MDRC, which produces some of the best social science research out there, has taken a crack at the DOE’s research concluding that the Reading First program was ineffective. I’ve always been convinced that the Reading First programs were both good for boys and effective for all students (while never doubting the program was run with a Mob mentality and deserving of a pimp slap from Congress).

Congress, of course, did more than that. The program is about to disappear, which means the reading money will get peddled out directly to school districts. In some cases, that’s a good thing. In other districts…watch for a decline in reading scores as they return to scattershot reading programs backed by third rate research.

So now is a good time to reconsider Reading First’s death sentence. A summary of the Reading First report:

Understanding Reading First
What We Know, What We Don’t, and What’s Next

Corinne Herlihy, James Kemple, Howard Bloom, Pei Zhu, and Gordon Berlin

In 2008, the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) at the U.S. Department of Education published research findings on Reading First, a centerpiece of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act that provided $1 billion per year to help all children read at or above grade level by the end of third grade. The findings were interpreted by many in the media and the policy community as saying that Reading First did not work. Although the story is more nuanced than that, funding for the program was eliminated in the fiscal 2009 spending bill that was signed by President Obama in March. NCLB is up for reauthorization in 2009. In the meantime, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provides tens of billions of dollars to states and localities for spending on education, meaning that federal, state, and local policymakers face critical choices today about how best to use this money to support early reading instruction and achievement.

(more…)

If you believe that the federal Reading First program is one of the most important education policies ever launched at the federal level (as I do) and also believe it would be a shame for Congress to dismantle it based on evidence to date (as I do) then you’ll find this somewhat dense Q&A in educationnews.org with former Reading First czar Reid Lyon compelling stuff.