, has recommended Congress not eliminate funding at this time.

We now know what it takes to teach reading.  Zeroing out Reading First would endanger our academic progress, send the wrong message to teachers, and, worst of all, do a disservice to our nation’s neediest students.

No words can describe this travesty…

See previous coverage here.

That’s how Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings just described* the decision by the House Appropriations Committee to defund the Reading First program. And she’s right.

* Here at the Excellence in Education summit in Orlando.

Here’s a twist. We’re used to reading about state and local officials who bellyache about No Child Left Behind’s requirements but aren’t courageous enough to live by their principles and forfeit the federal bucks. (If you don’t take the money, you don’t have to follow the law’s rules.) But according to an article in the Shreveport Times, now a district in Louisiana is turning this trend on its head. It’s restoring the Congressional cuts to the Reading First program by using its own money to keep the initiative going.

Caddo received about $671,000 from the state Education Department for Reading First in previous years. However, if the money isn’t received, the Caddo Parish School Board has decided to give the district the money from its general fund.

“(Reading First) helps students, and those kids’ scores have gone up because of Reading First. I don’t know why legislators want to cut something that works,” said board member Dottie Bell, a former teacher. “I thought we were all on the page when it comes to educating children, and that’s a good program. It’s working.”

You said it Dottie. Chairman Obey, Mr. Reading First Budget Slasher, are you embarrassed yet?

It’s not just that Leo Casey noticed that I lost a few pounds, or that Seattle’s school leaders are prioritizing achievement over “diversity.” Now Education Week has published a balanced article about Reading First. This is new, different, and exciting.

What’s most interesting about the article is the backpedaling of Institute for Educational Sciences director Russ Whitehurst. Such backpedaling started a few weeks ago, though too late to find its way into the mainstream press reports about the study. (Before backpedaling, he backed the study wholeheartedly.) No longer:

“I would say you have to wait for the final report before it would be reasonable for people to draw conclusions about the Reading First study,” said Grover J. “Russ” Whitehurst, the director of the Institute of Education Sciences, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Education that commissioned the congressionally mandated study. One difficulty in doing the study, he said, is that the treatment is not clearly defined, and implementation of the program varies from site to site.

“The ‘it’ [what is being measured] is more ambiguous than it might be in certain other impact studies,” he added. “There’s not a manual that you can get on the Web and order that is Reading First.”

And here’s the kicker:

The findings, Mr. Whitehurst said, do not support the arguments made by some critics that the Reading First principles, or the research-based approach to instruction overall, are ineffective.

“Scientifically based reading instruction has to work, because by definition it is based on practices that have been shown to work,” he said. “So this almost gleeful conclusion that because of this report we can ignore cumulative evidence on effective reading instruction is simply inappropriate.”

Well said, Mr. Whitehurst. It almost makes me gleeful.

Still trying to get your head around the recent Reading First evaluation? Do you work on Capitol Hill and want to give your member of Congress a quick overview of the hub-bub? Cut and paste this Eduflack entry and you’re golden.

Now that Sol Stern has completely ruffled the feathers of the “whatever works” crowd, he’s turned his sights to one of the most visible leaders of the “what works” movement, Institute for Educational Sciences director Russ Whitehurst. In a new City Journal Online piece, Stern critiques the recent Reading First evaluation and (joining Fordham’s Amber Winkler, among others) points out its fatal flaw: the likelihood that the study’s “control schools” were implementing many of the same programs as the study’s “treatment group”:

One reading scientist willing to speak on the record about these concerns is University of Illinois professor Timothy Shanahan, former president of the 85,000-member International Reading Association (the world’s largest professional organization of reading teachers and scholars) and a recent inductee into the Reading Hall of Fame. Shanahan told me that he asked IES officials about the study design and was told that it was too late to change it.

Stern, reading the Washington tea leaves and sensing Congressional Democrats’ eagerness to kill off the program, wants IES (i.e., Whitehurst) to admit the evaluation’s limitations:

IES officials should at least point out that influential people in Washington are drawing unwarranted conclusions from a study that many reputable reading scientists find deeply flawed. It would be a stunning display of irresponsibility to remain silent after their study has contributed to so much public misunderstanding.

As I wrote last week, Russ Whitehurst can use Flypaper’s valuable real estate anytime he wants to clear up this “public misunderstanding.”

To further illustrate the point that contamination may have occurred among Reading First and presumably “non” Reading First schools, a point I made in my piece in today’s Gadfly, Connie Choate, the director of Arkansas Reading First, writes:

I believe the design of the Impact Study is flawed.  The study compared funded Reading First schools with non-funded RF schools within the same district.  However in their RF proposals districts were required to include a plan for spreading the RF methodology to non-funded schools.  States were also required to do the same.  For example, all teachers across the state were invited to participate in ELLA, Effective Literacy, Summer Reading Camp, and several other professional development opportunities that are part of Reading First.  We aligned all of this professional development to SBRR.  So, even non-funded schools have benefited from RF.  One example is the revision of the State English Language Arts Frameworks. The knowledge gained from the National Reading Panel Report and Reading First enabled the state to revise the English Language Arts Framework to align with SBRR.  All professional development offered by the state is now aligned to SBRR.  This should align curriculum and instruction in all schools to SBRR, not just our RF funded schools.  We have created many materials in Reading First and have made them available to all schools. 

Ms. Choate got me thinking that it would be a good idea to take a look at the feds’ application for state RF grants. And sure enough, what she says rings true. Consider this from page 1:

Each SEA may reserve up to 20 percent of the Reading First funds it receives for State use. These funds will assist States in building and maintaining statewide capacity to effectively teach all children to read by third grade. States may expend up to 65 percent of these reserved funds for activities related to professional development… This unprecedented and significant funding will provide States with the resources and opportunity to extend this reading initiative and to improve reading instruction beyond the specific schools and districts that receive Reading First subgrants (emphasis added).

And should there be any confusion, page five includes the selection criteria for awarding grants. Potential state grantees, in a section called the State Professional Development Plan, are to answer this question: “How will teachers statewide receive professional development in the essential components of reading instruction, using scientifically based instructional strategies, programs and materials, and using screening, diagnostic, and classroom based instructional assessments?”

Again, it’s a great idea to spread the instructional reading wealth among state schools, but it sure makes it all the more difficult to assess what is really happening in this evaluation, which sought to draw a line in the sand between treatment and comparison schools.

Amber and Christina discuss the good and bad of the Reading First interim evaluation report:

Ohio AG Marc Dann isn’t the only one coming in for a beating. Take a look at this analysis of the recent Reading First interim evaluation study from Dr. James Salzman, the co-director of the Ohio Reading First Center.

To paraphrase Mark Twain: There are lies, damned lies, and the latest Reading First report. The report is methodologically flawed, statistically glamorous, and ultimately meaningless in terms of its conclusions. It’s caused the usual sharks to roil the waters as if chum were being served. And in the end, it says nothing about the positive impact of Reading First in Ohio.

Makes Fordham’s critique of the evaluation and defense of the program seem dispassionate and reserved. The key Ohio points:

- Students in Ohio have gained more than a year’s reading achievement for each year that they are in the program….If students stay within the program, they are able to catch up to benchmark scores in fluency, even though they start significantly behind.
- Students have closed the gap on state performance on the third grade Ohio Achievement Test (OAT) over the past four years.
- Teachers have helped students close the achievement gap for students of color.
- Equally importantly, Westat’s (2008) independent evaluation of Reading First Ohio has documented that the more time that students spend in Reading First schools the more they outperformed their peers in comparison schools across the state.

A message to my friend Russ Whitehurst (Institute for Educational Sciences director): Whenever you’d like to post a response to these critiques, this blog’s all yours.

Reid Lyon, former Reading Czar and one of the creators of Reading First, posted a comment about Shep Barbash’s Education Next article that’s so crucial to the current debate that it’s worth excerpting at length:

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 comprehensiveness 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 third 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.

According to our own Checker Finn, just yesterday the Institute for Educational Sciences director Russ Whitehurst admitted in front of 200 people that the “bleeding” of Reading First methods to schools in the control group is a probable explanation for the findings of his evaluation. In other words, non Reading First schools were using Reading First’s (proven and effective) methods too. That would have been a nice point to get across to the press before they wrote stories declaring the initiative a failure.

Let it be clear: even the government’s chief education researcher is saying that the findings of his evaluation don’t mean that Reading First is “ineffective” and should be scrapped. Congress, are you listening?

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.