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Angelapleasecall
RandyBest
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From: DonnaGarner
Sent: Sunday,October01, 20069:47AM
To: Margaret
Spellings,
Subject: DR.IOHNSTONE,S TAKEON INSPETORGENERAL'S
REPORT FIRST+ MY COMMENTS
ON READING -- 10.1.06

PostedbyJ. E. Stone,Ed.D.- 9.29.06

Consumers
Education ClearingHouse
& Consultants
Network
www.education-consumers.con
p@fescol@edllcatige-consumers.
com
phone& fax423-282$832

A key pointregardingyesterday's
comm€nts regardingReading.Frrst
on the controversy InspectorGeneral's
Reportneedsto be clarified:

The ReadingFirst programdid exclqdspanelistswho hada financialconllict ofinterest.

The reasonfor the adversereportandcontroversystemsfiom the fact that the InspectorGeneralchoseto defineconflict of interestin a way that goes
well beyonda financialinterestin thedecisionsmadeby ReadingFirst-i.e., "significantprofessional
connections."

wereappliedto USDbE panelsin pastyears,manyof thb individual'swho servedandpromoiedthe practicesthat

My point is thatif sucha standard
we now seein schoolswouldhavebeenexcluded.

John
******f********

Controversy about the Reading First program

The opinion piece below by Mike Petrilli hits the nail on the head: "They [the l)epartment of Education's Inspector General] are not interested in
whether children leam to read."

Instead, the IG's office "discovered" a problem that has characterizedUSDOE advisory panels since the Department's inception: Conflict ofinterest.

The IG found that some Reading First panel members may have been selectedbecausethey appear to favor Direct Instruction--one ofresearch-based
reading methodologies that Reading First was intended to promote.

Two quotes from the IG's report will tell you everything you need to know about the investigation:
An Officeof the GeneralCouncil(OGC)ethicsattomeyinformedus that the screeningprocesswas designed to exclude individuats who had financial
connections lo productsor programsor who had the appearanceof a conflictof interest.
<snip>

The potentialpanelistsalsoprovidedthe Departmentwith resumes.The Departmentdid not reviewthe resumesas part of the conflictof interestscreening
process.We lhoweverlreviewedthe resumesof 25 of the approvedpanelistsand identified six panelists whose resumes revealedsignificant
professional connections to a teaching methodology that requires the use of a specific reading program.
The specificreadingprogramto whichthesesix suspectswere professionallyconnected,of course,was DireqlInstruc{ion.

handiworkmanagedto overlook,however,is the longstandingtradition of USDOEpanelsincludingmemberswho are not merely

What the lG's investigational
proponentsof a particularmethodologyor pedagogicalviewpointbut who are stakeholdersin researchand developmentthatwouldbe advancedby the decisions
of the panel.

Giventhat this issuehas beenraised,it wouldbe my suggestionthat SecretarySpellingsimmediatelyorder the lnspectorGeneral'sofficeto examinethe resumes
of all USDOEpanelistsand advisorsfor the last 25 or so years and applylhe samestandardfor conflictot interest.

My off-the-wallguessis that if suchan investigationwere carriedout, a largenumber,if not the majorityof such panelists,wouldbe considereddisqualified.And it
would be especiallyinterestingto knowwhetherany past biaseswere linkedto educationalsuccessor failure.

Mike Petrelli'spoint,however,is reallytho importantissue. Rather,than considerthe proceduralissueof bias in the conlextof programsuccessor failure,the lG
and the USDOEbureaucracyare interestedsolelyin whethervariousvendorsand interestgroupswithinthe industryweretreatedfairlyby thosewho dispense
tederaltunds.

That the ReadingFirstprogramis succeedingin correctingone of the mostegregiousfailuresin Americaneducationis not evenconsidered.

lf nothingelse,the controversyaboutReadingFirstillustratesthe needfor vastlyincreasedconsumercontrolover education'srevenues-Whenschoolfundingis

decidedby a governmentbureaucracy,fairnessto the industry'sinternalstakeholdersis the top priority. The benefitsto studentsaro not partof the discussion.

The panelsreferencedin the lG's reportoperatedat the federallevel,butthe samekind of bureaucraticdeclsionmakingtakesplacedaily at state,schooldistrict,
and schoolhouselevels. Fundingquestionsare decidedusingprocedureslhat are good for the system. \A/hethertheyfail or succeedfor consumersis largely
ignored.

Indeedthe educationindustryis generallyopposedto talkingaboutthe outcomesproducedby differingprogramsand theoreticalp"op".r,u"r. Only reluctantlydo

program. Rather,the industryprefer to believethat readinginshuctionshould be
they agreethat here is such a thingas a "proven,"i.e., "research-based,"
judgedon an arrayof social,emotional,and intellectualoutcomes,not merelyon the basis of whetherstudentsleam. In-housediscussionsof educational
accountabilityalwaysreferto "multipleoutcomes"--and for good reason.

As internalstakeholders see it, a focus on differencesin effectivenessamongcurricularprograms,schools,leachers,etc. does nothinggood for education.
Competingclaimsof effectiveness crealefrictionand disharmony.Proponentsof provenmethodsand accountabilityare not popularwithinthe induslry. Comfort
and collegialityare the top priorities,not parentand taxpayersatisfaction.

J. E. Stone,Ed. D.

9t3t2009
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EducatlonConsumersClearingHouse
& ConsultantsNetwork
www.education-consumers.com
plolegsel@e"duaqllgn{onsumers.co._!n
phone& fax 423-2824832

t============
Postedby DonnaGarner - 930,06

Subject: MY TAKE ON IIIE READING FIRSTINITIATIVE VS. INSPECTORGENERAL'SREPORT

I have followed the Reading First process up-close-and-personalfrom its inception. I had several friends and a number of
acquaintanceswho were highlyinvolvedin this readinginitiative.Dr. John Stoneof EducationConsumershas writtenan excellent
analyzationof the InspectorGeneral'sreport.

The intentof Rod Paigeand his peoplewas to followthe researchwhich had been done in readingand whichcompletelydiscredited
the whole-languageapproach"Whereproblemsoccurredis when Paigetriedto buck the whole-languagelobbywhich was solidly
entrenchedin federal,state,and localeducationagencies.These peoplehad been"feedingoff'the systemfor many years and were
heavily vested in whole language companies,products,training,curriculum,software,programs,etc. Suddenlythey found themselves
without a market for their wares. Some of them became chameleonswho changed their "appearance"to make themselves look like
phonemic awareness/decodingskills experts, pawningthemselvesoff as consultantsto the all-too-willingstate agencieswith whom
they already had cozy relationships.

Then there were those (e.9., Voyager Expanded Learningowned by Randy Best with close ties to Mike Moses, Jim Nelson, and others
in the Texas crowd) who used their Texas connectionswith some of the high-levelpeople at the USDOE to script a plan to force
schools to buy their products by manipulatingthe federal and state grant process. I believe these companiescommitted highly
unethicalif not highlyillegalacts.

Otherssimplydecidedto undercutPaigeand the readinginitiative,and I believeit is out of this lattergroupthat the InspectorGeneral's
reportcame.This groupknew that the lG would not be interestedin the readingresearchnor what was scientifically/medically sound
aboutthe teachingof reading.They builttheir appealon a false premise,and the lG fell rightinto the trap.

The problem is that people such as Randy Best with his close ties to people at the USDOE had dirtied the waters enough that the lG
had groundsfor concems;and when Rod Paige,Reld Lyon,and Mike Moseswent to work for RandyBest in his
recently formed company,the lG had even more ammunition.

The interestingthing about the lG report, however,is that Direct Instructionseems to be the only targeted program; and Voyager
Expanded Learning appears to have escaped the lG scrutiny.In my view, the lG missed the mark and hit the wrong target
of corruption. Dl has solid, long-term research behind it to show that it is an effectivereading program, particularlyfor low-achieving
students. VoyagerExpandedLearninghas no such research.

9t3t2009
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From: DonnaGa
Sent: Wednesday, LL,200710:L4AM
To: (2)Garner
Donna
Subject: ETC..- 7.TO.O7
KRASHEN,

This articleestablisheswhy StephenKrashencertainlydoesnot needto be a reviewerfor the rewriteof

the English/ LanguageArts / Reading(ELAR)TEKS. He is a whole-language advocatewhichthe reading
philosophyhas destroyed
researchhas totallydiscredited.This articlealsotraceshow this wholeJanguage
students'abilitiesto writeand speakcorrectly.- DonnaGarner

http://rryur.weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle='t_L8ia&8:tl43l0eEZ

Excerptsfrom this article:

Instead,the proponenlsof "whole language"instructioncontend.it is a naturalprocessakin to learning

how to speak-something that children don't have to be taught formally but pick up automaticallyif
e_xpo,s€d to a sufficiently p eritus of education
allhe tloyergte_qflqulhernGalifornia and self-des defendef' of whole-laogua.ge_
__s,taqn-ch
strategies.explainedin an email: "LAlnychild exposedto comprehensibleprint Will lear-ntsleA4 iArung
Eg11e_1q neurologicalor emotional problems.l Or. as Krashenampll a_telephoneinterview
learn lq-1ead by readtnll

Hence_theantipathy of the who_lelanguageproponentstq having children-19-49!

a story out of a reader
a phrase from Krashe4'si
such as Hough_kln_Uitrltn]s;_tbald*o_eCn:L_qSun!_asjlealrcaditg,1!9_borrow
email...

Systematiclessonsin grammaLhandwriting.and punctuati_on also went by the boards.thought to be

devqlqpmenFllyinappropriatefor young children.The teachingof writing completelychangedlAgus.
Teachers in the primary grad
and properbLpunctuatedsentences,then how to form pgragraphs.and finally how to build piragapbs_
into simple eqsaysand stories. All this was abandoned_in favor of a kind of writers'woEShSp-applg_aqh
that focusedon students'self€xpressionand personalreactions."Journaling,"which allolvsyoungsters
t_o_chqose their own topics t bgut. becamea favored classroom writing activity. evep for
kindergartnersand first-graders,Studentswere encouraged_nq_t__tq w-Alry_about grammaticaland spelling
errors.as these could be cleanedup in,an"editing"processwith tle teacher.lmitatingthe graduate
writingproglam at the University of low_aand the copy-desk proce_dqrcS 3lthq ,\reulYorker was sqpps_Sgd
ts-tu rr 6-yea r--g.ldsjnle-x o-phis! iqate d wri te rs. cri tiegand -tluIers.

ReadIt andWeep
Why doesCongress hatetheonepartof No ChildLeft Behindthatworks?
by CharlotteAllen
0711612007.Volume012.Issue41

9t3/2009
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Richmond, Virginia
In a classroomat GinterPark ElementarySchool,a cenhrry-oldbrick schoolhouse on a dreary,
zoned-commercial truck route that bisectsalargely African-Americanneighborhoodin Richmond,
a third-gradeteacher,LaverneJohnson,is doing somethingthat flies in the faceof more than three
decadesof the most advancedpedagogicalprinciplestaughtat America'stop-ratededucation
schools.Seatedon a chair in a comer of her classroomsurroundedby a dozenyoungsterssiuing
cross-leggedon the floor at her feet, Johnsonis teachingreading-asjust plain reading.Two and a
half hourseverymoming, systematicallygoing over suchbasicsasphonics,vocabularywords, and
a crucial skill known as "phonemicawareness"that entailsrecognizingthe separatesound
componentsof individual words*that the word "huppy,"for example,containsfive lettersbut only
four sounds,or phonemes.

Phonemicawarenessis an importantpreludeto phonics:learningwhich phonemesare represented

in written Englishby which graphemes,or combinationsof letters.Accordingto theprinciples
Johnsonis following, it is the mix of phonemicawarenessandphonicsthat enableschildren(and
adultsleaminghow to readfor the first time) to soundout, syllableby syllable,unfamiliar-looking
words they might encounteron a pageand then link thosewordsto meaning.In the world of
forward-thinkingeducationalpedagogy,phonemicawareness is deemeduseless,phonicsof only
intermittentvalue,andthe soundingout of wordsdeadeningto a child'spotentialinterestin books.

As her main teachingtool, Johnsonis using somethingthat alsomakesthe most advancedminds at

America'seducationschoolsblanch:a reader.Thosefat hardbacktextbooksthat werethe stapleof
gradeschooluntil the 1970sare out of fashionthesedays,replacedin most elementary-school
classroomsin America by "authenticliterature":illustratedtrade-press children'sbooksof the sort
that parentsbuy to entertaintheir offspring at bedtime(or that older youngsterscheckout of the
public library to readfor pleasure)and entirely lackingin teachers'guidesor cluesas to how they
might be usedas instructionaltools.

Again, not so at Ginter Park.Every one of the dozenchildrensitting at Johnson'sfeet holds an open
copy of the very sametextbookthat Johnsonholds,whoseno-nonsense title makesits purpose
plain: HoughtonMffiin Reading,Grade3. It comessupplemented with suchfashionablydisdained
materialsasvocabularylists, ready-madecomprehension tests,andteachers'guidesthat include
built-in lessonplansandscripts.Indeed,Johnsonis handingout oneof thosevery vocabularylists:
30 new wordsthat they will encounterin the story to which their booksareopenbut which they
haven'tstartedyet: "Poppa'sNew Pants."Johnsonis soundingout the wordswith the childrenand
goingthroughtheir meanings:"pattem,""plaid,""draped,""hem."

"What canyou tell me abouta hem?"sheasks.A little girl promptlyflips up thehemof her T-shirt
and showsit off to the group.

"Sew--S-E-W,"saysJohnson."Now, doesanyoneknow a homonymfor sew?"

"So--S-O!"shoutsanothergirl.

"Yes!" saysJohnson,explaininghow it is that two differentwordswith two differentmeaningscan

soundthe same.Ahomorrym-they really still teachsuchthingsthesedays?

The educationestablishmentmay sneerat the techniquesJohnsonuses,but they arepart of a small-

scalemiracle:Ginter Park,despitean unpromisinglocationanda high-poverty-levelstudentbody,
now ranksin the top third of more than 1,100public elementaryschoolsin the stateof Virginia,

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holding its own againstschoolsin the ultra-affluent,highly educatedsuburbancountiesof northern

Virginia just acrossthe PotomacRiver from Washington,D.C. Until only five yearsago,Ginter
Park, locatedin a once-upscaletrolley-carsuburbthat hasseenbetterdays,wasnearthe bottom of
the state'sacademicbarrel,the second-worst-performing elementaryschoolin the RichmondPublic
Schoolsdistrict--whichwas itself the second-worst-performing schooldistrictin the state.

Richmond,statecapitaland onetimecapitalof the Confederacy,is a classicexampleof a southern

city nearlycollapsedin on itself after decadesof worseningeconomicfortunesandout-migration
to its exurbanring. The city boastsa handfulof genuinelywealthy or artfully gentrified
neighborhoods, but thereis alsomuch poverty,with its attendantsocialproblemsof crime, drugs,
teen pregnancy, and single-parenthouseholds,Of Richmond's25,000youngstersenrolledin public
school,95 percentareAfrican American,and70 percentqualiff for free or reduced-pricelunches,
a markerof poverty.At Ginter Park Elementary,whereall but a tiny handfulof studentsbelongto
minority groups,the childrenare on averageevenpoorer,with 83 percentqualifying for the free-
lunch program.

During the year2000, only five public schoolsin Richmond(andcertainlynot Ginter Park) were
fully accreditedby the stateof Virginia. Accreditationmeansthat 75 percentof studentsare
proficient at gradelevel in English,mathematics,science,andhistory,asmeasuredby a seriesof
tough standardized teststhat the stateput into placein 1999.This year,thanksin part to a
revolutionin instructionalmethodsin which the readingprogmmat GinterParkElementaryplayed
a key role, andthanksin part to a controversialBush administrationgrantsprogramcalledReading
First, a provisionof Bush'sNo Child Left BehindAct that fundedthe teachingmethodson view in
Johnson's classroom, 45 of Richmond's49 publicschoolsenjoyfull stateaccreditation.

DespiteRichmond'ssuccessstory*detailedby educationanalystSol Sternin an article for the

Winter 2007issueof the ManhattanInstitute'sCity Journal andduplicatedin schooldistrictsacross
the nationthat haveavailedthemselvesof ReadingFirst grants--itis safeto saythat phonicsand its
relatedinstructionalcomponentsareno morepopularin the public educationestablishment than
they were five yearsago.This despitethe fact that the literacylevelsof America'sschoolchildren
rangefrom appallinglylow to mediocreby both nationalandcomparativeinternationalstandards.
For example,nearlytwo-thirds of America'sfourth- and eighth-graders failedto attainscoresof
proficient(againmeaning"at gradelevel")in readingin 2005on theNationalAssessment of
EducationalProgress (NAEP), a nationwidesamplingsurveyof academicachievement.Even
worse,some40 percentof thoseyoungsterscould not evenreadat the "basic"level for their grade:
a barebonesstandardof fluency and comprehension that would meanthat as adultsthey would be
ableto makesenseout of a bus scheduleor a simpleinstructionmanual.Poorandminority
children faredevenworse,with 65 percentof themunableto readevenat the basiclevel for their
gradeand lessthan I 6 percentreachingthe proficiencylevel,

Americanyoungpeoplearealsosignificantlybehindtheir counterparts in otherdevelopedand

evensomedevelopingcountries.On the Progressin lnternationalReadingStudy(PIRLS), a
multinationaltest for fourth-gradersadministeredin 2001,the United Statesplacedonly 9th out of
35 participatingnations,hailing top-ratedSweden,the Netherlands,andEngland--despite spending
more per studenton educationthan any othernation in the world. On the Frogramfor International
StudentAssessment(PISA), a test of 15-year-oldsin 2003,Americanstudentsrankedjust aboutin
the middle in literacy skills, way behindtheir coevalsin top-rankingFinlarrdand a scoreof other
countriesincludingSouthKorea, Canada,Aushalia, andNew Zealand.Itis an educational
commonplacethat children who cannotreadat gradelevel by the fourth gradeareunlikely ever to
be ableto readwell enoughto tacklethe specialized textbookstheywill encounter in science,

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history, and other subjectsas they move to higher grades.More likely, they will fall further and
further behindin school,eventuallydroppingout in many cases.

Despiteall this less-than-encouragingdata,effortsto teachthe elementsof readingin a direct and

systematicfashion-theway LaverneJohnsondoesat GinterPark--aredenidedat most U.S.
educationschoolsas "cuttingleamingup into itty-biffy pieces,"or "one-size-fits-all,"or "the
factory model,"to borrow the words of Yvonne Siu-Runyan,a recentlyretirededucationprofessor
at the University of Northern Colorado in an interview for this article. Siu-Runyanis an influential
proponentof a competingtheory of reading instructionknown as "whole language"that is favored
by suchinfluential entitiesasthe National Council of Teachersof English andthe International
ReadingAssociation,nearlythe entire faculty at the prestigiousColumbiaTeachersCollege,and
the vastmajority of Americanelementary-school teachers,accordingto a2002 poll conductedby
the ManhattanInstitute.

Siu-Runyanand her counterpartswould probablyfind muchto criticize at GinterPark,wherethe

mandatorytwo and a half hoursof readinginstructionvastly exceedthe hour or so a day that most
elementaryschoolsdevoteto readingin the primary grades.After two hoursof Johnson'sdirect
teaching,her pupils returnto their desks,arrangedin clumpsof four aroundthe classroom,or take
seatsat oneof the fow computerworkstationslined up at a wall, or just sit on the floor with a
book. It's time for a half-hourof "enrichment"--independent readingfrom booksof their choicefor
the moreproficient students--and "intervention"-individualor small-groupwork undersupervision
from Johnsonon readingcomponentson which lessproficientstudentsneedextrahelp. Every child
in Ginter Park'sfive third-gradeclassrooms,72 youngstersin all, is testedweekly,alongwith the
rest of the school'sK-4 students,andtheir numberscoresarepostedon stickiesin the first-floor
teachers'conferenceroom at the school,so that everyteacheris awareofthe fluctuatingstrengths,
weaknesses, andprogressor lack thereofof everychild. Furthermore,everythird-gradeclassroom
follows the samedaily scheduleof instructionin the five componentsof literacythat reading
researchers at HarvardUniversity andelsewherehaveidentifiedover the pastfour decadesand
that, it would seem,everyteacherat GinterPark canrattle off the tip of his or her tongue:
phonemicawareness, phonics,fluency (recognizingwords andtheir letter-components quickly and
easily,usuallytestedby havingindividual studentsreadout loud), vocabulary,andcomprehension.
All third-gradersat GinterPark readone story a week fromHoughtonMffiin Reading,Grade3.

In one third-gradeclassroom,a teacherhelpsa boy with phonics,guidinghim ashe picks out and
lines up, from an arrayof word-flashcards,everyword that containsthe short"e"-sound:"step,"
"setn""hotel."In anotherclassroom, a pile of in-classexercises
sittingon a teacher's
deskhave
askedthe youngstersto look at a drawing of a commonobject(a couch,for example)and identifu
the one word out of five multiple-choiceitemsthat containsa letter combinationttratis alsoin the
word pictured(here,the conect answeris "lunch").A little girl in Johnson'sclassroomwho is
clearly an accomplished readeris standing,actuallydancingin slow, swayingcircles,while she
readsaloudto herselfthe story of SleepingBeauty,pickedout from one of the numerousathactive
children'sbooksarrangedfor the taking on tablesor proppedup againstwhiteboardsaroundthe
room: GrandfatherandI, Froggt GetsDressed,AII thePlacesto Live, Androclesand theLion,
TheLife Cycleof a Salmon.The girl hasturnedSleepingBeautyinto a privateperformancefor the
audienceof one that is her own imagination:readingthe dialoguein different voicesfor the
different characters,following the words on the pagewith her finger, sashayingin place,so
engrossedand so captivatingthat anotheradvancedreader,inspired,joins in with her own book,
R.L. Stine'sMostly Ghostly,andher own swayingdance.

Johnson'sclassroom,like the other third-gradeclassroomsat GinterPark,is stuffedwith a tidy

9t3t2009
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jumble of visual and written materialpitchedat 8-year-olds:a world globe,a porhait of George
Washington,and on every wall, postersillustrating simple machines,grasslandsanimals, and the
water cycle from rainfall to faucef a setof multiplication tables,a cursive alphabetwith arrow-
directionson how to form the letters,"The Gifts of the Ancient Greeks,""The Gifts of the
Romans,"a list of values("compassion,""perseverance," "responsibility").Thereare certificatesof
"Math Whiz Achievement"for studentswho haveworkedtheir way successfullythrough 100
additionproblems(Ginter Park teachesaritlmetic the old-fashionedway,just as it teachesreading
the old-fashionedway). And lest onethink IhatPoppa'sNew Pants,this week'sstory, is dull see-
Spot-nrnfarereminiscentof the 1950s,it is actuallyas "authentic"a pieceof children'sliteratureas
Charlie and the ChocolateFactory.Its author,Angela ShelfMedearisof Austin, Texas,is a widely
readwriter of dozensof children'sbooksaboutAfrican-Americanlife (indeed,Poppa'sNa,vPants
can be boughton Amazon.comasa freestanding title). Colorful, highly detailedpicturesby the
award-winningillustratorJohnWard helptell Medearis'swarm andhumorousstory abouta black
farm family and its eccentricmembersin theDepression-era South.Elsewherein HoughtonMffiin
Reading,Grade3, are lushly illustrated,information-packed chaptersaboutPlymouthPlantation,
ErnestShackleton's expeditionto Antarcticain 1914-1916, andBessieColeman,America'sfirst
black licensedpilot. The materialis not only interestingin itsell but it introducesyoung readersto
worlds andvocabulariesthat extendwell beyondtheir own neighborhoods.

Being on the premisesof Ginter ParkElementary--withits high-ceilinged,tall-windowed

classrooms,its wide, spotlesshallwayswhosewalls aredecoratedwith samplesof studentart, its
well-stockedlibrary (calledthe "mediacenter"becauseit alsofeaturescornputersand DVD
players),its attentiveand energeticteachers,its lively but well-manneredyoungstersin grades
rangingfrom pre-K to fifth, andits ultratraditionalcurriculum,is like passingthrougha time warp
to the world of, say,your grandmother's public school--exceptbetter,becausethe classesat Ginter
Park are smallerand the instructionalmaterialsarelivelier, richer,morecomprehensive, and
fortified by upto-date technology

The miracleat Ginter Park is partly,perhapshugely,dueto an aggressivenew school

superintendent, DeborahJewell-Sherman. In 2001,the yearbeforeher promotionto the top post,
while shewas still directorof instructionin Richmond,Jewell-Sherman had alreadyincorporateda
set of instructionalmaterialscalledVoyagerUniversalLiteracy,heavyon phonicsandphonemic
awareness,into the lowest-performingof Richmond'selementaryschools,including Ginter Park.
Then, when shetook over the city's educationsystemin2002, one of her first stepswas to
standardizethe readingcurriculum,mandatingVoyagerandthe HoughtonMifflin readersfor all
Richmondelementaryschools,andthento starthaining teacherson how to usethem.Before that,
every teacherhad beenfree to pick his or her own readingmaterialsanddesignhis or her own
curriculurn.This led to widespread"hobbyteaching,"as one Richmondteachercalled it:
Instructorsleft to their own deviceswould sometimesspendthe entireschoolyear working with
their studentson art and otherprojectsthat suitedthe teacher'sinterestsand skippingtestsand other
written assignments with the upshotbeingthat the teachersoften "nevergot
that could be assessed,
aroundto teachinganything."The resultsfrom Jewell-Sherman's plan of attackwere immediate.
By 2003,22 schoolsin Richmondhadachievedfull stateaccreditation.

The real boostto Ginter Park,andto the Richmondschoolsystemin general,however,also came

in 2002,whenJewell-Shermanarrangedfor the Richmondpublic schoolsto accepta modestgrant
of about$450,000a year,madeavailablethroughthe stateof Virginia, from the ReadingFirst
program,which handsout about$l billion ayearnationwidefor usein kindergartenand the first
three gradesat schoolsin high-povertydistrictsso that the schoolscansetup programsderiving
from "scientificallybased"readingresearch. The programsmust alsoincorporatethe five-part
 Page7 of l5
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standardizedtesting, and also the many small-governmentconservativeswho believe that the entire
No Child Left Behind Act representsunprecedented federalinkusion into education,which has
haditionally beenstrictly a stateand local concern.

Furthermore,and ironically, the instructional materialsfrom HoughtonMifflin and Voyager that.

Doherty'spanelsdeemedacceptablein orderto qualiff statesfor ReadingFirst grants-andwhich
Higgins testifiedat the Househearinghad generatedan "unprecedented" numberof complaintsfor
having beenproducedby "commercialinterests"--are the very materialsthat Richmondeducators
credit with turning Ginter Park into a model school.(Voyagerwas developedby Reid Lyon, a
friend of Bush from Dallas who was chairmanof child developmentandbehaviorfor the National
Instituteof Child HealthandHumanDevelopment (NICHD) from 1991to 2005; [I do not believe
Reid Lyon helpedto developVoyager.As lateasDec. 2002,ahigh-rankinggovemmentofficial
who helpeddraft ReadingFirst stated,"But the measureof whethera child is really learningto read
is if they havemasteredthe code,early,and completely.That is not the approachthat Voyager
takes.Theyhavean "eclectic"approach which may be somedegreebetterthana completewhole
languageapproach, but it is certainlynot somethingthat shouldbe encouraged, in my view."] Lyon
subsequentlysold the program [Reid Lyon neverownedVoyager.]to ProQuest,an educational
companybasedin Ann Arbor.) The materialsmarketedby HoughtonMifflin andVoyagermight
strike an educationprofessoras overly "commercial,"but accordingto tho teachersat Ginter Park,
they do thejob. "We selecteda programthat fit our needs,"saidLynn Smith,GinterPark'sreading
coach,concemingthe Voyagermaterials."It providedfor small,flexible groupsso that with the
changingdata,we could respondto children'sneedsin an individualizedway, it encourageddeep
thinking by the children,and it includedstrongphonics.It alsocontainsextrasupportfor the strong
students.It'sjust a realnice fit."

ReadingFirst andthe changein Richmond'spedagogicalcultureoverthe pastfive yearshavehad a

galvanizingeffect on the moraleof Richmondteachers."We could seeimmediateresults,"said
CathyS. Randolph,GinterPark'sprincipal."It's excitingto be successful."

In his City Journal article aboutReadingFirst, Sol Sterncrunchedthe nunrbersand discoveredthat

in 2005 Richmond'sthird-gradershad outperformed,by 15 percentage pointson the statereading
test,the blackthird-gradersin the public schoolsof affluentFairfax Countyin NorthernVirginia,
which hadtumed down federalReadingFirst moneyon the theorythat the program'srestrictions
would interferewith Fairfax teachers'classroomcreativity.Only 59 percentof the African-
Americanchildrenin Fairfax werereadingat gradelevel in 2005,comparedwith 74 percentof
their counterpartsin Richmond.The Richmondpercentagebarelylaggedthel9 percentgrade-level
ratio for Fairfax'saffluent white youngsters.

That ReadingFirst hasprovedto be a runawaysuccessoughtto be a no-brainer.Phonicsin a

mannerof speakingls reading:the almostinstantaneous processby which the humanbrain links
the troika of spokensounds,thosesymbolson the printedpagethat we call writing, and meaning-
The pivotal momentin the movie TheMiracle Workerin which the blind anddeafHelen Keller
suddenlymakesthe connectionfor the frrst time betweenthe world outsideher andthe lettersthat
her teacherhastracedon her arm,is a paradigmaticdramatizationof the power of the written word
as a codeof communication.It would seemobviousthat childrenlearninghow to readfor the first
time might benefitfrom a thoroughandsystematicgroundingin phonicsandphonemicawareness.
The Englishlanguagecontainsa largernumberof soundsthanmany otherlanguages,thanksto
English'sheavyinfusion of Frenchafterthe NormanConquestand centuriesof changing
pronunciation.While English spellingis lessarbitrarythanmostpeoplethink, the26letters of the
English alphabetoften haveto do double,triple, and quadrupleduty in orderto accommodatethe

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large numberof Englishsounds.This canbe highly confusingto a beginningreaderwho cannot

urderstandwhy the word "was," for example,might look like "wass" on the pagebut is
pronounced"wuz"--apronunciationthat is actuallylogicaland regularifyou know something
aboutphonics.

It would seemobvious,too, that learninghow to readinvolvesreal learning--receivingand

instructionson how to decodethe symbolson the page,fit them to
internalizingstep-by-step
spokensounds,andthenlink thosesoundsto meaning.Hencevocabularylists andthe old-
fashionedtechniqueof havingnovicereaders"soundout" words by readingaloudin classin order
to associatesoundsandletters.Childrenalsoneedto learnhow to make all thoseconnections
quickly andalmostunconsciously,or readingwill alwaysbe difficult andunpleasantfor them,
which is why fluency andcomprehension arekey measuresof readingskill. Learninghow to read
would seemanalogousto learninghow to play the piano,in which practioingscales,mastering
fingering technique,decodingthe notes,and developinga feeling for the rhythm andbeautyof the
music aresimultaneous but separatecomponentsof theprocess.

All this common-sense intuition--muchof which underlaythe famousphonics-intensive McGuffey

Readersof the 19thcentury-is in fact supportedby decadesof 2Oth-centuryscientificresearchinto
how peopleactuallylearnhow to read,startingwith the work of JeanneSternlicht Chall, a
psychologistwith a specialinterestin fosteringthe literacyskills of poor childrenwho foundedthe
HarvardReadingLaboratoryat Harvard'sgraduateschoolof educationin 1966.Startingin the
1970s,a flood of readingstudies-anestimated10,000in all--appliedquarrtitative analysisand
experimental,conhol-group-based researchto identify the instructionstrategiesthat teachreading
most efficiently.The researchers includednot only specialistsin educationand early childhood
developmentbut alsoexpertsin suchfields aslinguistics,psychology,neurology,genetics,
anthropology, andsociology.

The resolutelyapoliticalNICHD, part of the NationalInstitutesof Health,hasbeenfunding studies

of readingdevelopment since1964,andhassponsored longitudinalstudiesof 44,000childrenin
morethan 1,000schoolssincethe early 1980s,trackingsomeof thosechildrenandtheir reading
progressfor morethan20 yearsas they grew to adulthood.It was all that researchwhich led the
NICHD to identiff the five componentsthat appearin ReadingFirst'senablinglegislation
(phonemicawareness, phonics,fluency,vocabulary,andcomprehension). The value of these
studies,their proponentsargue,is that like all scientificstudies,they arebasedon rigorous
methodologies--assessments, for example,not only of how well children oanreadusingvarious
instructionstrategies,but evenhow they movetheir eyesasthey scana printedpage.And, like all
valid scientificfindings,theresultscanbe replicated.

"We know how readingis acquired,"saysLouisaCookMoats,a protdg6eof JeanneChall'sat

Harvardanddirectorof theNICHD'sEarlyReadingInterventions projectfrom 1997to 2001."It's
leaming to processvery specif,rckinds of linguisticinformationandbuild networksthat coordinate
phonologicalprocessingto the pattemsof printedsymbolsthat the eye sees,and it's alsoconnected
to meaningandthe building of vocabulary.WhenI explainhow the processworks to teachers,I
compareit to an unraveledrope with the strandsstickingout. The strandsare all thosebeginning
skills to be woventogetherin the rope."Readinglooks automaticand natural,Moatsexplains,but
only becauseskilled readersarepracticedenoughto decodethe symbolsat lighfiring speed.

There aremanycausesfor the resistanceof the educationestablishmentnot only to the conclusions

that Moats andothershavedrawnaboutreadinginstructionbut to the researchthat underliesthose
conclusions.Onebedrockphilosophicalprinciple,however,unites all thosewho opposethe step-

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by-stepteachingof literacy skills: the notion that leaming how to read is not at all like learning
how to play the piano.Instead. the proponentsof 'rwhole languageil hSlfuetion contend, it is a
naturalprocessakintolearuing @
taught formally but pick up automaticallf,if exposedto a suflicieutly print-rich environment.
StephenD. Krashen,a professoremeritusof educationat the University of Southern
California and self-described"staunchdefender" of whole-languagestrategies.explainedin
an email: ff[A]ny child exposedto comprehl:nsrblqLriufiud@evere
neurolqgigalor emotionalpro Or. as Krashen amplified in a telephone_interview:
iKidsleaulata{by-rc adug."
Hencethe antipathy of t having children read a story out of
areadersucn asUougnton thatdoesn'tegUntsslle4llea44g-_lq]q-ryAy_g
phrase from Krashen's email. Indeed,textbool'rs or any otherkind of formal instructionalmaterial
are eschewed.In elementary-school classroomsacrossthe country,readir,rg instructiontypically
consistsof what is called"sharedreading."The teacherreadsa story aloudto the class,often from
a "Big Book," an oversized,large-typeedition of an illustratedchildren'sbook of the teacher's
choosingthat is proppedup on a tableor on the floor in front of the class.The teachermight read
the story out loud severaltimes,pointing out wordsthat may be difficult, andthenhavethe class
readthe story aloudin unisonwhile the teacherturnsthe pages.Thereis almostno individual
readingaloud,andthe soundingout of wordsphoneticallyis actively discouragedastendingto
turn youngstersinto rote parsersof syllableswho fail to understandwhat they arereading.

Aclar+ltonics per se,both K n and Yvonne$iu-Runyan insist that they_ indeed

incorpqratte+hoaiesjnrtru.slianjutslheir reading strategies,,bullqnlLin_ql.Cuqtary fa$lql
a_ndln an as-necdedbasisl"basic phonics."as Krashen puts it. Whorle-language instruedql
slsA_rypleaUyjrcludesperiods qf independentsilent reading-j'Drop fyerytht4g a4dlReatl$
the namefor theseimpromptu sessigut-,LnLuhiqh thc rhildrgu+lshout and perusematerial of
their choigefiuU a claSsrsqmlibrary of f'leveledbooks"--that is. booksthat the teachqr
deems-aBprspdale_fortheir readilglevel. _DuringthpsescsuqlElhe teachertypiSally
"models" the gacgs_LbJiropping everythingand reading silently from a childre_n's_ book"
too, anlbg+unSlplq that seeingother peopler@g.As for vocabulary.
whole-language.classrooms tl,picallyincorporatea " "--an ever-changilg.gollectiqn
_of Iar ge_:lgltclwqr ds_rryritten on post€@eJ@
!_h_en Urite out.

The instructionalprinciplesbehindwhole language-lighton formal contentandheavyon

assumptions that childrenwill learnto readby feelingenthusiasticaboutreading--arefar fi"omnew.
Indeed,they dateback to the endof the 19thcentury,to the educationaltheoriesof JohnDewey
(1859-1952), the pragmatistphilosopherandeducational theoristwho heldthatchildrenlearnbest
not by directly absorbinginstructionfrom their teachersin specificsubjeotssuchasmathematicsor
history,but by interactingwith the real world. School,in Dewey'sthinking, shouldoffer a
simulacrumof real-worldexperience in which learningtakesplaceobliquelyasthe child explores
his or her surroundingsunderthe guidanceof a teacher.Dewey was in turn influencedby the
romanticphilosophyof Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who believedthat childrenwere naflrally perfect
and that educationoughtto consistof allowing themmaximumfreedomto developtheir innate
talents.

In 1904Deweyjoined the facultyof ColumbiaTeachers College,regardedthenasnow as

America'spremiereducationschool(U.S.Neus currentlygivesColumbiaTeachersits No. I
rating). From thereDewey's"progressive"theoriesof pedagogyprofoundlyinfluencedseveral

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generationsof Americanteachersand schoolboards,right up until the Sputrriklaunchof 1957,

when it suddenlylooked as though the SovietUnion, whose Communist leadershad kept in place a
decidedlynon-progressive educationsystemdatingfrom czaristdays,hadthe United Statesover a
barrel in scienceandtechnology.The Dick andJanereaderswidely usedin American elementary
schoolsfrom the 1930sthroughthe 1950swereoffshootsof a branchof Dewey-ismthat held that
phonicsinstructionwas backwardandproposedthat the way to makechildrenliteratewas to
exposethem to simplewordsrepeatedinterminably.("SeeDick. SeeDick run. SeeDick run fast.")
This so-called"look-say"pedagogy(a forerunnerto whole languagein its emphasison contextand
meaningratherthan soundsand letters)met its endafter Rudolf Fleschpublishedhis bestselling
WhyJohnnyCan'tReadin 1955,two yearsbeforeSpufirik.By the early 1960sit looked as though
progressiveeducationhad run its coursein all but the most outrd pivate schools.JeanneChall's
1967bookLearning to Read: TheGreatDebate,proposeda returnto thoroughgroundingin
phonics,but in up-to-datecombinationwith interestingchildren'sliterature.

Then camea revolutionin pedagogythat sweptthroughthe K-l2 gradesin the 1970sand I 980sas
thoroughlyas its college-levelsister,postmodemism, sweptthroughthe academy.Therevolution
was called "constructivism."Like postmodernism, it had its groundingin arcaneFrancophone
theory: the ideasof the SwisscognitivepsychologistJeanPiaget.Piagetproposedthat children
progressthroughdistinctdevelopmentalstagesduringwhich they acquireknowledgenot simply by
learningit from the outsidebut by "constructing"it from within, building upon andreflecting upon
what they alreadyknow in orderto riseto new levelsof knowing. In Piaget'stheoreticaldialectic,
the subjectiveprocessof learningwas moreimportantthan any particularcontentleamed.Indeed,
Piagetargued,it was crucialthat the developmental processtaking placewithin eachindividual
child's mind not be interferedwith, but rathernurturedand encouragedby the child'steachers.As
the ubiquitousmantraof Piaget-influenced educationaltheory laterput it, the teachershouldbe "a
guide on the side,not a sageon the stage."The essentialconstructivistprinciple is that teachers
shouldteachnothingdirectly, but ratherfimctionas coacheswhile their studentsbasicallyteach
themselves

This was Dewey'sprogressivismwith a new,fashionablyContinentalface."The idea is that

educationis growth,educationis development,andthat childrengrow all by themselves,"said
Diane Ravitch,an educationpolicy analystandauthorof Left Back: A Centuryof Battlesover
SchoolReform,a mordantcritiqueof constructivism."The idea is that childrenfigure everything
out for themselves,"Ravitchadded."There'sno authority."

Piagetacquiredan anny of Americanapostlesat educationschoolsand elsewhere.Chief among

them were FrankSmith,an Australianjoumalist-turneduniversity instructor,andKenneth
Goodman,an educationprofessorat the Universityof Arizona. Smith,whose1971book
UnderstandingReadingderidedthe teachingof phonics,and Goodmanarecreditedas the creators
of whole-language theory.lna 1967articlein an educationjournal, Goodmanhad describedthe
processof learningto readasa "psycholinguistic guessinggame"in which childrendecipherwords
on a page,not by decodingthemphoneticallyas Chall maintained,but by following "cues."The
cues,Goodmanmaintained,canbe the individuallettersand soundsin the word--or they can be the
larger contextof the story in which the word appears,the artist'sillustrations,or even(andperhaps
especially)the child'sown previouslyacquiredknowledge.Like Smith,Goodmanarguedthat
phonicsinstructionwas uselessat best,downrightharmful at worct. "Matohingletterswith sounds
is a flat-earthview of the world," he declaredin a 1986book, Wat's Whelein WholeLanguage.
Dramaticallytuming centuries-oldprinciplesof readinginstructionon their heads,Goodman
maintainedthat "a story is easierto readthana page,apageeasierto read,thana paragraph,a
paragrapheasierthan a sentence,a sentenceeasierthana word, and a word easierthan a letter."

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Both Smith,who had nevertaughtreadingin an elementary-school classroom,and Goodman,who

had, deridedthe useof textbooks,worksheets,and otherformal instructionalmaterial.Smith's 1986
book, Insult to Intelligence: TheBureaucratic Invasion of Our Classrooms,complainedabout
childrenbeing forcedby their eldersto memorizemountainsof uselessdata.(Memorizationis
generallyconsideredin constructivisttheoryto be developmentallyinappropriatefor elementary
school.)In whole-language theory,the teacher'sjob is to identifi the child'serors--or "miscues,"
as they are called--andnudgethe child in the directionof the correctcues."Drill and Kill" is their
derisiveterm for pedagogythat emphasizes the systematicteachingof content.,

Thus beganthe practice,now a bedrockofwhole-languagepedagogy,ofteachers'encouraging

beginningreadersto look at the first letter of any difficult word they encounterin a story and guess
the rest,or if that strategyfails to produceresults,simply to skip the word andreturn to it later.
Although Goodmanrefusedto be interviewedfor this article,statingin a pair of dyspepticemails
that he would not respondto "negative"criticisrnof his theories,Yvonne Siu-Runyanprovided an
exampleof how a wholelanguagereadinglessonworks in practice."A ctrild encountersthe word
'butterflies'in a story," saidSiu-Runyan."The first time he readsit as 'b-flies.'Maybe the next time
he readsit as 'butt-flies'andthe next time as 'betterflies.'Forme to assumehe'snot going to get it
would be a mistake,becausefinally he'll sayto himself,'Doesthis makesense?'He'll look at the
picturesof butterfliesfin the book] andsayto himself 'Oh,this is a story aboutbutterflies!'And
he'll get it right after that.It's a lot more complicateda processthanhandinga child a list of
words."

Whole languageand otheraspectsof constructivisttheorysweptthroughthe educationschools,

startingwith the flagshipColumbiaTeachersCollege,whereDewey'sprogressiveinfluencehad
neverwaned,wherecourseson readingpedagogyto this day concenkateon erectinga "theoretical
framework"for instructionratherthanteachingteacherswhat acfuallyworks in classrooms,and
wherethe school'spublishingaffiliate,TeachersCollegePress,churnsout dozensof constructivist
treatiseseveryyear. Smith and Goodmancrisscrossed the corurtryon the ed-schoollecturecircuit,
wherethey werewelcomedwith openarmsand standingovationsby professorsandstudentsalike.
Whole languageclearly appealedbecauseit allowedteachersto do essentiallywhat they liked in
their readingclasses,and it relievedthemof the arduouswork of ensuringthat their studentshad
masteredspecificliteracyskills. Teachersand administratorsrushedto create"child-centered"and
"learner-centered" curriculain everyfield and at everygradelevel ("learner"beingthe fashionable
ed-speakword thesedaysfor "student,"as it connotesthe constructivistideathat childrentake
chargeof their own education).

SandraWilde, an educationprofessorat PortlandStateUniversity in Oregon,deemedthat learning

how to spell,like learninghow to read,"shouldultimatelybe asnatural,unconscious,effortless,
andpleasantas leamingto speak,"so spellerswent the way of readersin classroomsacrossthe
country.Teachersencouraged youngstersto makeup their own "invented"or "independent"
spelling,alsounderthe influenceof Wilde'sself-described "holistic"approach, which theorized
that childrencouldlearnfrom their spelling"miscues."Wilde drafteda "Speller'sBill of Rights"
that included"the right to be valuedas a humanbeingregardlessof your spelling."Whole-
languageadvocatesand otherconstructivistsalsoabandoned conventionaltestsandletter grades,
which they thoughtslightedyoungsters'individuality, in favor of what they called"authentic
assessment." That usually meanshavingstudentsassemblesamplesof their work in a
"portfolio" (the oversizedenvelopettratartiststaketo job interviews)that the teacherthen
evaluatesverbally.

Systematiclessonsin gramm_4r.
handwriting, and punctuationalsofvgt bf$e_bqadc,

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thought to be developmentallyinappropriatefor young children. The teachingof writing

completelychangedfocus.Teachersin the primary gradeshad traditionally taught their
studentsfirst how to constructgrammaticaland properly punctuatedsentences, then how to
foruo+afagraphs"ana nnaUy now to mild paragraphsinto simpteessaysa
was abandonedin favor of a kind of writers' workshop approachthat focusedonSlUdenls'
self-expression and personalrejrctions.rrJournaling"rr
which allowsyoungstersto cboosetheir
qwn topicsto write about.becamea favoredclassroomwriting activify"evenfor
kindergallnergand first-graders.Studentswere encouragednot to ru-orryabout grammatical
4nd spellingerrors. as thesecould be cleanedup in an "editing" processwith the teacher.
Imitating the graduatewriting program at the University of Iowa and the copy-desk
proceduresat the Nenrlorfar was supposedto nto sophisticatedfryftte$,
critics, ald_lhin ker!,

Two educationprofessorsat IndianaUniversity of Pennsylvania,DonaldA. McAndrew and C.

Mark Hurlbert,in an award-winning1993articlein thejournal of the NationalCouncil of Teachers
of English,went so far asto urge sfudentsto indulgein "intentionalerrors"of syntaxandusageas a
way of rebellingagainstthe "tyranny" of standardEnglishusage.In 2003the NationalCouncil
took its own insurrectioniststandagainststandardEnglish,voting to endorsea manifestotitled
"Students'Right to Their Own Language"--namely the right to write their homeworkin hip-hop-
ese,Spanglish,Valley Girl talk, or whateverothernonstandarddialecttheybelievebestexpresses
their "community"or "personal"identities.Many whole-language teachersdo not botherto prepare
lessonplansor syllabi,relying insteadon queryingtheir studentson whatthey would like to leam
on any particularday.

Like theiroppositenumbersin the readingsciencecommunity,whole languageadvocatescan

point to plentyof publishedresearch,fatteningthe educationjoumals andbolsteringwhat the
whole-language proponentsinsist is their superiorapproachto teachingliteracy.That research,
however,almostuniformly consistsof anecdotalrecollectionsby its authorsof eureka!momentsin
their classrooms.The story that Siu-Runyannarratedaboutthe child who finally decipheredthe
word "butterflies"is a perfectexample.The education-school slangterm for such"qualitative"(in
contrastto quantitative)observations,analogousto the materialthat anthropologistsrecordin their
field notebooks,is "kidwatching."Almost all kidwatchingresearchconsistsof teachers' first-person
successstories--because whole-languageadvocatesarehumanandthey almostneverreporttheir
classroomfailures."But they'resurethatthosereports[in the education journals]are 100percent
scientific,"saysPatrickGoff, a professoremeritusof educationat SanDiego StateUniversity in
Californiaandreadingscienceadvocate."That'sbecauseyou canget a Ph.D.in educationwithout
ever havingto reada singlequantitativestudy.Evenmy own universitywould not teachits
studentsaboutthe empiricalevidenceconcerningthe teachingof reading-"

Fortunately,perhaps,for about40 to 50 percentof children--thesocioeconomic top 40 to 50

percenthailingfrom upper-middle-class-to-wealthy "print-rich"homeswherethereadingof books,
magazines, andnewspapers is an everydayoccurence--whole-language readingpedagogydoes
little if anyharm.The mostverbalof theseyoungsters, the gifted offspringof lawyers,college
professors,andHollywood screenwriters,eitheralreadyknow how to readby the time they get to
kindergartenor pick up readingquickly no matterhow they aretaught,Otherswho are not so
naturallyverbalstrugglewith whole language'sguessinggamesandunsystematicinstructionbut
eventuallymanageto readat gradelevel andto write and spell passably.Furthermore,many
whole-language proponents,suchas Siu-RunyanandKrashen,arc clearlypatient,gifted,
imaginativeteacherssensitiveto their studentsas individuals(Siu-Runyansayssheslips structure
into her student-interest-driven
lessonplans,andKrashen,who currentlyteachesin a suburbof

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Portland,Oregon,wherewhole languageis officially verboten,runs his classesas a kind of Dead

PoetsSociety,ignoringthe ban while the administrationlooks the otherway).

Indeed,eventhe staunchest supportersof the five-componentscientific approachto literacy

acknowledgethat whole language'semphasison child-friendlyclassroomsandhigh-quality
children'sliteraturearevaluablecontributionsto pedagogy.Thosedesksarrangedin clusters,not
rows, the childrensittingon the floor, andthe plethoraof stimulatingbooks in LaverneJohnson's
classroomat GinterParkrepresentsomeof the bestof whole language'slegacy.Finally, many
affluentparentswith progressivepolitical leaningsactuallypreferthe unstructured,arts-and-crafts-
orientedmethodologyof constructivism,which is why privateprogressiveelementaryschoolssuch
asthe Dalton Schoolin Manhattanandthe PeninsulaSchoolnearSanFranciscocontinueto
flourish (by the time thosechildrenenterhigh school,though,SAT cram coursesandthe rat race
for Ivy Leagueadmissionsarethe order of the day;few of America'stop privateprep schools
operateon progressive pedagogical principles).

The childrenwho sufferfrom the wholeJanguagerevolutionarethat bottom40 percentof

Americanchildren,thepoor andnear-poorwho comefrom householdswherebooksareseldom
seenandwhereunschooledparentshavestarvedtheir offspringofthe rich vocabularyand cultural
exposureto which better-offchildrenare accustomedasa matterof course.Childrenwhoseparents
don't speakEnglishat homefareworst of all in whole language.This grorlpof low-income,print-
deprivedchildrenis the groupthat needsdirectreadinginstructionmost desperately,and asthe
resultsin Richmondindicate,benefitsfrom it mostdramatically.

Long beforeReadingFirst becamelaw in 2002,therehadbeena backlastragainstwhole language

by parentsandschoolsuperintendents unimpressedby their students'low testscoresdespitebeing
assuredthat their childrenwerebeingtaughtaccordingto the mostup-to-dateideas.In 1987the
stateof Californiamandateda whole-languageapproachto readingandwriting. Within a few years
California'sreadingscoreson the NAEP testplummetedto thirdlowest in the United Statesand its
overseas territories;only LouisianaandGuamrankedlower-The declineshetchedacrossthe
socioeconomic board,amongthe offspringof the college-educatedaswell asthe offspring of
Hispanic immigrants.

Jill Stewart,a writer for theLos AngelesWeekly,visited a second-grade classroomat a highly

regardedschoolon Los Angeles'swealthyWestside.Thereshemet a little girl who wrote "I go t
gum calls" for "I go to gym class"in ajournal that was entirely free of punctuation(which hadn't
beentaughtyet). In anotherclassroom,a 7-year-oldboy had gottenby with memorizingthe
"sharedreading"storythat the teacherhad readover and over but could not actuallyreada single
word of the story on his own. At one Los Angelesschoolparentsheld nachosalesto buy their
classroomsforbiddenspellers.In CharlesSykes'sbookDumbingDown Our Kids, a mother
complainedthat her fourth-gradedaughterhad receiveda gradeof check-plus(aboveaverage)and
notationof "Wow!" for thesesentences:
a teacher's "I'm goin to hasmajik skates.Im goin to go to
disenelan.Imgoin to bin my mom anddadandbrusrandsisd.We r go to semickeymouse."

In 1996Californiaofficially dumpedwhole language-(After parentstherediscoveredthat their

fourth-graderscouldn'tdo long division, a similar, equallysuccessfulgrassrootsrebellion
overthrewanotherconstructivistfad promotedby educationschools,"firzzy" mathematics--in
which childrenaren'ttaughtstandardcomputations,the multiplicationtables,or commonformulas,
but spendhoursof classtime pretendingto be Pythagorasandtrying to reinventhis theoremwith
sheetsof coloredpaper.)A shorttime afterthe whole-languagerevolt, the Los AngelesUnified
SchoolDistrict mandatedthe use of OpenCourt Reading,a phonics-based instructionprogram

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marketedby McGraw-Hill that happensto passmusterwith ReadingFirst.DeborahJewell-

Sherman'sdecisionto mandateVoyagerUniversalLiteracy in RichmondalsoprecededReading
First. Indeed,afterthe California debacle,the education-school
establishment
begana strategic
retreatin its antagonismtoward phonicsinstruction.Many whole-language peoplenow prefer to
usethe term "balancedliteracy,"which meansweavinga bit of phonicsweft into the whole-
languagewarp.

The scandalthat promptedChristopherDoherty'sresignationfrom ReadingFirst last fall was

essentiallya playing out of the decades-oldantagonismbetweenthe whole-language proponents,
whosenumbersarehuge,representingmostof the faculty membersat mosteducationschools,and
the reading-science proponents,whosenumbersare small but whosephilosophyof reading
instructiontheNo Child Left BehindAct was specificallydesignedto protect.Doherty'sbehavior
was crudeandimprudent--itis alwaysa mistaketo send,as he did, emailsusing four- and seven-
letter vulgaritiesto refer to his.whole-language
antagonists--but
he was certainlywithin his rights
underthe law he administratedto do exactlyashe did, which was to preventwholeJanguage
programsfrom benefitingfrom ReadingFirst grants.

The chargesof "steering"largely stemmedfrom Doherty'stargetingfor exclusionone particular

programcalledReadingRecovery,a widely usedbut controversial$9,000-a-year-per-student
tutorial systemthat saysit is scientificallybasedbut actuallyusesa methodologysimilar to that of
whole languagethat hasbeencriticizedas ineffectiveby someresearchers. Doherfy'sabrasive
personalitygot him into trouble,but he alsogot caughtbetweenthe languageof No Child Left
Behind,which forbids the recommendation of specificinstructionalprograms,andthe brute reality
of readingpolitics,which hasmeantthat only a handful of expertshavedevelopeda handful of
productsthat aregenuinelybasedon scientificresearch.

Doherfy'sdownfall turnedout to be a godsendto the whole-languagepeople,who had hitherto

beengraspingat suchstrawsas possiblemiscalculationsin the improvedtestscoresreportedby the
EducationDepartment,doubtsaboutthe efftcacyof instructionin phonemicawareness, hints that
whole language,like Marxism,had neverbeenproperlykied, andthe pererurialcomplaintthat
childrentaughthow to readdirectly don'tunderstandwhat they read.Attackingthe very ideaof
standardized testingwas anotherperennialtactic,as was politicization.KennethGoodmanaccused
reading-science expertsof being "part of an orchestratedcampaignby the far right" to discredithis
theories,implyingthat phonicsadvocates weremostlyhome-schooling fi.rndamentalists
who spent
their sparetime bombingabortionclinics.Actually, many of thoseexpertsare far more likely to
vote the straightDemocraticticket. DianeRavitchis a fellow at the BrookingsInstitution in
Washington, LouisaMoatsis a Bushantagonist quick to point out thatshebelievesin global
warming andopposesthe war in lraq, andReid Lyon servedat NICHD throughoutthe Clinton
administration.Now, afterthe Doherfyscandal,thereis a new bullet in the anti-ReadingFirst clip:
the argumentthat the programmostly benefitsthe "commercial"companiesthat publishreaders
and othertextbooksfor profit. That might be a damningaccusationwereit not for the fact that most
textbookcompaniesastutelyplay both sidesof the readingscience/whole languagefence.
HoughtonMifflin, for example,publishesthe basalreadersusedat GinterParkElementaryand
alsothe storybooks usedin manya whole-language class.

CertainlyReadingFirst hasits defects:Dohertygot caughtin the trap of the law's insufficiently

specificlanguageaboutwhich progrcmsaresufficientlyprovento qualifu for grants.And No Child
Left Behindhasdefectsof its own. It is loathedon the left becauseof its strict accountability
requirementsand on the right becauseit doesn'trequireenoughaccountability.It leavesstatesfree
to jigger their testsso that studentswill showenoughprogressto keepthe federalmoneyflowing.

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Both endsof the ideological spectrumare likely to pushhard for changes,bur:with a Democratic
Congressit is highly likely that "changes"will meana wateringdown of standards.For the
dazzlngly successfulReadingFirst program,thatwould be too bad.Both housesof Congress
approvedlegislationlast month cutting appropriationsfor ReadingFirst, an ominoussign. Last
week in Philadelphia,all the leadingDemocraticpresidentialcandidatesstoplledin at the annual
meetingof the National EducationAssociation,whereNo Child Left Behind hasthe samestatusas
pet food from China*and duly promiseddrastic"overhauls"in the act that could scuttleReading
First altogether.

The future of Ginter Park Elementaryis uncertain,too. Richmond'sschoolsystemis expensiveto

operate,and Jewell-Shermanis often at loggerheads with the city's mayor,DouglasWilder, the
former governorof Virginia. Right now, the third-gradersof GinterPark go trl schoolin a cocoon
of lavish attentionand top-notchinstruction.Soonenough,though,they will r:eachinner-city
adolescence with all its temptations,andRichmond,despiteits tremendouse<lucational stides, is
still besetwith hellholemiddle andhigh schoolsanda dropoutrate of nearly,l7 percent.Yet Ginter
Park'sprincipal, Cathy Randolph,hasplenty of hope."I feel thesechildrenw:.11 be successful,"she
said. "I know they'll be successful."Certainlyher schoolhasdonemore thanrnostto give them that
chance.

CharlotteAllen, a writer in Washington,D.C., is the author,mostrecently, oJ'THEHUMAN

CHRIST.
O Copyright2007,News Corporation,Weekly Standard,All Right,sReserved.

Writer/Consultant for MyStudyHall.com

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TexasAlternativeDocument(TAD)for Englishilanguage (Pre-K-12)

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hltPlu Ary€dusalignnews.org/Curriculu a$ve*dscunenf,htm
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9t3t2009
 Page1 of3
Page '19of 88

From:
Sent: Friday,October27,20061L:43AM
To: Donna(2)Garner
Subject: THEDIFFERENCE BETWEENd. i. AND D. I. -THE INSPECI'OR
GENERAL
GOTIT
wRoNG-- to.27.06

http:l/www.ednews.org/articles/3361/1/Misconception-About-Direct-lnstruction-Key-Faqtor-in-Findings-of-
Inspector-Generals-Report-That-Criticized-Administration-0f-Reading-FirstlPagel.html

MisconceptionAbout Direct InstructionKey Factorin Findingsof InspectorGe,neral's

ReportThat
CriticizedAdministration0f ReadingFirst
By AssoeiatrsnlqrDirest Lnctrusti!! lPublished Today I Colomcutariessnd-Repofll-s
I Rating: sffiF
,-li.-..-l

AssociationFor Direct Instruction

Vtewa-Ua$iqlcsby_A$loq-iatiBqEqrDrrw1lrr-strLlqliqn
MisconceptionAbout Direct InstructionKey Factorin Findingsof InspectorGeneral'sReportThat Cri

By Bryan Wickrnan,ExecutiveDirector
AssociationFor Direct Instruction

On September22, 2006, theInspectorGeneralof the Departmentof Educationreleaseda reporton the

ReadingFirst GrantApplication Process.

Two of the major findings dealtwith what the InspectorGeneralconsideredto be "stacking"of the
panelswith peoplewho were advocatesof Direct Instructionprograms."Althoqh not required,the
Departmentdevelopeda processto screenexpertreview panelistsfor conflictsof interest;however,the
Department'sprocesswas not effective.We identifiedsix panelistswhoseresumesrevealedsignificant
professionalconnectionsto a teachingmethodologythat requiresthe useof a spccificreading
program" (page4).The conclusiondrawnby InspectorGeneral(seepage 17 for ,locumentationthat the
specificmethodologywas direct instruction)seemsto be basedon a misunderstanding of the difference
between:1) a generalteachingmethodology(directinstruction)that incorporatel;systematicand
explicit teachingand is incorporatedinto a growing numberof instructionalprog;ramstargetingat-risk
populationsand2) a specificgroupof commercialprogramsreferredto asDirect Instructionprograms.

The generalteachingmethodology(directinstruction-smalld. i.) is a descriptiorr of the scientifically

basedreadingresearchrelatedto instructionalpracticesthat ideallymostpanelis:swould be familiar
with.Thesepracticesare what constituteexplicit andsystematicinstruction.Among the elementsof
direct instructionare a numberof elementsthat areidentifiedas systematicande,xplicitteachingin the
pamphlet"Put ReadingFirst.: preparedby the ReadingPartnership2002to sumrnarizethe National
ReadingPanel(NRP) NRP findingsto the public.: i.e. clearly identifiesa carefullyselectedand useful
set of letter-soundrelationships,organizesthe inhoductionof theserelationshipsinto a logical
instructionalsequence,s ampleopportunitiesto practice,predeterminedsequencrl for instruction.The
term direct instructionrefersto highly systematicand explicit teachingcoupledlrith other teacher
presentationbehaviorsresearchhasshownis associated with high levelsof learnsrsuccess,particularly
with at-risk students.Specificdescriptionsof the generaldirect insfructionareprovidedby Rosenshine
(1986),Stallings(1987),RJ Marzano,D Pickering, JE Pollock- 2001.

9/3t2009
 Page2 of3
Page20 of 88

Publishersof major coreprogramusethe term "directinstruction"to identiff the practicesusedin their

programs.All major readingtextbookpublishershaveprogramsthat usedirect instructionas does
SuccessFor All.

Harcourt

developmental
HarcourtTrophiesis a research-based, artsprogram.(..K-6)
reading/language

Explicit phonicsinstruction;directreadinginstruction;guidedreadingshategies;phonemicawareness
instruction;systematic,interventionstrategies;integratedlanguageartscomporrents;
and state-of-the-
art assessmenttools ensureeverystudentsuccessfullylearnsto read."

hltp://www.weeklyrea

Houghton Mifflin

In additionto the direct instructionof the selectionvocabulary,vocabularyskill lessonsthat include

expansionof the story conceptwords areincludedin eachweekly lessonplan, zrlongwith appropriate
practiceand challengeactivities.The weekly spellinginstructionalso contains'zocabularywords.

K-6 instructionis very explicit in HoughtonMifflin Reading,beginningwith an auditoryexperienceto

introducethe skill, followed by direct instructionin both skills and strategiesth;rtutilize teacher
modelingthroughThink Alouds.comprehension. The teachershoulddemonshale(model)until students
can carry them out independently.

* http://www.eduplace.com/marketi
ng/ric/pdfTnatlg1pf:Igadlng,pdf

Scott Foresman

Manipulatives supportthe explicit, direct instructionin Segmentingand Blendingincludesdirect

instructionin the New Literacies(Leu), to teachcritical thinking and heightenfrrcility with regardto
technology.

bftp:lwuaugeuqggy/education/rflappendixd:part2.htm

Successfor All

Readingprogram: Durrng daily 90-minutereadingperiods,studentsareregroupedby readinglevel

acrossagelines.Havinga separate readingperiodeliminatestheneedfor in-clarisreadinggroupsand
increasesthe amountof time for direct instruction.Also, using tutors asreadingteachersduring these
periodsreducesthe sizeof mostreadingclasses. In gradesK throughone,langu,lgeskills development,
auditorydiscrimination,andsoundblendingareemphasized, andphoneticallyn:gularminibooksare
usedfor pairedreadingexercises

http:/iwww.ed.govlpLlb
s1O gqs.htm
RlCqnsumerGuielcs/s-usc I

The term Direct Instructionrefersto instructionalprogams developedby Siegfried

Engelmann,Engelmann hasauthoredmorethan60 instructional programs,includingiore readingseries
for the elementarygrades(e g. ReadingMastery),a conectivereadingseriesfor older studentswith
readingdeficits,and math,writing and spellingseriesfor the elementarygrades.rMostof theseprograms

9/3t2009
 Page3 of3
Page21 of88

arepublishedby ScienceResearchAssociates(SRA).

As the ExecutiveDirector of the Associationfor Direct Instruction,a group orig;inallyformedto

advocateand supportthe useof Direct Instructionprogramsand direct instructi,rn,I havehad contact
with manypeopleinvolved with both directinstructionandDirect Instruction.Iexaminedthe entire list
of personswho had beennominatedfor thepanel.Ifound mostpeoplewho supportedDI programsalso
are involvedwith otherprogramsthat usedi.Anotherway to seehow much mole widespreaddirect
instructionis thanDirect instruction,is the out comeof this GooglesearchWhen I searchedfor direct
instructionwithout SRA, without Engelmannandwithout ReadingMastery,I cameup with 1,920,000
hits.Moreovera searchfor direct instructionand otherpublishersfound the folkrwing: Houghton-
42,900,ScottForesman- I 3,900,andHarcourt-3 3,000.

ln sum,the findingsof the InspectorGeneralappearto havebeenmadebasedon a major

misconceptionaboutdirect instructionversusDirect Instruction,Whata shame.

Rosenshine,B. (1986)-Synthesisof researchon explicit teaching,EducationalLeadership,April issue,

pp.60-69

Stallings,J (1987)Longitudinalfindingsfor early childhoodprograms.Fouson direct instructionERIC

297 874 t}p

Marzano,Pickering,Pollock,200l, ASCD) andA Handbookfor ClassroomIns.tructionthat

Worl<s(Marzano,Norford, Paynter,Pickering,andGaddy,2001,ASCD.

DonnaGarner

Writer/Consultant
for MyStudyHall.
com
hllp;ilwww.mysludy-hal
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Grammar Packets
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hlnn
Research-Paper
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httX
http:l/wwwCd[cetionne_wS.qrg10-uflsulumll_a[ggqge_Artsffhe_Lostjrt_of_ResearE.h_]laper_Utrllrg
Stepsto Research
Paper
hltpJlranuuedueationnews.org/Curriculum/Langsage-;Arts/STE'PS:IO-EESEABAH-PA['ER,htm

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tl.htnn
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91312009
 Page22 of 88

,spelj 'ings. Personal. Fw oesp'ite stumblesReadingFirst imbuesscience irrto instruction (education

From: Private - spelf ings, Margaret
Sent: February23, 2007 9:20 AM
To: Maddox,Lauren; Simon, Ray
subject: rw: oespite stumbles, Reading First imbues science into instruction
(education Dail

from my slackeerry wireless nandheld

-----ori gi na1 Message-----

From: McLane,Katherine
To: Private -.5pe11ings, Margaret; Beaton,Meredith; Briggs, Kerri; Dunn, David;
Evers, eill;
Flowers, Sarah; Halaska, Terrell; Johnson,Henry; Kuzmich,nolly; tanders, Rngela;
Maddox,
Lauren; rucnitt, Townsend L.; Mesecar,Doug;eitts, elizabeth; tucker, Sara Martinez;
scheessel e,
Marc; simon, Ray; Tada, wendy;talbert, Kent; Toomey,Liam; Tracy Young;williams,
Cynthia;
Young, Tracy
cc: colby, chad; Ditto, Trey; Neale, Rebecca;Reich, Heidi; Ruberg,casey; Terre11,
:ulie; vudof,
Samara
Sent: rri reb 23 08:30:34 2007
subject: Despite stumbles, ReadingFirst imbuesscience into ins'Eruction(education
oai I y)
oespite stumbles, Readingrirst imbuesscience into instruction (educationoaily) ey
I eanne
sweeneyand stephen sawchukeducationoaily, rebruary 23, 2007
neading r-irst, the No child t-eft eehindAct's K-3 reading initia'tive, has, for all
its troubles,
managed to quietly shepherdan evolution in reading instruction':hat has most
researchers,
educators, and policymakersagreeingon at least one thing: sr:iencecan tell us
muchabout the
way children becomereaders.
the scandal over whether the educationoepartmentfavored somecommercialprograms
has
attracted media attention to the program,but for local official:;, that has
overshadowed the
prooram's real success- a sea chanqein howteachers approachrr:adinqinstruction.
rtaotivatedby NCLB'sdemandthat all-children read at grade level by ZOt+, districts
are
increasingly adopt-ingresearch-based practices to teach a set of specific skills
defi ned bv the
Nati onal itead'ingeanel as essentia'l for every profi ci ent reader.
that changehas fostered collaboration amongteachers and consist:encybehind
cl assroom-doors .
"Teachersare al1 speakingthe samelanguage,they have a common vocabulary," said
sandra
Koczwara,whowrote Putnamcounty (lenn,) Schools' neadingFirst grant.
ns districts focus on instruction, however,the program'is engenclering new debates
over whether
classroominstruction is too rigid and scripted, whether the focus on the five
readinq skills is too
narrowl or whether it is appropriate to prescribe one methodof teaching when
children's readinq
skills vary widel! in the early grades.
PageI
 Page23 of 88

,spellinqs.personal.Fw
' Despite stumblesReadingFirst imbuesscience into instruction (education
nlto up in the air is the program'sfutu-re. educationstakeholdersgenerally believe
the program
will be part of the No child t-eft eehindnct reauthorization, but questions remain
about what
tweaks Congressmight maketo ReadingFirst in light of the scandal - and whether
those tweaks
could'impact the program'sinstructiona'l components.
"people want to gbt [heir poundof flesh po1itical1y," said andrewRotherham,
co-di rector of the
EducationSector.
Five components Enactedat a critical t'ime in the decades-long"reading wars"
between
proponentsof old-sty1e phon'icsinstruct'ion and advocatesof whole language,
observers declared
neading First a win for the traditionalists. lhe'legislation specifically adopted
the NRP's
recommendation that all children be instructed in five skills: phonemicawareness,
phonics ,
vocabulary, fluency and comprehension.
Eo officials implementedthis requirementto the point of misconduct,according
to a series of
i nte rna'l revi ews (see box) , tu rni ng downstates ' grant app'l'icati ons unti 1 they
promised to adhere to
ED's narrow specifications.
But as money started flowing, acceptance of the NRP's recommendationsqrew.
"we're not here to experiment with our chi'ldren, " said JamesHerman. dTrector of
neadi ncl Fi rst i n
tennesiee. "t,vehave to know what works."
And as one former federal neadingFirst official says, whicheverprogramdistricts
ul t'imately
selected, its impact 1ay'in howwell teachers used it to instruct to the five
components.
"Most programswill say they have those five components," said Sandi lacobs, former
Read'ing
r'irst programofficer. "[But] if you're not talking about explicit and systematic
instruction, then
you' re not necessari1y tal ki ng about sci enti fi cal 1y based reading i nstructi on. "
ieacher prep while co-ntroversyat the national lev6l has centered on textbooks and
favored
publishers, school officials say the most fundamentalelementof their ReadingFirst
proqramshas
beei staff developrnent.rhat's becausemost practicing teachers were not educatedin
the five
components of reading, and are not equippedto apply research-based strateg'ies in
the classroom.
"We had to reeducateour teachers in the five components,"Koczwarasaid.
"rt's rea11ythree pieces," Jacobssaid, noting that professional developmentand
i nstructi onal
strategies are ultimately groundedin ongoingprogressmon'itoringof students'
qrowth and areas of
freakness."Anvthino that savs this is all about a textbook is iust totallv wronq."
Louisa Moats,'a reiding coniultant and researcherwith sopris frest, said the
combinationhas
especiallv impactedhiqh-needsschools.
"what neailingFirst hai been able to engenderthrough professional development,
coaching,
accounteb'if ity, leadership training and an understandingof the practices that work
better than
others, 'is a completechangein the functioning of a school culture," Moats said.
Too scri pted?
A testamentto that changeis districts are nowdebating the howsrather than the
whys of
scientifically based reading instruction.
Page2
 Page24 of 88

.Spellings.personal.rw
' oespite stumblesneading First imbuesscience into instruction (education
For example,severai popuiar curricula, such as the wide'ly used open court, have
i nstructi ona'l
routines on each of the five components that dictate what the teacher is to do and
say when
'introducinq the readinq technique.
SomeleadeFshave praiSed that approachfor facilitating programfidelity.
"we've stayed pure to the curriculum, teaching the standards," said ttancyLuc'ia,
associate
superintendentin Elk Grove (calif.) unified School oistrict,. which uses open court.
others, though, characterize the approachas overly "scripted.
"[M4ny districts] use the series like a cut and dry recipe and it doesn't always
work wel1," said
Cathy Roller, director of researchand po'licy for the rnternational Reading
Associati on.
Moats said such curricula are highly structured and help teachers internalize a
routi ne.
nnd administrators agree their teachers do morethan adhereto a script. rn Elk
Grove, academic
support teamsset annual targets for each student, monitor prpgress regular'ly and
adjust instruction
as necessary,Lucia said.
still, reading is muchmore complexthan five components, Roller argues. "Motivation
is crucial,"
she said. "rt doesn't do any good to cover the five components if you've got kids
who don't want
to do it."
rweaking the mode'lone of the concernsfor someresearchersis whether it is
approprlate to
assumeall children - even all at-risk children - need identical instruction in the
primary grades.
rn a typical neadingFirst model, all children receive 90 to l-20 minutes of da'i1y
core instruction in
a whole-groupsetting, often called Tier 1, w'ith supplementa'l instruction and
interventions in
successivetiers for struqqlers.
But even within Tier 1 teiihers should tailor activit'ies to the skill leve] of
individual children, says
carol connor, a researcherat rlorida state university and the rlorida center for
Reading
Research,one of the Eo-fundedneadingFirst technical assistance centers "There is
a tendencyto
re1y too muchon the core curriculum," she said. "we don't want everyoneto be on
the samepage
at the sametime."
Rdministrators share her concern.
"our upper quint'ile students are not makingas muchprogress," Koczwarasaid. "That
is one of
the areas we needto look at."
Moats said ideally, teachers differentiate instruction from the beginning and use
the ongoing ..
progress monitoring to adjust instruction. such a practice modelsthe traditional
tiered "readinq
groups" used in Americanelementaryschools. The difference, Moatsnoted, is the
tocus on gettl ng
students with t e weakestskil I s caught up.
Jacobssaid the best approachis probab'lya mix. "The key is ensuring that time is
welI and
appropriately spent."

eage 3
 Page 25 of 88

2006.09.30.spellings.Personal.09.30.06rn the News.txt

From; Yudof, Samara
sent: september30, 2006 10:50 au
To: private - spelf ings, Margaret; Dunn,David; Simon, Rdy; Luce, thomas;
lohnson, Henry; Maddox,L-uren; Mclane,Katherine; Young,Tracy
Cc: co1by, chad; Ditto, Trey; nuberg, casey
subiect: 09.30.06 rn the News
Ittichments: 093006Clips.doc

09.30.06 rn the News

Associated Press (sen reller): got $278million in

Rudit: student loan company
i mproper
payments
rhe washingtonPost (washingtonin er"ief): EducationDept, tmproperly Paid $278
Million in-
Subsidi es
rhe washingtonPost (Dion tlaynes):More Poor Results For Charter schools; Janey
Intervene;
legaf ity of chief 's plan rs Quest'ioned
the ruewYork times (nick lyman): rn Manypublic schools, the paddle rs No Re1ic
Boston
clobe editorial: Dick and Jane Go Bad
Missouri News-Leader (Steve Koehler): MSUplans for more disclosure to public,
uni versi ty "is
gathering information for scorecardto be releasedeach year.
rhe washingtonPost (Michael Grunwald)A Textbookcase: THEEDUCATToN
rsSUE
The WashingtonPost (Paul n. Hanle): rHE EDUCATION
ISSUE

got $278million in improperpayments

nudit: student loan company
BEN FELLER
Rp education writer
rri september29, 2006 l-9:05 eor
WASHINGTOT (np) - R ruebraskacompanywas improperly pa'id more than $278 million by
misusing the federal student aid program,accordingto a federal audit released
rri day.
The overpayments could swell to $882million through 201-5if the company,ttelnet, 'is
not
ordered to change its billing practices, the educationDepartment's'inspector
general found, -
The departmentshould makeltelnet return the moneyafter the companydoes its own
cal cul ati on
of what it was overpaid, the audit says, estimating the figure at $278mi1lion.
lelnet officia'ls called the report inaccurate and denied wrongdoing.rhey did not
agree to return
any moneybut pledged to work w'ith the EducationDepartmenton a resolution.
eage 1-
 Page26 of 88

.09.30,06 rn the News.txt

2006.09.30.spel1inqs.Personal
trlike ounlap, the chairmanof the iompany,said ttelnet will examine all other
avai'lable remedies
that prove the merits of our position. Howeverthis matter is resolved, we w'i11
!9!!t-!!9
superror !9_qf9Yi
serv'rce.99
education secretary Margaretspel'lings will review the report and ruelnet's response
before
deciding how to proceed, said spokeswoman Katherine McLane.
"secretary Spellings takes protection of nmericantaxpayersvery seriously and is
concernedabout
the issues raised in the inspector general's report," McLanesaid.
rhe jawmakerwho requestedthe audit, sen. Edwardtvt.t<ennedy, D-Mass.,said the
education
Departmentshould take action. He said hundredsof millions of dollars have gone to
waste,
-'ruelnet should be required to pay back the i11-gotten proceedsfrom these 1oans,
and that money
shou'ldbe useiJto benefit students," Kennedysaid.
the top Democraton the Houseeducationcommitteealso jumpedon the findings.
-'rhe depth and breadth of t'telnet's failure to complyw'ith the law is
breathtaking," said nep,
Georgeuiller, o-calif.
ttelnet is one of the nation's largest providers of student loans. rhe audit
descri bes the companyas
purposely exploiting-the loophole that lawmakershave been trying to close.
At issue is a promisethe governmentmadeto lenders in 1980: a guaranteedreturn of
9. 5 percent
on loans financed by tax-exemptbonds. rt forced billions of dollars in paymentsto
banks when
interest rates droppedand the governmenthad to makeup the difference.
Congresshas tried to end the lofty paymentsto banks, most recently in 2004. Yet
lenders have
found ways to keep drawing in the large governmentpaymentsby recycling older
I oans.
rhe inspector general says the ruelnet created a project just for that purpose,
substantia1I y
'increasingthe amountof loans requiring a 9.5 percent payment.Fromwtarch2003
through June
2004.-the amountof ruelnetloans billed rose from $551mi'llion to $3.66 billion.
did this in violation of the law and department
Ruditors say the company
regulati ons.
the companydisputes that it mademoneyoff ineTigible loans. rt says it followed
the department's
guidanLeand that any 'loans billed at the higher rate were fuliy eligible. "
the report cameout late rriday afternoon as congress nearedthe end of its session.
on rhe l,let:
office of the rnspector Generall
govlabout/offl ces/1ist,/oig/reports . html
http : / /vww,t,ed.
eage 2
 Page27 of88

Personal.09.30.06 rn the News.txt

2006.09.30.Spellings.

rhe washingtonPost
WASHINGTON
TN BRIEF

Saturday, september30, 2006; PageA08

educationDept. tmproperly Paid $278Million in subsidies
the education oepartmentimproperly paid lender Helnet rnc. more than $278 million
i n student-
loan subsidies from early 2003 through mid-2005and should demandrepaymentof the
money,the
department'sinspector general said in a report released yesterday.

erred in awardingpaymentsthat saver.telneta muchhigher return than

T!fiOlil"rtment
entit'ledto receiveon federally subsidizedstudentloans, the report
3li,?.Otnarily
rhe type of subsidy tlelnet claimed has long been critic'ized as a windfall for
lenders, and congress
has sought to curtail it becauseit guaranteedlenders a minimurn interest rate on
certain loans even
whenprevai'l'ing rates were muchlower. rf the departmentdoes not stop makingthe
r mproper
payments,Nelnet could receive an additional $882 million, the report said.
ttelnet said in a newsrelease that it followed the rules. The company,basedin
ti ncoln, Neb., to'ld
investigators that the departmentpaid its bills without objection, according to the
report. Nelnet
movedloans through a series of transactions to continue claiming they qua'lified for
the subsidy,
and it increasedthe amountof loans for which it sought governmentpaymentsfrom
about $551-
million in early 2003to about $3.7 billion in mid-2004,the report said.
education secretary Margaret spel'linls "wants a thorough and comprehensive
review of
the
inspector general's report after which the departmentwill makeknownhow it
wi11 proceed,"
departmentspokeswoman Kather-ineMcLanesaid.

rhe washingtonPost
More Poor Results For charter Schools; Janeyto rntervene tegality of chief's plan
Is Questioned
By V. Dion Haynes
washingtonPost Staff writer?
saturday, September30, 2006; eageB04
only one of the o.c. goard of rducation's l-3 public charter school campuses
reached
academic
targets in both reading and math, promptingsuperintendentclifford e. laney
yesterday to
announcehis intention to intervene and mandateremedia'lsteps to improvescores.
Rage 3
 Page28 of 88

2006.09.30.spelI i nqs. Personal.09.30,06 rn the News

. txt
Janey's proposal to introdute and-overseespecial programsat 42 troubled charter
school campuses
was immedihte-lydenouncedby charter school advocatesas illegal. rhey assert that
the law
authorizes the eoard of education and a secondchartering agency-- not the
superintendent-- to
managethe publicly funded, independentlyrun schools.
rhe plan could exacerbatea heated debate over whether the school board should
rel'i nquish i ts rol e
of authoriz'ing and monitoring charter schools. But Janey said so manyschools had
mediocrescores
that drastic steps are needed.
Data released yesterday showedgenerally d'isma1results for charter school students.
onlv the
fi cent Rchievers publi c charter School i n Northwest
rarnit tnsti tute for tutagni
washingtonmade
adequateyearly progress in reading and math on the april assessment.The rlsie
whitlow Stokes
communityrreedompublic charter School in t'torthwestmadeadequateprogress in
reading. The
L1 other campuses overseenby the school board madeadequateprogress in neither
subject.
the results are similar to scores posted recently by the traditional public school
system and schools
under the secondchartering agency,a shortfall someschool officials attribute in
part to a new,
more rigorous exam.rn the traditional system, 118 of l-46 schools failed to make
adequat6
progress, as did 30 of 34 campuses overseenby the o.c. public charter school Board.
nppiicants for charter schools mayseek authorization from either the eoard of
education or the
Charter School Board. rhe two boardsmonitor the schools they charter and can c-lose
those failinq
academica'l1y-andfi nancial'ly.
laney has authority over charter schools as chief state schools officer, a role
typically held by a
state school superintendentoverseeingloca'l school districts. He said he intends to
i ntroduce
teacher training programsand quarterly assessments at the 42 troubled charter
campusesoverseen
by both authorities. tte also said he would monitor improvement p'lansdrafted by
principals and
teachers and put one of the eoard of educat-ioncharter schools on a year-round
cal endar.
"r want to get muchmoreinvolved in the charter schools authorized by the goard of
Education, "
Janey said in an interview. peter G. parham,Janey's ch'ief of staff, later said the
superintendent
intends to intervene in all troubled charter schools.
"This wi'I1 happenin october," Janeysaid, "we will have an approachconsistent with
what we do
with [failing schools] in DcPSas a school system."
Robert cane, executive director of rriends of choice in urban schools, a charter
school advocacy
organization, questionedwhetherJaneyhas the 1ega1authority to do that. The
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charter school 1aw,
he said, gives oversight poweronly to the authoriz'ingboard.
"This is illegal, and we'll fight against that," cane said. Moreover,he added, "rt
'is unethical for the
superintendentto involve himself in the operation of a charter school with which he
competes, "
rhe-debate over the school system's dual roles and its authority over ch-4rter
schools ignited during
the summer.
In June, the school board imposed a moratorium on charter school applications and
decided to
start discussing whether to relinquish its authority over charter schools. Some
membershave
agreed with criticism by the u.S. GovernmentRccountability Office that the board
lacks the
resources and expertise to supervise charters.
this year, the board c'losed the Jos-Arz Therapeutic Public Charter School, and the
board's charter
school office is under federal investigation into possible misuse of pubfic funds.
Brenda L. Belton,
who headed the office and is the target of the investigation, 'is on paid
adrninistrative I eave.
rn July, the Senate Rppropriations committee approved leg'is'lation requiring the
school board to
give up state-level functions, including setting proficiency levels.

sponsors of the legis'lation, who serve on the D.c. appropr-iations subcommittee, said
they acted
because of the school system's designation in Rpril by the u.S. Department of
education as "hiqh-
risk" for mismaniging federal money and because of concerns that the dua'l role is a
conflict of
interest. The senate'is expected to vote on the'legislation this fall.

school board memberJoAnne cinsberg, who serves on a committee overseeing charter

school s,
said :aney's proposal for charter schools is not a takeover.
"we have schools that need help now," she said.

The t'tewYork Times

rn Manypubl'ic schools, the paddle rs No Reli c
By Rick Lyman
September30, 2006
Photo: (tuark Grahamfor the NewYork rimes) Anthonyprice, the principal of Everman
rq'iddl e
school i n Texas, rei nstated corporal punishmentlast year. "rt's had a huge effect,"
he said.
photo: tina Morgandid not object to corporal pun'ishment
until she saw the bruises
whenher son,
Travi s , 1-2, was paddled i n Robesoncounty, N.C.
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2006.09.30.Spe]'linqs.Personal
EVERMAN,Tex. - Anthonyerite doei not mincewords whentalking about corporal
punishm6nt- which he i'efers to as taking pops - a practice he-recent'lyrbinstated
at the
suburbanFort worth middle school where he is principal.
"r'm a big fan," Mr. price said. "r knowit can be abused.But if used properly,
alonq with other
puniihments,a few pops can help turn a school around. rt's had a huge effect here-"
tjna l,torgan,who works on a highwaycrew in rural North Caroiina, gave permission
for her son
to be paddledin his North Carolina middle school. eut she said she was unprepared
tor Trav'rs,
now 12, to comehomewith a backsidethat was a florid ka-leidoscope of plums and
lemonsand
blood oranges.
"This boy might need a blistering nowand then, with his knucklehead,"Ms. Morgan
sai d. swatt'inq
at him piayfuTly, but she addedthat she never wantedhim to be beaten like that.
"r've decided,
we've got to get corporal punishmentout of the schools."
over most of the country and in all but a few major metropofitan areas, corporal
punishmenthas
been on a gradual but steady decline s'ince the L97A's, and 28 states have bannedit.
But the
practice remainsalive, particularly in rural parts of the South and the lower
tvtidwest,whereit is
not only 1ega1,but also widely practiced.
tn a handful of distrjcts, like the one here in Everman,there have been recent
movesto reinstate
it, somesuccessful, more not. rn Delaware,a bill to rescind that state's ban on
paddlinq never qot
through-thelegisiature. But in pike county, oh-io, corporal punishmentwas
reinstated last vear.
and in southeast-Missjssippi,the Laurel school board voted in Rugustto reinstate a
corporal
punishmentpo'licy, passing one that bars menfrom paddling women,but does not
require parental
consent, as manyother po'lici es do.
The most recent federal statistics showthat during the 2002*3school year, more
than 300,000
Americanschoolchildrenwere discipiined with corporal punishment,usua'l1yone or
moreblows
with a thick woodenpaddle, Sometimes holes were cut in the paddle to makethe
beatinq more
painfuT. of those students, 70 percent were in five southern states: Texas,
Missi ssi ppi , Tennessee,
alabamaand Arkansas.
often the batt-le over corporal punishmentis be'ing fought on the edges of Southern
cities, where
suburbangrowth pushesnewcomers frorn across the country into rural and religiously
conservatrve
communities.rn these areas, educatorssay, corporal punishment'isfar more
accepted, resultinq in
clashing attitudes-about child-rearing and using the rod.
"r couldn't believe it whent learned about it," said eeggyDean,a mother of three
students i n
eage 6
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2006,09.30.Spel'linqs.Personal
union county, N.C-, a rapidly groil,ingsuburb south of charlotte. "rf r'd known,r'd
never have
movedinto this school district."
Rs views of child-rearing have changed,groups like the AmericanAcademy of
pediatri cs, the
Nationa'l nssociation of school esychologists and the nmericanMedical and Bar
tssoci ati ons
have comeout against corporal punishment.
"r believe we have reachedthe point in our social evolution wherethis is no longer
acceptable,
just as we reacheda po'int in the last half of the 19th century where husbandsus'ing
iorporal
punishmenton their wives was no longer acceptab-le,"said tvturraystraus, a director
of the ramily
ResearchLaboratory at the university of t'tewHampshire.
Amongadherentsof the practice is Jamesc. Dobson,the child psychologist who
founiled Focus
on the ramily and is w'idely regardedas one of the nation's most influentia1
evangelical leaders.
ougo5eRavenel,a North carolina pediatrician who is the in-house expert on the
subiect for tttr.
oob6on'sgroup, said, "r believe the whole country would be better off if corporal
punishmentwas
allowed in schools by parents whowish it."
Dozensof lawsuits have been filed aroundthe country, including as recently as
Auqust in a case
iniolving a student and a baseball coach in cameroncounty, okla., but thus far,
courts have
tended to side with school districts in cases where a corporal pun'ishmentpolicy is
on the books,
said nadine Block, the director of the center for rffective oiscipline, a group
opposedto the
practr ce.
rn North Carolina, paddling is bannedin the largest cities, like charlotte. rt
remains1ega1in 70
percent of the state's districts, although since they tend to be small and rura1,
fewer than half of
the state's students are covered.
union county 'is one of the nation's fastest-growing, with dozensof new suburban
developments,
often populatedwith transplants from the Hortheast and elsewhere.
Ms. Dean, one of those transplants, cameacross the corporal punfshmentprovisions
while reading
through her newdistrict's school policies and, shocked,decidedto mounta campaign
to have 1t
outlawed that has madeher the bane of local offic'ials.
"They don't like outsiders coming'in and telling them how to run their schools," Ms.
oean said.
she rallied others to the cause, finally forcing a vote on the issue last year.
school board membersvoted 5 to 3 to ban the practice, but under the district's
rul es, a
supermajorityof six votes was needed,so the policy remainson the books.
felt that, if it were used correctly, as it would
"someof our school board members
be, corporal
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punishmentwould be yet another dEterrent to keep students from misbehaving," said
Luan
Ingram, the chief communications officer for the district.
still, wts. rngramsaid, "none of our 41 principals have chosento use'it, and none
of them p-lan to
use it. "
Oneof those who joined ttts. Dean's crusadewas John Erker, who retired from the ttew
vork city
police Departmentand relocated his family to North carolina.
'we thought it would be a lifestyle for the whole family downhere, a little more
laid-back, a 1itt1e
more country," Mr. erker said. "BrJtwe're in the middle of the eible eelt, and a lot
of these old-
school peop'lereally believe that this is the right thing to do with children."
rn more rural Robesoncounty, Ms. Morgansaid her son, Travis, was punishedlast
year for taking
part in a punchinggamecalled flinching. She complainedthat it was too severe, but
di stri ct
officials ruled that the paddling had been justified.
nl rahn, a spokesman for the distr-ict, said he understoodthat corporal punishment
was not
g1!I3::d_:u:gl!:rg. "I guess every part of the country has a different way of
looKrngat thrngs,
Mr. rahn said, "and downhere we're pretty unique."
Mr. Price, the middle school principal, also said corporal punishmentworked. He
arrived at the
school two years ago, hired, he said, to turn aroundan institution that was rife
with fights, students
cursing teachers and gang activity.
Not until monthsafter he arrived, Mr. price said, did a parent tell him that
corporal punishment
was used at the high school. ue got permissionto reinstate it in the middle school,
too, and began
with the 2005-6school year, during which 150 of the school's 685 students were
paddled.
The Evermandistrict is not unique in the oallas-Fort worth area in a11ow'ing
corporal punishment.
R study by The oallas tvtorningNewsin Rugustplaced it fifth amongarea d'istricts in
i nstanles' of
corporal pun'ishment,far behind schools'in erosper, north of oallas, for instance,
where nearly l-5
percent of the students were paddledin the 2005-6school year.

Fut,in two of oallas's largest suburband'istricts, Plano and Frisco, paddling was
bannedthis year,
as 'it was in wtemphis
last year.
Mr. price said he initial'ly encounteredresistance. "r was cursed out so much, r
couldn't bel i eve i t, "
he said. "And r'm talking about the parents."
But gradually, the tenor of the school turned around, he said, for the better. He
designedwhat he
cal1ed the school's "discipline 1adder," beg'inningwith a wanningfor a fi rst
offense and escalating
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through pushrups,detentionb and isolation from the other students duiing the school
day.
rinally, there is the fifth rung. At that level, in consultation with parents,
students can choose
amongcorporal punishment,hav'ingtheir parents "shadow"them through a fu11 school
dav. nront
sch6ol 5r outright suspension.rn 8 cases out of 10, Mr, price sa'id, the students
choosethe
padd'ling, although this is allowed only a few times
"rf it's not chang'ingtheir behavior, then we figure the pops aren't working and we
trv somethinq
el3e," Mr. pFice said.
Mr. price said he definite-ly believed there was a "cultural factor" behind the
persistence of
torpora'l punishmentin someparts of the country after it has d'isappearedelsewhere.
"yol hear-peoplesay, well, you know,'it's in the eible, don't spare the rod and
spoiI the chi 1d, " he
sai d.
He uses it, he said, becausehe believes jt works.
"The rule is, never hit in anger," Mr. Price said. "we alwaystalk to the child
before the
punishment,makesure they understandwhy it's happening,and then talk to them
aqain afterward.
n5ne of it is cold or harsh. we try to treat the kids fike they're our own."

BostonGlobe
GLOBEEDITORIAL
oick and :ane go bad
september30, 2006
READTNG FrRSTwas supposedto be a fairy tale of a us Departmentof fducation
programthat
irsheredchildren into the wonderfulworld of reading. rnstead, it becomea dark
fable about
corrupt governmentofficials and conflicts of interest.
once upon a time in 2001, congressmadea 1ega1wish that no child be left behind.
Si nce then,
Congresshas given nearly $5 billion to states to help ch'ildren, from kindergarten
to third qrade.
improvetheir ieading.
states submitted applications and 16 panels of experts decidedwhich ones to fund.
unfortunately, the programwas run by a dark wizard, grimly knownas the
' 'di rector. "

fhe director skirted federal rules. He expectedstates to meet standardsthat

weren't required by
law. He hid useful-'information. whenstates applied for moneyand didn't get it, the
di rector often
did not te'll themwhy, even though the expert panels had often madesuggestionsthat
could have
he'lped states with f uture appli cati ons.
Sad1y, the panels of experts were tainted, staffed in part by obsequiouswinged
Page9
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2006.09.30.spe'l1ings.
monkeys.Sone
were chosenby the director becausethey supporteda part'icular commercialreading
product that
pronotes oirect Instruction. states were pressedto use this product.
Whencomplaintswere madethat the panels were unfairly stacked, the director said
that he was
"shocked" in the smirking claude-Rains-in-casablancasenseof the word, to find
gambling-- or
in this case pofitfca'lly stacked panels -- in this establishment.rndeed, the
di rector hi mself had 'in
the past promotedthe Direct rnstruction product.
ro discouragestates that wantedto use different products, the director e-mai'leda
oepartment6f
educationstaff member asking for nasty reviews of these products. rhe e-mail said:
"rhey are trying to crash our party and we needto beat the
lexpletive] out of them
in front of all
the other would-be party crashers who are standing on the front lawn waiting to see
how we
we'lcomethese di rtbags. "
So muchfor civil speechand free markets.
Fortunately, people comp'lained.rhe educationdepartment'sinspector general
investiqated and
exposed-thetruth. other investigations are underway.and a metaphoricalhousehas
fal I en on the
director, christopher ooherty. His educationdepartmentcareer is over.
The messpredates us Educationsecretary Margaretspellings, who says she's going to
cl ean
house. But the story won't end until it is clear that the EducationDepartmentcan
weedout
warpedbureaucratsin the future and ensure that federal dollars are properly spent
on the literacy
needsof children.
0 copyright 2006 Globe Newspapercompany.

l,tsupl ans for more d'iscl osure to publi c

univers'ity is gathering information for scorecardto be released each year.
By steve roehler
News-Leader
Missouri state university eresident tvtikettietzel continues to raise the curtain on
campus
operations with two new p'lans aimedat disclos'ing its job performanceto the public.
part one of the plan is the establishmentof a public scorecardthrough which the
universitv will set
goals and-then report each year how it's doing reachingthose goa1s.
Part two is Nsu comparing'itself with a selected group of similar-sized universities
-- knownas
benchmark institutions -- in a variety of categories.
The reports would be available online for public scrutiny.
eage 10
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"rt's another step toward transpa-encyand accountability,:' Nietzel said. "we're
sayinq, 'Here are
oui (6oals).' tf we achieve them, we will be a better institution."
t'tietzel's p'lan comeson the heels of u.s. EducationSecretary Margaretspellings
announcingthat
she wants to gather student data from colleges and universities to track their
progress.
rt would be sirnilar to what's already being done in grades kindergarten through L2.
spellings told the Chronicle of nigher educationthis weekshe would seek federal
funds to test a
prototype databasealready being developedby the rducation oepartment-
often referred to as a "unit record" system, it would track the progress of
individual - but
unidentified - students as a way to measurelearning outcomesand ho'ld colleges and
uni versi ti es
more accountable.
To protect student privacy, the databasewould use anonymous identification numbers.
MSUprovost gelinda t',tccarthy
said the wtsupian is in line with spellings' desire for
more public
accountabi'l
i ty.
"rt'i an honest selection of measuresthat will be of interest to taxpayers,
parents, students, people
who like the university and peoplewho don't," Mccarthysa'id, adding that the data
won't be
manipulatedto makethe university iook good.
"There's no (public relations) effort here. rt's up to the reader to interpret the
data, "
The scorecardwill be detailed and extensive, Nietze'l said, covering 25 different
areas, from
student achievementto researchactivity to accessand diversity efforts.
this year, the university will gather information to establish the baseline for each
measure .
nbout a third of the work for establishing the baseline has beendone, Nietzel said,
with either the
information gathered or having someone 'in place to gather it.

tt'ietzel said someof the information will take monthsto gather.

"people knowthis scorecardto be important, and makingit puiblic will signal its
" he
i mportance,
sai d.
Retention of students is one top'ic in the scorecandand a cri'tical issue nationally
and at ptsu.
In 2005, MSU'sretention rate of first-time freshmenwas 73.5 percent, but t,tietzel
said he would
like to see it at 80 percent.
"The goal of most students is to get a degree. we ought to be able to serve that
need. what's key is
that enrollment is going to stabilize in about two years and we're either going to
have to recruit
more out of state or keep morekids ... Retention is an enrollment management tool, "
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2006.09.30.spe'l'lings.Personal
he said.
other measuresdeal with faculty performanceincluding howmanynational awards
facul ty w'in
and papers they've had published.
tqark Richter, chair of the raculty senate, said he hasn't heard a lot of talk among
faculty about
the scorecardbut the group isn't surprised by Nietzel's p1an.
"He wants to rampup researchand the faculty is on board with that," he said.
He said academicdepartmentsalready keep scorecardsthat are more extensive than
what the
overall scorecardwill track.
"There's more detail of what we need to do to get where we want to go. rt's about
productivi ty,
teaching and research. we've alwaysdonethat. (Nietzel's plan) is makingthe
untverslty more
accountable," Richter said.
institutions will be used to:
the benchmark
- Provide benchmarks for comparingpubfic performancemeasures.
- rdentify and analyze "best practices" that would makeusu more effective and
effi ci ent.
- nnalyze salary levels as one component toward identifying salary goals for
lvtissouri State
university.
Hietzel said the university administrators "still have to have someconversations
about the p1an"
but the 11 benchmark universities inc'luderllinois state, Northern rowa and wichita
State from
the Missouri va11eyconferencethat MSUbelongsto for athletics along with
Louisiana Tech and.rexas-Arlington.
the university of
the benchmark institutions will be reviewedevery five years in conjunction with the
universi ty's
strategic plan development.
"t,'lecan look at things like how rap'idly the institutions makeprogress toward their
qoals, how
long does it take them and what have they achievedaccording to their resources,"
tti etzel sai d.
Mccarthysaid ttietzel's approachto pub'lic disclosure is impressive,
"we',re taking the pos'ition to makepublic things that had beelnused internally," she
sa] d.
"rt wi'l'l showthat we are very focused in our use of resources but people may not
knowthat. "

The Washi
nqton Post
A TEXIbOOK-CASC:THE EDUCATIONISSUE

october 1-, 2006; B01_

By Michael crunwald?Sunday,
president eush's No child t-eft eehindAct was premisedon three revolutionary goa1s.
rhe fi rst
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2006.09.30.Spellinqs.Personal
was to focus on low-performing schools and students; hence, No chi ld t-eft aehind.
the second
was to beef up the federal role in education, enforcing national standards through
testi ng. The
third was to bring facts and evidenceto the notoriously squishy wor'ld of education
po'li cy ,,. ..
bromoting teaching methodsbackedby "scientifically based research" instead of
i nsti nct and fad,
-rhis was the least-pub]icized goa1, but arguably the most vital; the phrase
"scientifically based
research" appelred more than l-00 times'in the landmark2001 law.
The centerpiece of the new research-based approachwas ReadingFirst, a $1
billion-a-year effort to
help low-incomeschools adopt strategies "that have been proven to prevent or
remediate reading
fai"lure" through-rigorous peer-reviewedstudies. "qu'ite simp1y, neading First
focuses on what
works, and wiII support provenmethodsof early reading'instruction," the education
Department
promised.
Five years later, an accumulatingmoundof evidence from reports, interviews and
program
documentssuggeststhat neadingFirst has had little to do with science or rigor.
rnstead, the
billions have gone to what is effectively a pilot project for untested programswith
friends in high
pl aces.
Departmentofficials and a small group of influential contractors have strong-armed
states and
local districts into adopting a sma11group of unprovedtextbooks and reading
proqramswith almost
ho fieer-reviewedresearch behind them- The commercialinterests behind those
textbooks and
programshave paid roya'lties and consulting fees to the key Read'ingrirst
contractors, who also
served as consultants for states seekinggrants and chaired the panels approving the
grants. Both
the architect of neading First and former education secretary noderick R. Raige have
qone to work
for the ownerof one of those programs,who'is also a top eush fundraiser-
on Sept. 22, the department'sinspector general released a report exposing someof
ReadinqFirst's
favoritism and mismanagement. The highlights were internal €-rmailsfrom then-progrant
di rector
chris ooherty, vowing to deny funding to programsthat weren',tpart of the
department's i n-crowd:
"They are trying to crash our party and we need to beat the fiexpletive] out of them
in front of all
the other would-beparty crasherswho are standing on the front lawn wa.iting to see
how we
welcomethese di rtbags. "
ooherty has since resigned, and educationsecretary Margaretspellings has pledged
to revl ew
nead'ingFirst, emphasiz'ingthat the "indiv'idual mistakes" detailed in the report
occurr6d befoie
she becarnesecretary. Sti11, spellings expressedfu11 confidencein the overall
program: "Thanksto
neading First, struggling students are far more likely to get the help they need
eage 13
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2006.09.30.spe1'lings.
from teachers usinq
scientifically bas6dclassroomread.inginstruction."
But the report barely scratchedthe surface of the incestuous process that donrinated
the formation
of ReadingFirst. The initiative didn't promotescientifical"ly based reading
i nstructi on, the thi rd
goal of No child t-eft eehind. And it's providing ammunitionto critics of the second
goal, strong
nationa'l standards. rhe billion-dol1ar question is whether it mayimperil the first
qoal: will some
Ehildren qet left behind?
eush administration officials frequently say that ReadingFirst does not play
favorites or intrude on
loca'l control, that states and districts are free to choosetheir own textbooks and
programs-- as
long as they're backedby soundscience. But aggressivemuckrakingby the newsletter
ritle 1
Monitor and reading advocatesat the successfor all roundation have eviscerated
those claims,
and the inspector general's report official'ly contradicted tlirem,accusingthe
departmentof breaking
thb law by promotingits pet programsand squelchingothers. rn his internal
e-mails, boherty
frequently admitted using "extralegal" tactics to force states and local districts
to do the
department'sb"idding.A report by Successfor nll documented how state appiications
for Reading
pirst grants that promotedthe preferred programswere the only ones approved.
rn fact, the vast majority of the 4,800 neading rirst schools have now adoptedone
of the five or
six top-selfing cornmercialtextbooks, even though none of them has been evaluated in
a peer-
reviewedstudy against a control group. Most of the schools also use the same
assessmentprogram,
the sameinstruct'ional mode1,and one of three training programsdevelopedby
neading ri rst
insideis -- with little researchbacking.
"They kept denying it, but everybodyknewthe departmenthad a list," said:ady
Johnson,di rector
of the ReadingRecoverycouncil of ruorthAmerica. "They're forcing schools to spend
rnillions on
i neffective programs."
To someextent, the controversy over ReadingFirst reflects an older controversy
over reading,
pitting "phonics" advocatessuch as ooherty against "whole language"practitioners
such as
:ohnson.
rhe administration believes'in phonics, which emphas'izes
repetitive drills that
teach children to
soundout words. Johnsonand other phonics skeptics try to teach the meaningand
context of
words as well. neading First moneyhas been steered toward states and local
districts that qo the
phonics route, largely becausethe ReadingFirst panels that oversawstate
appli cations were
stacked with departmentofficials and other phonics fans. "stack the panel?" Doherty
joked in one
e-mail. "r have never *heard* of such a thing <harrumph,harrumph>."whenReid
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Lyon, who
dbsignedneadingFirst, complainedthat a whole-language proponenthad received an
i nvi tati on to
participate on an evaluation pane1,a top departmentofficial replied: "llt,e cantt
un-invite her. Just
makesure she is on a panel with one of our barracudatypes."
Doherty braggedto Lyon about pressuring uaine, Mississippi and Newlersey to
reverse oecls'lons
to allow whole-language programsin their schools: "This is for your Fyr, as r think
this program-
bashing is best done off or under the major radar screens." Massachusettsand Horth
Dakota were
also told to drop whole-languageprogramssuch as Rigby Literacy, and districts that
didn't do so
lost funding. "Ha, ha--nigby as a CORE program?"ooherty wrote in one internal
e-maiI . "wh6n
pigs f1y! "
said gruce Hunter, a lobbyist for the RmericanAssociation of school ndministrators:
"rtts been
obvious all along that the administration knewexactiy what it wanted."
But it wasn't just about phon"ics.
successfor all is the phonics programwith the strongest record of scientifica'l1y
proved results,
backedby 31-studies rated "conclusive" by the americanrnstitutes for Research.nnd
it has been
shut out of neading First. The nonprofit successfor Rll roundationhas shed 60
percent of its
staff since Readingr'irst began; the programhad been growing rapidly, but now 300
schools have
droppedit. netsy Ammons, a principa'l in North carolina, watchedsuccessfor nll
improve reading
scores at her school, but state officials madeher switch to traditional textbooks
to qualify for the
new qrants.
"You-can't afford to turn downthe federal money,"Ammons said. "But why should we
have to
give up on someth'ingthat works?"
The answerlies in the ReadingFirst grant process, which was almost comically
skewed.tqichi qan
was the first-state approved,after it simp'ly proposedto adopt the five
best-sellinq textbooks. But
whenRhodeisland officials proposedto require "high-quality reading programsthat
meet the test
of having a scientific researchbase," they were rejected. ooherty told them to
check out
uichigan's list, so they cut and pasted it into their appi'ication, while suggesting
that di stri cts could
still adopt other programsjustified by research. They were rejected again. So they
limited thei r
programto the textbooks. only then were they approved.Similarly, oklahoma
irnsiccessfull y
proposedto require reading programsbackedby three years of longitudinal data
before it qot the
hint and pFoposed the Michiganlist,
so instead of advocatingscientifically based read'ingprograms,ReadingFirst has
promoted
programswith "key elements"endorsedby a national reading pane1,which could
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2006.09.30.spelI i ngs. Personal.09.30.06 rn the News.

txt
describe almost
any program.rt maynot be a coincidencethat the initiative was essential'ly
outsourced to a few
experts with a dizzying array of apparentconflicts of interest.
For example,whenthe departmentneededreviewers to evaluate reading assessment
programs,it
tontracted with a univers'ity of oregon teamled by rdward Kame'enui,RolandGoodand
oeborahSimmons. cood had developedan assessment called oynamicrndicators of gasic
Earlv
liteiacy skills (oreels), and Kame'enu'i,
cood and simmonshad all served on the
design team
for Voyagerpassport, a remed'ia1programbuilt aroundDTBELS. u'ltimately, oterLs was
the on ly
assessmentused in neadingFirst, and voyagerwas the most popu-larsupplemental
program.
similarly, the departmentsteered states to just three providers of professional
development
servic6s: Kame'enuiand Simmons at Oregon,Louisa C. Moatsat the for-profit Sopris
west, and
Sharonvaughnat the University of Texas at Austin. vaughnwas the other memberof
the voyager
passport design team, and one of the four chairmenof the secretary's Reading
teadership
Rcademy,which exerted enormousinfluence over neading First; the others were Moats,
Kame'enuiand his oregoncolleague ooug"lascarnine. States surchas Alabama,North
Caroli na
and.washington-specified in their ReadingFirst grants that every one of their
reviewers for local
proposa'lswould have to be approvedby one of those chairmen.
Kame'enuiand Simmons also wrote the "consumer'sGuide" that most states agreed to
use to
evaluate neadingF'irst programs,and ran one of ReadingFirst's three "technical
assrstance
centers" at oregon. They co-wrote one neading First textbook, and Kame'enuiearned
more than
$100,000last year from royalties on another, according to his financial disclosure
when he moved
to an EducationDepartmentjob. ln her 2004book "rn Defenseof our children: when
pol'iti cs,
erofit, and educationcollide," rlaine Garanrecalled color-coding the various
fi nancial
connectionsrunning through neadingFirst; whenit cameto Kame'enui,she wrote, "I
ran out of
col ors . "
the departmentdeclined a request to interview Kame'enui,but undersecretaryHenry
lohnson
said the departmenttakes conflicts of interest seriously, and will adopt all the
i nsoector qeneral's
recbmmendaiions. "lve're go'ingto dig into this," he said.
gut lohnson said states are ultimately respons'iblefor makingsure their programs
are scientificallv
based, which is small comfort for appiicants pressuredinto adopting programsthey
di dn't want.
"rt's been very frustrating for those of us who really believe"in evidence-based
programs, " said
R'ichardLong, a'lobbyist for the tnternational ReadingAssociation, which represents
Rage16
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2006.09.30.Spellings,Personal.09,30.06 rn the News.txt

90,000
reading teachers and specialists nationwide.
Then again, Longthinks spending$1-billion a year on reading is a great idea. Rnd
he thi nks i t's
helpjng kids to read: "Havethere beenmistakesin'implementation?oh yeah. But
teacners I n
ReadingFirst schools believe progress is being made."
lhe bottom line, Johnsonsaid, is that ReadingFirst works. n departmentreport
found that
teachers in ReadingFirst schools spent 1-9minutes more per day on reading than
teachers in other
schools, and were more likely to piace struggling students in reading'intervention
programs.A new
report by the nonpartisan center on EducationPolicy suggestedthat neading First is
havinq a
pos'itive effect on state reading scores, although lohnsonsaid muchmore needsto be
done.
"Despite a'll the problemswith neadingFirst, there's evidencethat it's helping
states," s4id :ack
Jennings, the center's president.
of course, $5 b'illion over five years ought to help states; the question is whether
it's heloi nq as
muchas it 6hould. without the kind of rigorous studies the 1aw promisedbut the
i mp1ementers
failed to del'iver, it's not clear.
aut it is c'lear that neadinq First has been a terrific boonfor the textbook
publishing industry, and
for the department's favored programs.For example,the companythat deve'loped
voyager
Passportwas valued at about $5 million in a newspaper article before Readingrirst;
founder
RandyBest, whosenepublicanfundraising madehim a BushPioneer, eventually so'ld it
for $380
m"illion. He then put Lyon and ea'igeon his payroll .
Local dominationof education is an Americantradition, and eush took up a storied
cause in
challenging it; reformers since HoraceMannhave promotednational education policy
as a way to
encouragecommon culture and equal opportunity, But local-control advocateshave
always -
warnedthat empowering heavy*handed federal bureaucratswould breed self-serving,
one-size-fi ts-
all solutions. Now, neading First is makingthem look like prophets.
q runwaldmr@washpost
. com
Michael Grunwalilis a washingtonpost staff writer

rhe washingtonPost
THE EDUCATIONISSUE

ey Raul n. uanle
Sunday,October J-, 2006; Page804
I recently addresseda group of french engineeringgraduatestudents who were
vi si ti ng
washingtonfrom the prestigious Schoolof vtines in paris. Rfter encouragingthem to
eage 17
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2006.09.30.SpelI i ngs. Personal.09. 30.06 rn the News

. txt
teach
biotechnologyin French high schools, r expectedthe standardqueries on teaching
methodsor
training. rnstead, a bright young student askedbluntly: "Howcan you teach
biotechnoloqyin this
country whei-youdon't even accept evolution?"
r wantedto disagree, but the kid had a point. Proponentsof "intelfigent design" in
the united
States are waging a war against teaching science as scientists understandit. over
the past year
alone, efforts to incorporate creationist languageor undermiine evolution in science
classroomsat
public schools have emergedin at least l-5 states, accordingto the National center
for Science
education. And an -independent educationfoundation has concludedthat
sci ence-teaching
standardsin 10 states fail to addressevolution in a scientifically soundway.
Throughchangesin
standardsand curriculum, these efforts urge students to doubt evolution -- the
cornerstone
princip'le of biology, one on which there is no serious scientific debate.
this war could decimatethe development of u.s. sc"ientific talent and erode whatever
competiti ve
advantagethe united states enjoys in the technology-based 91oba1economy.Already,
u.s. hiqh
school itudents 1ag near the bottom in math skills compared with students in other
developed
nations, and high school seniors are performingworse in science than they were 10
years ago.
Thesetrends can only worsenif students cometo regard evolution as questionableor
controversial. rhirty-seven percent of the high school Rdvanced Placementbiology
examinati on
tests knowledgeof evolut'ion, evolutionary biology and heredity, accordingto the
college soard.
Studentswho do not thoroughly understandevolution cannot hopeto succeedon this
exam;they
wl1l be handicappedin compet-itivescience coursesin college and the careers that
mayfollow.
ey teaching inteliigent design or other variants of creationism in science classes
at public schools --
or by undercutting the credibifity of evolution -- we are greatly d'iminishingour
chancesfor future
scientific breakthroughsand technolog'icalinnovat'ions,and are endangeringour
health, safety and
economicwell-be'ing as individuals and as a nation.
rhis is not a war of religion against science. rhe two have thrived together for
centuries. Nor is it
a struggle of believers against god'lessmaterialists; manybelievers practice
science and find
inspiration folit from their faith, rt is a battle betweenre'lig'iousdogmacloaked
as science and
open inquiry that leads to new knowledgeand understand'ing of the natural world.
rhe notion of intelligent design is clever; it has a certain philosophica'lappea'I.
the evolution of a
humaneye from a series of randommutations, for example,is jndeed difficult to
understand;the
notion of an intelligent creator solves such problems,and feeds our spiritual
Page18
 Page43 of 88

2005.09.30.spellings.Personal.09.30.06 rn the News.txt

needs. But it distracts
us from learning what is scientifically testable and reducesstudents' will to probe
the natural
worl d .
rhe opposition to evolution discouragesthe deve'lopment of entire high-school
classes of future
scientific talent. "rt seemslike a raw deal for the l4-year-o'ld girl in ropeka who
might have gone
on to find a cure for resistant infections if only she had been taught evolution in-
high school," H.
HoldenThorp, chairmanof the chemistry departmentat the un'iversity of ttorth
caro'li na at
chape'lHill, wrote in the ttewyork Timeslast spring.
wtultip'lythat girl's plight thousandsof times -- in school districts in Georgia,
Kansas.ohio and
other itates that are discouragingthe teaching of evolution.
Last year, a report from the National ncademies'committee on erosperingin the
Global Economy
of the 21st c-enturyshowedus a glimpse of the future. of all the patent
applications reachinq the
u'.b. patent office, the report noted, the most by far still comefrom the united
states. However,
from l-989to 2001, the rate of increase of patent applicatiornsfrom the world's
fastest-q rowinq
econom'ie5, such as china and rndia, was nearly three times that of the united
states. By that
measure,innovation in those economies will blow past ours in little more than a
decade-- just
about the time the current classes of high school biology students will be starting
thei r research
careers.
Non-scientific viewpoints deserve respect. But to combatthe spread of utv/atos,
bi o-warfare
and pandemicdiseases, to discover lifesaving cures and l'ife-improving
breakthrouqhs,tomorrow's
with scientifically basedknowledgetoday.
biolog'ists-muit be equ'ipped
ttations that value open inquiry and use scientific criteria in educat'ion,research
and i ndustry wi I -.
outperformthose that do not. tf we are to continue to be leaders in the g1oba1
economy,we must
teach science, not religion, in the science classroom.
oahanleGbiotechinsti tute . o rcr
i'aul n. Hanle is pres-ident6f the eiotechnologyrnstitute.

eage 19
 Page44 of 88

Readi!g First succeedsin teaching kjds to read (city Journa'l - r.ry)

.02.05.Spe11ings.Personal.Re
From: Kress, B. AlexanderIskress@nkinCump.com]
Sent: February05, 2007 10:20 nl,t
To: Private - Spellinqs. Marqaret
subject: Re:'Read'ifrg'rirsfsucceedsin teaching kids to read (city Journal
NY)
Sol has been a strong rf advocate for some time.
SK
-----orioi nal Messaoe-----
From: private - speTlings, Margaret
To: Kress, B. Alexander
Sent: Monreb 05 08=3L:LZ2007
subject: Fw: Readingrirst succeedsin teaching kids to read (city :ourna'l - Ny)

sent from my Blackserry wireless uandheld

-----ori gi na-l ruessage-----

From: Ditto, Trey
To: McLane,Katherine; Private - Spe]1ings,Margaret; Beaton,Meredith; eriggs,
tcer ri ; Dunn,
oavid; rlowers, sarah; Ha"laska,Terrell; lohnson, Henry; Kuzmich,Holly; Landers,
angela;
rqaddox,Lauren; 'Mark'; Mcn'itt, Townsend t-.; Pitts, E1izabeth; tucker, sara
Martinez; Simon,
Ray; tada, wendy;Talbert, Kent; Toomey,t-iam; williams, cynth'ia; Young,Tracy
cc: colby, Chad;Nea1e,Rebecca;Reich, Heidi; Ruberg,Casey;Terre11,:ulie; Yudof,
Samara
sent: MonFeb 05 09:06:38 2007
subject: ReadingFirst succeedsin teaching kids to read (city Journal - Ny)
his eush EducationReformReally works neadingFirst, thoughmuchmaligned, succeeds
in
teachinq kids to read. sol stern winter 2007
oeep in*the winter of the eush white House'sdiscontent, the educationdepartment's
i nspector
general madethings worse by issuing a series of reports that slammed the
adm'ini stration's prized
neading First program.The tc chargedthat neadingF'irst exegutivedirector chris
ooherty
exhibited a "lack of integrity and ethical values" by trying to strong-armeducation
officials in some
states to adopt a phonics-basedreading programcalled Direct rnstruction, whjle
blocking a non-
phonics program,Read'ingRecovery.The report a'lso quoted private e-mails in which
oohertv
defendi:dhis preferred early-childhood reading programsagainst their progress'ive
critics in
languageunsuitable for kids. nn embarrassed administration forced ooherty to
reslgn.
rhe inspector general's revelations brought intense mediacoverageand outraged
edi tori al s-
having moreto do with the domesticpolit'ical war against president Bushthan w.ith
the "reading
wars" over classroompedagogythat have raged within Americaneducationfor decades.
Most
newsaccountsd-idn't even bother to reoort that a 2005nmericanrnstitute for
Researchstudv
concludedthat pirect rnstruction and a similar program,successfor Rll, were the
eage 1-
 Page45 of 88

tA.trtd;rt"tJt;.it;Jr u's' plan for Read'ine'txt

Fro1r0.:6
sent: November 15, 2006 5:23 nrq
To: private - spel'l'ings,Margaret; Dunn,David; laaddox,l-auren; young, Tracy;
conaty,:oseph; talbert, Kent;:ohnson, Henry; simon, Rily; Kuzmich,uo11y;
tvtcni
tt, Townsend t-. ; eri ggs, t<erri; col by, chad
Subject: ttw: she poundAbusesin u.s. plan for neading
NovemberL5, 2006
on education
she round Abusesin u.S. plan for neading
BY JOSEPHBERGER
SAVANNAH,Ga.

Don't be overly disarmedby Cindy Cupp'sSouthernmolasses.

"I'm just a little old peon downhere in Savannah"is the way she describes herself
and her
company,which publishes reading kits for kindergartenersand first graders.
Yes, hgr businessis small. or. Cupp, 57, and Ginger Douglass,her older sister, are
the only
emp'loyees,working out of a small warehouseon this city's orrrtsk'irts.Their profits
nave never
topped $200,000.
But Dr. cupp has proved to be a canny businesswoman;she sells her reading kits to
80 of
Georgia's 1, 267 elementary schools. She has also emergedas something of a
giant-killer. with
rel entl ess sl euth'i ng, she has becomeone of several whistle-blowers who uncovered
evidence of
conflicts of interest and favoritism in the eush administration's $6 billion neading
Fi rst program.
The program,which was intended to ensure that a'll lower-incomechildren learned to
read,
awardedgrants to states to buy reading textbooks and tests. rt turned out to be a
bonanzafor
certain textbook publishers and authors. R half-dozen experts setting guidelines for
which reading
textbooks and tests could be purchasedby schools were also the authors of textbooks
and tests
that endedup being used.
DR. CUPP'scomplaints about the programhelped propel an'investigat'ion by the
rnspector general
for the united states Departmentof educationthat has resulted in three reports
condemnino "a
lack of iitegrity
- and ethical values" in neading First. The program'sdirector
resiqned 'in
sept6mber.More reports are anticipated, and RepresentativeGeorgeMiller, the
ranking Democrat
on the Houseeducation and the WorkforceCommittee,likely to becomeits new
chai rman, has
cal'led for a criminal investigation.
Dr. cupp is a self-described speedboatwho spent 19 years teach'ingchildren and
adults to read. nt
her compaly,cupp publishers, she visits ceorg'ia schools demonstratingher reading
kits, while her
s'ist6r, a retired guidancecounselor, packs them for shipping and handles the
bookkeePing'
Page1
 Page46 of 88

She roundAbusesin u.s. plan for Reading.txt

2006.1-1.L5.Spe11ings.personal.NYT
whenthe federal governmentenacted ReadingFirst in 2002, Dr. cupp thought her
company
would iurely get a s'lice of the pie. After all, 90 percent of students in the
schools that use her kits
had learned to read by the end of first grade.
the federai programemphasizedphonics - mastering the soundsof letters and letter
bl ends - as
opposedto what officials consideredthe mushinessof who'le-language teaching, which
emphas'izes
graspifg meaningthrough good children's literature. Dr. cupp's materials also
emonaslzed nnonlcs
- in 60 sto'ries centered on two capedturtles namedlack and l'i11y.
that emphasiswas on display one day recently"in tttarieDurrence'skindergarten at
the East eroad
Street ElementarySchool here.
"Jack can see the manplay," Terrica williams read, pride glinting through her
bashful smile
"Jack can see the mango, go, go," K'iara Plummer
chimedin.
Still, schools that used her materials found themselvesfrozen out of federal money.
Dr. Cupp
sought'in explanation from a friend at the ceorgia Departmentof Education,where
Dr. Cuppwas
djrectbi"of reading from 1996 to 1999, and was to'ld, she said, that any school
I i sti no her read'inq
prografr"would not be funded."
after the federal departmentrepeatedly rejected their grant applications, Georgia
offi ci al s
conc'ludedthat "this moneyis available if you follow the rulebook,"
said oana rofig, communichtions director for the Ceorgia EducationDepartment.Dr.
Cupp's
reailinq Droqram"did not meet the benchmarks it had to meet,"
he saiii,'adiling that the officials who cou'ldexplain why no longer workedin the
depantment.
Dr. Cupppoints out that Georgiachosebig textbook publishers, like Scott Foresman
and
Macmillan/wlcCraw-Hill,spurning what she called home-cookedturkey dinners like her
reading
oroqram.
bhe"endedup losing contracts at about a half-dozen schools. Then, she sa'id, by
demandinqfiles
under Ge5rg'ia'sopen records 1aw, she discoveredthat a national evaluator had never
even looked
at her program.
Dr. cupp's dealings with the Georgia educationDepartmentare being examinedby the
federal
inspector general. Mary tqitchelson, counsel for that office, said, "we don't talk
about our pending
work." Bt.ttDr.
cupp is hop'ingto get someanswers.
Others might have given up whenthey lost their contract, but Dr. Cuppsaid she has
a strong
inclination to resist injustice, rooted in a childhood shadowedby an alcoholic
mother. She did not
eage 2
 Fage 47 of 88

2006.1L.15.Spe'llings.personal.Nwshe FoundAbusesin u.s. Plan for Reading.txt

sheepishly accept hef fate becauseshe thought she deserveda p1ace.
"we're not al1 going to be wal-Marts and rc-ruarts,"she said. "r go to the hardware
store downthe
street becauser can walk in and say, 'Help mewith th'is,'
becauser knowthe guy." so she filed a complaint.
lccording to Robert E. slavin, chairmanof Successfor Rl'|, a nonprofit publisher
whoseph6nics-
based ilrogramis used'in 1,200 americanschools and who also complainedwhen200
schools
.dropped
his programin order to get federal money,Dr. cupp got the ball rolfing
against Read'ing
and gave us somecourage," Mr. Slavin said.
rirst. She "gave us an examp-le
Last December,federa-l inspectors cameto savannah,a city gnacedby sleepy squares
and shaded
by oak trees dripping with Spanishmoss.
Dr. cupp showedthe investigators hundredsof documentsshe collected over three
years that
showedlinks betweencontractors hired by the federal governmentto evaluate school
readinq
prografrs,and the writers of those programs.She also diagrammed these links. Her
findinos and
those 6f others, inc'luding reporters for educationweek, found that consultants
hired to help
school districts apply for and run ReadingFirst grants sometimesreceived hefty
royalties from the
very materials that schools were encouraged to buy.
For example,Dr. cupp learned that a writer of a scott Foresmanreading textbook
sel ected bv
schools in'ceorgia and other states was EdwardKame'enui,a professor on leave from
the
university of oregon. Dr.
Kame'enui headed a Reading First technical center in oregon, one of three under
contract that
help state officials run Reading F'irst programs. Dr. Sl avi n unearthedfi nanc'ial
disclosure forms Dr.
Kame'enui filed for 2005 and 2006 showing that he earnedbetween$100,000and
$250,000 a year
from Scott Foresman'sparent company,Pearson.
Dr. Kame'enuiis now commissioner of the National center for spec'ia1Educat'ion
Research,an
arm of the federal rducation Department.
CHADcoLBY,a spokesman at the department,said or.
Kame'enui's"ro'le at the departmenthas nothing to do with neadingFirst anymore,so
he's not
gi vi ng i ntervi ews. "
Dr. Henry L. lohnson, assistant secretary for e'lementaryand secondaryeducat'ion,
contendsthat
the universe of science-basedreading researchis small and would include some
textbook writers,
but or.cupp argues that it is not so small that blatant conflicts were inevitable.
"rt's fike say'ingthere are only six heart surgeonsin the united states," she said.
watchdoosl'ik6
the cen[er for rducation policy think ReadingFirst moneyhas general'ly'improved
reading. Yet
eage 3
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She Found Abuses in u.s. plan for neading.txt

. 2006.L1-.1-5.spe_11ings.P_ersonal.N.YT
the center has also has found ethical problems with the way the program was run.
Dr. cupp, a Repubfican by habit, sees an irony in the fact that an administration
supposeory
skbftical-of washington bureaucracies that dictate to local governments ended up
creatinq one
that did precisely that. she thinks the Reading First scandal "wi'11 go down as the
greatest tlrmflam
in the history of education." gut she said what drove her was the sheer injustice of
eval uators
reject'i.ng reading k'its that she knew succeeded. Her life has been teaching children
to read, and
"they were attacking my 1ife."

"The issue is not what reading programis good or bad but thiat the playing field -
wasn't level, and
schools lost their right of choice," she said.

r-mai1: joeberg@nytimes.
com

Sponsoredtink
$200,000mortgagefor $660/ mo -
3O/L5yr fixed, reducedebt -
http: / /yahoo.ratemarketp'l
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eage 4
 Page49 of 88

9.26.06

ReadingFirst coverage

Bloomberg:Lawmaker Asks Criminal Probeof U.S.ReadingPnogram"Michael

Petrilli, who helpedthe administrationimplementthe No Child Left Behind law andnow
servesas vice presidentat the ThomasFordhamFoundation,a Washington-based
researchBroup,saidhe believesEducationSecretaryMargaretSpellings"is hanging
Chris Doherty out to dry."

Baltimore Sun: Favoritism guided funds for reading, report saysoolnan interview,
Slavin saidhe haslong suspectedthat federalReadingFirst money was being directedto
favoredprograms- andthat his Successfor All wasnot on the list despitegood reviews
andresearchshowingits effectiveness."

Rocky Mountain News:ReadingFirstfs scandalousunderbelly: '6TheReadingFirst

programhasbeengenerallywell-receivedandfoundto be effective,but this kind of
political meddlingcould quickly turn it toxic with the statesand Congress.It speakswell
that the department'sown inspectorgeneralwas the first to blow the whistle.Thegrossest
abusestook placebeforethe currentsecretary,MargaretSpellings,took over, and she
quickly promisedto adoptall the recommendations. That'sfine, but the scandaloverall is
extremelydisturbinggiven the still expandingfederalrole in education."

Detroit Free Press:Open All the Books On ReadingFunds "By pledgingto be

forthcomingaboutany wrongdoing,Spellingshastakena critical steptoward repairing
the public'strust andthe credibility on one of the most importantaspectsof the No Child
Left Behindlaw."

LawmakerAsksCriminalProbeof U.S.ReadingProgram
By PaulBasken
Sept.25 (Bloornberg)
- A Democratic calledfor a criminalinvestigation
congressman
 Paqe 50 of 88

after an audit found that a $l billion federalprogram to improve reading among grade-
school children was run by staff who steeredconhactsto favoredpublishers.

The EducationDepartment'sinspector-general last week recommendedan overhaulof

the "Reading First" program,part of the "No Child Left Behind" law, including
removingdirectors and reviewing the propriety of their contractawards.
"The inspector-general's reportraisesseriousquestionsaboutwhetherEducation
Departmentofficials violated criminal law, andthosequestionsmustbe pursuedby the
JusticeDepartment," saidRepresentative GeorgeMiller of California,the top-ranking
Democraton the HouseEducationCommittee.

Miller, in his statement,calledthe auditpart of patternin which the Education

DepartmentunderPresidentGeorgeW. Bush "has repeatedlyrun afoul of ethical
standatds."

Miller's offrce also cited an independentanalysispublishedlast yeanby the Washington-

basedAmerican Institutes for Researchthat found the program favored by ReadingFirst
directors,a productof the McGraw-Hill CompaniesInc., was one of only two programs
to receiveAIR's highestrating.

Billion-DollarProgram

ReadingFirst distributesabout$1 billion ayearto statesto spendon readingprograms

that the govemmentagreeshave scientificallyproveneffectiveness.

The headof the program,Chris Doherty,resignedin advanceof the releaseof the audit,
and othersinvolved alsohave left, EducationDepartmentspokeswoman Katherine
Mclane said.

The audit describesDoherty as a former executivedirectorof the BaltimoreCurriculum

Project,which has implementedthe McGraw-Hill product,known as "Direct
Instruction," or DI, in the Baltimoreschoolssystemsince 1996.

Auditors saidthey reviewedthe resumesof 25 peoplewho servedon the panelscharged

Six of themhad "significantprofessional
with evaluatingeligiblereadingprograrns.
connections"to DI, and Doherty "personally nominated" thteeof them,the audit said.

The audit cited examplessuchas Massachusetts, whereDoherty questionedthe quality of

readingprogramsin four schooldistricts,while stateauthoritiesapprovedthem. One
district refusedto changeand lost its federalfunding; the otherthreeagreeto changeand
kept their funding,the audit said.None usethe DI program,saidCheryl Liebling, director
of ReadingFirst in Massachusetts.

Liebling saidsheagreedwith Dohertythat the programschosenby the four

Massachusetts schooldistrictswere of lesservalue to strugglingreaders.
'HighestRegard'
 Page51 of 88

"There was nothing in our situationthat would suggestany impropriety," Liebling said.
"I havethe highestregardfor Chris Doherty."

Michael Petrilli, who helpedthe administrationimplementthe No Child Left Behindlaw

andnow seryesasvice presidentat the ThomasFordhamFoundation,a Washington-
basedresearchgroup,saidhe believesEducationSecretaryMargaretSpellings"is
hangingChris Doheity out to dry."

Both Petrilli andLiebling saidthey believeSpellingswantedDoherfy to run the program

strictly. Federalofficials werejustifiably rejectingreadingprogramsthat emphasize
literary skills aheadof thosestressingbasicskills, which aremore importantto struggling
readers,Liebling said.

BaltimoreProgramCited

The reportissuedlastNovemberby the AmericanInstitutesfor Researchgaveonly DI

and the Baltimore-basedSuccessfor All programits top rating, "moderately strong
evidenceof positiveeffects," olt of 22 popularcomprehensive elementaryschoolreform
models.Miller's office citedthe reportto highlight Successfor All as a quality
alternative.

The counselto the EducationDepartment'sinspector-genbral, Mary Mitchelson,saidshe

planswithin
could not commenton the findings.At Miller's urging,the inspector-general
comingweeksto publishfive morereportson the ReadingFirst program,including
examinationsof its operationsin Wisconsin,GeorgiaandNew York.

Educationis a prime topic of concernfor voters,and suchallegationsmay havesome

effect on the Nov. 7 congressionalelections,especiallyin statesor districtswherethe
incumbentalreadyfacesaccusationsof impropriety,saidLarry Sabato,a political
scientistat the Universityof Virginia.
"Reading this makesanyoneat1ry, assumingit's true," Sabatosaid.

Mclane todayreiteratedthat SpellingssupportedDoherty's work ar,rdsaidhe left

voluntarily.

Spellings'sResponse

Miller cited investigationslast yearshowingthe departmentusedtaxpayerdollarsto pay

mediacommentatorsfor friendly coverage,and an audit this year showingthe department
directededucationgrantsto political alliesratherthan altemativesendorsedby career
peerreviewers.

JaclynLesch,saidshehadno immediatereactionto
A JusticeDepartmentspokeswoman,
Miller's request.

Spellings,in her responseto lastweek's audit, defendedthe ReadingFirst programas

proveneffective,while promisingto makeall changesrecommended in the audit.
 Page52 of 88

"I am deeply committed to the highestlevels of integrity and ethics for the Department
of Educationand all its programs," Spellingsaid.Somedepartmentactionsdescribedin
the report "reflect individual mistakes,"shesaid.
"Our readingprogramshavebeensuccessfulin driving studentachievementfor decades,
and that's why thereareheld in suchhigh regard," McGraw-Hill spokeswomanMary
Skafidassaid.

To contactthe reporteron this story:PaulBaskenin Washingtonat

pb asken@bloomberg.netBaltimoreSun

Baltimore Sun
Favoritism guided funds for reading, report says

Md. firm's complaintled to federalprobeinto steeringof grants

ByLizBowie
Sun Reporter

26,2006
September

Four yearsago,a nonprofit educationfirm calledSuccessfor All occupiedfour floors in

a Towsonoffice building andemployed500people.Hundredsof schoolsacrossthe
country were signing up to useits highly regardedreadingcurriculum,which stresses
phonics.

Today, Successfor All haslaid off twothirds of its employeesand shrunkto two floors.
A federalinspectorgeneral'sreportappearsto explain why. It saysthe U.S. Department
of Educationsteeredfederalgrantmoneyto certainreadingprogramsand away from
others.

The report,issuedlast week,accuses the departmentof favoritism,conflict of interestand

mismanagement in the awardingof $4.8billion in federalfunds.

RobertSlavin,the JohnsHopkinsUniversityeducationprofessorwho co-foundedthe

Successfor All Foundationandspentyearsresearchingeffectivereadingprograms,said
he watchedin disbelief asthe nonprofitlost businessbecausestateschoseto adoptother
programsfavoredby U.S. officials.

Slavin,chairmanof Successfor All, promptedthe federalinvestigationby going to the

inspectorgeneralin May last yearandtelling authoritieswhat he thoughtwas going on.
"There is nothing in the reportthat we haven'tbeensayingfor two ysars," Slavin said
yesterday."It is a vindicationof sorts."
 Page53 of 88

The focus of the investigators'attentionalsois someonefrom Baltimore. The inspector

general'sreport is severelycritical of ChristopherDoherty,who worked with city school
programsbeforebecomingdirectorof the ReadingFirst grantsin Washington.

The report quotesheavilyfrom e-mail messagesthat Doherty sentto colleaguesin which

he appelarsdeterminedto stampout readingprogramshe disliked, including an approach
oncecalled"whole language."His e-mailsmadeclearthat he did not want whole
languageprogramsto get ReadingFirst moneyfrom his office.

"Beat the [expletive]out of them in a way that will standup to any level of legal and
[whole language]apologistscrutiny,"Dohertywrote in an e-mail, arguingthat whole
languageadvocatesdid not haveresearchto supporttheir approach."Hit them over and
over with definitive evidence.... They aretrying to crashour party andwe needto beat
the [expletive]out of them in front of all the would-beparfy crasherswho arestandingon
the front lawn waiting to seehow we welcomethesedirtbags."

Doherty resignedfrom his federalpostlast week,effectiveat the end of this month.A

departmentspokesmansaidDohertywould haveno comment.

In an interview,Slavinsaidhe haslong suspectedthat federalReadingFirst moneywas

being directedto favoredprograms- andthat his Successfor All was not on the list
despitegoodreviewsdndresearchshowingits effectiveness.

He saidhe's puzzledthathis programdid not getmoneybecauseit is basedon phonics,

which Doherty championed,andnot whole language.And Slavin sayshe's angrybecause
ReadingFirst moneywas supposedto be awardedto curriculumswith scientificproof
that they worked,andhis programis backedby suchresearch.

"It just didn't fit their modelof how theywantedto do this," he said."To this day,I don't
know why."

Doherty,who lives in Baltimore,went to the U.S. Departmentof Educationafter a job as

executivedirectorof the BaltimoreCuniculum Project,a nonprofit that ran threecity
schoolsusinga phonics-based programcalledDirect Instruction.The projectwas funded
for manyyearsby the Abell Foundationandwasconsidereda successfulexperimentin
educationthat improvedthoseschools.

Dohertywasalsoa boardmemberof the BarakaSchoolin Africa, which recently

receivednationalattentionin a documentarvfilm.

ReadingFirst is a programunderthe federalNo Child Left Behind law that was designed
to give out federalmoneyto schoolsystemsthat chose"research-based reading
 Paoe54 of 88

programs."A recentreview by the Centeron EducationPolicy, an independent

foundation,concludedthat programsfundedby ReadingFirst arehelpingto raise
achievementin schools.No onehassuggestedthat childrenwereharmedbecauseof the
allegedmismanagement in the federaloffice.

Underthe three-yearprogram,stateshad to write proposalsspecifuinghow they would

useReadingFirst moneyto teachreadingandcheckon studentprogress.The federallaw
specifiesthat the Departmentof Educationcannottell a stateor local schoolsystem
which textbooksor curriculumto use,so ReadingFirst officials could not issuea list of
acceptablereadingprograms.But, in effect,that is what Dohertydid, the report suggests.

Specifically,it saysthat when theReadingFirst office setup panelsof expertsto review

stateproposals,it chosepeoplewith closeties to certainreadingprograms.

The reportsaysDohertyrecruitedseveralpeoplewho workedwith Direct Instruction,

includinghis former bossat the BaltimoreCurriculumProject,MurrielBerkeley,and
askedher to serveon the panels.

WhenBaltimore schoolofficials heardaboutthe choice,they calledthe Departmentof

Educationto complainand alertthemto what they considereda conflict of interest,the
reportsays.But their complaintswere apparentlyignored.

Dohertywrote anothere-mailto a colleaguelaughingaboutthe complaints."Funny that

[city schoolofficials] call me to inform that theremay be somepro-Dl folks on my
panel!!!Too rich. ... You know the line from Casablanca, 'I am SHOCKEDthatthereis
gamblinggoingon in this establishment.' Well,I am shocked thattherearepro-Dl people
on thispanel!!"

Doherfy also said in othere-mailsthat he was stackingthe panelsso that a particular

programthat usedwhole languagewould not "get a fair shake."

Berkeleysaidyesterdaythat shehasnot readthe report,but did not seeanyoneon a panel

push onereadingprogramover another.Whenpanelistsrevieweda state'sproposalsfor
ReadingFirst, shesaid,they lookedonly to seethat programswerebackedby research.

"l feel Doherty is an honestguy," shesaid."We were trainedat length.We were

monitored.I think it is a shameif somethingis awry thatI didn't see."

The reportdoesnot suggestthat Berkeleywas involved in any wrongdoing.

Marylandwas one of dozensof statesthat appliedfor the federalmoney.The report says

that basedon Maryland's originalproposal,Doherty was concernedthat stateofficials
would not includeDirect Instructionas one of the approvedprogramsfor reading.
 Page55 of 88

But after aphone call from Doherty, the report says,the statewrote a clarification to its
proposalthat Doherty said "bodeswell for DI" in Baltimore schools.

Askedfor commentyesterday,Maryland educationofficials said only that the statehad

not beenaccusedofdoing anythingwrong.

U.S. EducationSecretaryMargaretSpellingssaidlast week that shewould comply with a

by ttre inspectorgeneral."Even thoughtheseoccunedbeforeI
list of recommendations
becamesecretaryof education,I am concemedabouttheseactionsandcommittedto
addressingandresolvingthem," shesaid.

In interviewswith The Sun last week, Stan Lewis, Kentucky's commissionerof teaching
and learning,recountedhow her stateappliedfor ReadingFirst grantsfour timesbefore
they were approved.

Shesaidthe review panelsdid not like her state'schoiceof teststhat wereusedto see
how childrenwere learning.The statechosean assessment alreadywidely usedin
Kentuckyschools.

*We felt we had adequateevidenceto basethat choiceon," Lewis said.But

the state
nevergot approvalto receivethe federalmoneyuntil it chosea testdevelopedat the
Universityof Oregonby a researcherwho was a memberof someof the department's
reviewpanels.

"Even thoughtherewas nevera list of programsthat wereprohibited,in the end there

wereprogramsthat were discouraged,"Lewis said.

liz.bowie@.baltsun.
com

RockyMountainNews
underbelly
ReadingFirst'sscandalous
September26,2006

Theindependent inspectorgeneralat theDepartmentof Educationdidnotpull punches

in a reportontheadminishationof ReadingFirst,a centerpiece
Bushadministration
initiative.

In theyears2002-2003, theprogramwasshotthroughwith politicalfavoritism,conflicts

of interest,
mismanagement andcomplaints thatprogramadministrators
ignoredthelaw
in tryingto forcestatesto selectcertainfavoredpublishers
of textbooks
andcurriculums.
 Page56 of 88

Meanwhile, review panelswere stackedwith departmentfavorites to ensurethat favored

conclusionswould be rcached.

This is not a small academictempestin the f'acultylounge.The ReadingFirst program

hasdispensed over $4.8billion to 1,500dishicts.

The ReadingFirst programhasbeengenerallywell-receivedand fourd to be effective,

but this kind of political meddlingcould quickly turn it toxic with the statesand
Congress.It speakswell that the department's own inspectorgeneralwas the first to blow
the whistle.

The grossestabusestook placebeforethe currentsecretary,MargaretSpellings,took

over, andshequickly promisedto adoptall the recommendations. That'sfine, but the
scandaloverall is extremelydishrbing given the still expandingfederalrole in education.

Copyright2006,Rocky MountainNews.All Rights Reserved.

Open All the Books On ReadingFunds

September26, 2006

At a costof a billion dollarsayear,theBush administration's

ReadingFirst program
shouldbe deliveringmorethan a textbookexampleof mismanagement and failure.

Evenworse,a blisteringnew auditby the Office of InspectorGeneral,an independent

unit of the U.S. EducationDepartment,suggeststhat officials actuallybrokethe law by
trying to forcecertaincurriculaonto schooldistricts.Contractsapparentlywere doled out
to readingcurriculumpublishersbasedon favoritism.The program'sdirectorordereda
staff memberto get toughwith a companyhe disliked.

"They aretrying to crashour parfy andwe needto beatthe (expletive)out of them in

front of all otherparfy crasherswho are standingon the front lawn waiting to seehow we
welcomethesedirt bags,"ReadingFirst directorChrisDohertywrotein an e-mailcited
in the audit.EducationoffrcialssaidFriday Doherty would be steppingdown.

But EducationSecretaryMargaretSpellingshas steppedup. While the allegationspredate

her tenure,shehaswisely pledgedto adhereto the audit'srecommendation for
transparency andto reviewall ReadingFirst grants,
totaling$4.8bililionto 1,500school
districts.

By pledgingto be forthcomingaboutany wrongdoing,Spellingshastakena critical step

towardrepairingthe public'strust andthe credibility on one of the most importantaspects
 Page57 of 88

of the No Child Left Behind law.

Spellings'departmentcan'tpreachgreateraccountabilityto the nation'sschooldishicts

unlessit is alsowilling to showaccountabilityitself. Fixing the flaws in ReadingFirst is
a fine placeto begin.

Copyright O 2006Detroit Free PressInc.

 PageI of10
Page58 of 88

From: Neale,Rebecca
Sent: March25,2A079:41AM
To: Cariello,
Dennis;Halaska,
Terrell;Dunn,David;Terrell,Julie;Rosenfelt,
Phil;
Tucker,SaraMartinez;Ruberg,
Pitts,Elizabeth; Casey;Kuzmich, Holly;
Scheessele,Marc;Mcnitt,Townsend L.;Flowers,Sarah;Williams,Cynthia;
Toomey,Liam; Tada,Wendy;tracy_d._you ng@who.eop.gov; Reich,Heidi;
Landers, Angela;Talbert,Kent;Colby,Chad;Briggs,Kerri;Mclane,Katherine;
Simon,Ray;Private- Spellings,
Margaret;Neale,Rebecca; Herr,John;Ditto,
Trey;Maddox,Lauren;Beaton, Meredith;Yudof,Samara
Subject: WEEKEND NEWSSUMMARY, 3.25.07

WEEKENDNEWSSUMMARY
March25,2007

1.TheNewYork Times-- StatesPraiseReadingProgramDespiteIts Troubles,ReportSays

2. The WashingtonPost-- To BeAP, CoursesMust PassMuster
3. Associated
Press-- Experts:U.S.testingcompanies "buckling[ underweightof NCLB
4. Associated
Press-- ArizonaState:A universitytriesto bebothbig andgreat

StatesPraiseReading Program Despite lts Troubles, Report Says

By Diana Jean Schemo
The New York Times
Nlarch 25,2007

WASHINGTON, March 24 -Despite irregularitiesin the management of ReadingFirst, President

Bush's initiative to teachreadingto low-incomechildren,a majority of statescredit the programwith
improving readinginstruction,accordingto a reportby the GovernmentAccountabilityOffice released
Friday,

The G.A.O.,the investigativearm of Congress,surveyededucationoff,rcialsacrossthe nationabout

ReadingFirst, which awards$1 billion ayear in grantsto statesto buy textsand curriculums.According
to the report,69 percentof thosesurveyedpraisedthe programfor "greator very greatimprovementin
readinginstruction."About 80 percentsaidthe programhadvastly improvedteachertraining-

The reportalsofound that most stateswere satisfiedwith the help they hadreceivedfrom federal
officials andprivate contractorsin applying for grants.

But the accountabilityoffice, echoingcriticism in a seriesof reportsby the EducationDepartment's

inspectorgeneral,found that departmentofficials andprivatecontractorsmight havebrokenthe law in
either steeringl4 statestowardspecificreadingprogramsor advisingthemnot to useothers.Those
stateswerenot identifiedin thereport.

The law authorizingReadingFirst requiresthat grantsgo only to districtsusing readingapproaches

backedby scientificresearch.It prohibitsEducationDepartmentofficials from promoting,or even
endorsing,specific curriculums.

EducationSecretaryMargaretSpellingsdeclinedto commenton the G.A.O.report.

The reportsfrom the inspectorgeneralalsofound that federalofficials had overlookedconflicts of

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Page59 of 88

interestamongconhactorsadvisingstatesapplyingfor grants,andthat in someinstances,contractors

had had a financialstakein programscompetingfor the money.

The reportby the accountabilityoffice foundthat of 3,400districtseligible for ReadingFirst, 2,100

appliedfor grants,and 1,200arereceivingthem.ln most states,officials gavethe progtamhigh marks
for improving the way readingwas taught.

Statesreportedthat teacherswere workjng more systematicallyto build children'sskills in phonics,

readingaloud,vocabularyand comprehension, andthat schoolswere devotingmoretime to reading,
typically 90 minutesor more a day.

In addition,all statessaidprofessionaldevelopmentof teachershad improvedunderthe program.

ReadingFirst hascomeunderheavyfire in Congressand elsewhere.Previousauditsof the program,and

somelocal schoolofficials, said the departmenthadusedthe law to promotereadingp.ogra*s with a
heavyrelianceon phonics,which focuies on the mechanicsof soundingout syllablJs,ratherthan
methodsemphasizingadditionalstrategiesfor makingsenseof texts.The Houseandthe Senateare
planninghearings.

The G.A.O. reportincorporatedrecommendations

from the earlierinspectorgeneralreportsthat the
EducationDepartmentshouldguardagainstconflictsof interestin administeringtheprogram.

In a responseattachedto the report,the deputysecretaryof education,RaymondSimon,wrote that the

departmentagreedwith its recommendations.

To Be AP, CoursesMust PassMuster

TeachersRequiredTo Submit to Audit
By Daniel de Vise
The WashingtonPost
March 25,2007

While her studentsat Blake High Schoolpreparefor an AdvancedPlacementexamthat measures

whetherthey know college-levelworld history, SarojaRingo is being askedrtoprove sheknows how to
teachit.

The CollegeBoard,publisherof college-preparatory exams,is auditingeveryAdvancedPlacement

coursein the nation,askingteachersof an estimated130,000AP coursesto furnishwritten proof by
June 1 that the coursesthey teachare worthy of the brand.

An explosionin AP study -- participationin the programhasnearlydoubledthis decade-- hasbred

worry, particularlyamongcollegeleaders,of a declinein the rigor for which the coursesareknown.
Oncethe exclusiveprovinceof elite studentsat selecthigh schools,AP studyor its equivalentis now
more or lessexpectedof any studentwho aspiresto attendevena marginallyselectivecollege.

In the hasteto remaincompetitivein the AP arrnsrace,schoolssometimesawardthe designationto

golfes that barelyresemblethe collegecurriculumthe programis meanttordeliver,accordingto
CollegeBoardofficials and educators.Until now, therehasbeenno large-soaleeffort to weedout such
abuse.

"Anybodycouldjust say,'I'm teachingan AP course;I'm an AP teacher.There'sno protocol,'" said

Ringo,who teaches
AP World History at the SilverSpringschoolandworksasan official graderof the

s/4/)ooq
 Page3 of 10
Page60 of 88

exams.

Begiruringwith the 2007-08academicyear,only teacherswhosesyllabuseshavebeenapprovedby the

CollegeBoard may call their coursesAP. Eachteachermust submitan audit form, alongwith a syllabus
for the coursehe or sheteaches.Dependingon how well the teacher'ssyllabus- assuminghe or shehas
one -- reflectsthe rigor expectedby the CollegeBoard,the processcanbe brief or time-consuming.

The task hasbeenmet with no small amountof grumbling.MontgomeryCountyteachersloosedan

angryvolley of e-mailsoverthe exercise,mostly alongthe lines of "Why me?" and "Why now?" But
many faculty begrudginglyacceptthat somequality conhol is needed,lest the AP programspiral out of
control.

"I think the teachersare sympatheticin hindsight,"saidStephanieValentine,who overseesthe program

at SpringbrookHigh in Silver Spring."Not while they'redoing it."

The implicationsfor high schoolsandcolleges,studentsandteachersare enoilnous.

Onewould be a probabledecline-- after yearsof double-digitgrowth - in the numberof courses

labeledAdvancedPlacement. CollegeBoardofficialshaveseta goal of approvingat least105,000AP
courses,of an estimated130,000nationwide.The attrition,they predict,would comemainly from
teacherswho declineto participate.No schoolwill be resfrictedfrom giving the exams,although
studentswithout adequatepreparationareunlikely to takethem.

Tom Matts, a CollegeBoardofficial who overseesthe audit,saidits purposeis to help teacherselevate

their courses.

"'We'renot trying to eliminateany courses,"he said,"but to help teachersunderstandwhat needsto be in

the courseandto provide evidencein the syllabus"that college-levelmaterialis being taught.

Sinceits lan.23 launch,the audithasdrawnsubmissions from 55,000teachers,Mattssaid.University

professorsreview the coursesandusuallyrespondwithin two months.Seventy-fourpercentof courses
havebeenapprovedto date.Unsuccessfulteachersareencouraged to resubmitup to threetimes, with
guidancefrom the CollegeBoard.Onceapproved,teachers andtheir syllabuses
aresanctioned until they
move to anotherschoolor the courserequirementschange.

Wendy Borrelli, who hastaughtAP Literatureand Compositionat SpringbrookHigh for two years,
earnedapprovalon her first try. Shecompletedthe audit in a day and submittedit the first week the
CollegeBoardwould takeit.

"The bulk of what I sentthemwasthe real syllabusthat I give my studentseachsemester,"Bonelli said.

Sheconcedesthat the audit would be more work "if you weren'tthe kind of organizedor, shall I say,
anal-retentiveteacherthat I am."

For collegeadmissionsofficers,the auditmightassuage risingdoubtsaboutthe valueof the AP stamp

on an applicant'stranscript.They,morethan any othergroup,pushedfor the review, driven by the steep
increasein applicantsclaimingan AP pedigree.

"Is it possibleto expandthesecoursesas fast as theyhaveandmaintaintheir quality?"askedAndrew

Flagel,deanof admissions at GeorgeMasonUniversityin FairfaxCounty."Anecdotally,what we're
hearingfrom peopleis that that'sa hugechallenge:that the classeshavegottensignificantlylargerand
that the pushto get so many peopleinto [them] hasled to a tendencyor a temptationto lower the rigor

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ofthe course."

Matts saidcollegeofficials nationwidewere "curiousto know what hashappenedto the curriculum

when we're seeinga 150percentincreasein the numberof studentstaking theseclassesover the past 10
years."He cited well-traveledanecdotesaboutschoolsthat "simply makeup coursesand call them Ap.,

Although fast-growi-ngAP programsin the Alexandria,Fairfax,Montgomery.andArlington County

systemsretain a uniformly high caliber,vetcranteacherstheresay,they haveseenor treardof scofflaws
elsewhere.In a typical scenario,a schoolcombinesdisparategroupsof honorsand AP studentsinto a
vaguelydefinedAP coursewithout intendingto teachthe advancedcurriculumor to preparestudentsfor
the end-of-courseexam.

"They'll call it AP, but you end up wittr two of 26 kids taking the AP test,"saidMel Riddile, principal of
T.c. williams High Schoolin Alexandria."Is that really an Ap course?"

Studentsmight havethe most at stake.An aspiringpre-medstudentmight learnin the fall that the Ap
biology coutseon her high schoolschedulehasbeendowngradedto thJ more generic"honors.',This, in
turn, could affect what sheis taughtin the classandher chancesfor taking,letilone passing,the priied
AP biology exam,a gatewayto collegecreditand advancedstanding.(Taking an AP coursJby itielf is
not enoughto earncollegecredit; a studentmusttakeand scorewell on the correspondingexam.)

Also at stakemight be theprestigefactorof the courseon a high schooltranscriptand the potential for
lost bonuspoints awardedfor AP study,with a correspondingeffecton classrank.

Someteachersremain skepticalof the audit:What'sto stop lazy AP teachersfrom copying another

teacher'ssyllabusand passingit offas their own?Who will ensurethat lessonplans approvedby the
CollegeBoardwill actuallybe taught?

supportersof the audit effort, however,sayit's a stepin the right direction.

The meanAP examscoredippedfrom 3.01in May 2000to 2.89in May 2006,on a five-pointscale,a
modesterosionin a spanof yearswhenthe numberof examstakendoubled:to2 million.

Of greaterconcemthan the scores-- to critics,at least- is the growingnumberof Ap studentswho

nevertakethe exam.

Matts, of the CollegeBoard,contendsthat "studentsbenefitevenwithout the exam."

But Riddile saysthe testis the ultimatemeasure

of Ap success.

"What'sthe only way you can assurethat'san AP course?"he said."That'sthat the studentin that course
took the AP assessment,
andhere'stheirscore."

3. Experts:U.S.testingcompanies"buckling" underweightof NCLB

By Megan Reichgott
AssociatedPress
March 24,2007

CHICAGO - To motivatejuniors on lastApril's assessment

exams,SpringfieldHigh Schooloffiered
covetedlockers,parkingspacesnearthedoorandfreeprom ticketsai incentivesfor
eoodscores.

9/4/2009
 Page5 of 10
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But the incentivesat the centralIllinois schoolwentunclaimeduntil earlierthis month.when Illinois

finally publishedits 2006test scores- more thanfour monthsafterthey were due.

Critics pouncedon HarcourtAssessmentInc., which lost most of its $44.5million statecontractover

delays- causedby everythingfrom shippingproblemsto missingtestpagesand scoringerrors- that
madeIllinois the last statein the nationto releasescoresusedto judge schoolsunderthe federalNo
Child Left BehindAct.

But expertssayproblemsaremore widespread,andpoisedto getworse,A handful of companiescreate,

print and scoremost of the testsin the U.S., andthey'restrugglingwith a workload that has exploded
sincePresidentBush signedthe five-year-oldeducationreformpackage.

"The testingindustry in the U.S. is buckling underthe weight ofNCLB demands,"saidThomasToch,

co-directorof EducationSector,a Washington,D.C.-basedthink tank.

When EducationSectorsurveyed23 statesin 2006,it foundthat 35 percentof testingoffices in those

stateshave experienced"significant"errorswith scoringand20 percentdidh't get results"in a timely
fashion."

Illinois saw more problemsthis month,when studentstook achievementteststhat containedas many as

13 errors,officials said.But Illinois isn't the only statethat'sexperienceddifficulties:

_ Connecticutlast year fined its testingcompany$80,000aftera processingerror causedwrong scores

for 355 studentson the 2005test.The problemcamea yearafterthe statecanceledits contractwith
anothercompanyafter scoringproblemscauseda five-monthdelayin reportingscores.

_The TexasEducationAgencypassed4,160 l0th-graderswho initially failed the math sectionof the

TexasAssessmentof Knowledgeand Skills in 2003after offrcialsdiscovereda test questionhad more
than one correctanswer.

_Michigan EducationalAssessment Programresultsweredelayedlast year, and therewere previous

problemsunder anothercontractor.In 2003,3,400MEAP scoreswere deliveredmonthslate and nearly
1,000resultswentmissing.

_Alabamaeducationofficials saida testingcompanymistakenlyfailed someschoolswhile passing

othersthat shouldhave failed, after scoringproblemson the 2005assessment
test.

In Oregon,the stateEducationDepartmentcomplainedthat a computerizedstateassessment test was

plaguedby systemproblems.The testingcompanylaterterminatedits contractwith the state,claiming it
was owed back payments,andthe statesuedthe companyfor breachof contract.Now, thousandsof
studentswho haven'tcompletedonline examswill takethem in May usingpaperandpencil.

Causesof the problemsaremultipronged,testingcompanyandeducationexpertssay.

The numberof studentsbeing testedhasrisensharplysincethe No Child Left BehindAct took effect.

Illinois, for example,usedto test only third, fifth andeight gradersbut nowitestsstudentsin third
througheighth grades.

To meetNCLB requirements,statesadministered45 million examsby spring2006, andthe number

keepsrising.By the endof the 2007-2008schoolyear,it will reachabout56 million tests.
 Page6 of 10
Page63 of 88

What'smore,eachstatehasits own test,andmanywant them customized,saidMichael Hansen,chief

executiveofficer of HarcourtAssessment,
which no longeradministersIllinois'tests but still is involved
in developingand gradingthem.BeforeNCLB was signedinto law, statesusedexamslike the Stanford
AchievementTest, and publisherscreatednew testsevery six to eight years.

"Not only (have) stateswanteddifferent contentin terms of the tests,but they also have very many
different requirementsas to logistics,delivery,look and feel, color,how the questionsare organized,
horizontal,vertical ... you nameit, it was on the table," Hansensaid.

On top of that,expertssay,arerigid NClB-driven deadlines.

"That meansMarch and April we arecompletely... at peakcapacifyand so is every one of our

competitors,"Hansensaid."But alsothenwhenthe testresultscomein, they (schools)needthe test
resultsback as soonas possible... so the turnaroundfrom the time that the test is taken,to (when) we
needto reportthe resultsis extremelytight andit's gettingtighter and tighter."

Otherssay theproblemsare exacerbated

by little competitionor regulation.

The NCLB testingindustryis dominatedby four companies:SanAntonio,'flexas-based

Harcourt;
Monterey,Calif.-basedCTBAvIcGraw-Hill;Iowa City, Iowa-basedPearsonEducationalMeasurement
and ltasca,Ill.-basedRiversidePublishing.

"It's not entirelya monopoly,but it is an oligopoly,with very little regulation,"said Walter Haney,
professorat the Centerfor the Studyof TestingEvaluationandEducationalPolicy at BostonCollege.

Both stateeducationdepartmentsandtestingcompaniesare "overtaxedandrburstingat the seams,"said

Becky Watts,former chief of staff at the Illinois StateBoard of Education.

"It's logical.Any time you havea relativelysmallindustry... it's a tall order.What is demandedof the
testingindustry,what is demandedof the states,it's huge,"Wattssaid.

Between2002 and,2008,stateswill spendbetween$1.9 billion and $5.3billion to develop,scoreand

reportNClB-required tests,accordingto a reportby the GovemmentAccountabilityOffice. Ultimately,
the price tag dependson whetherstatespreferexamswith open-endedquestions- which arehand-scored
andmorecostly- or multiple-choice questions.

But it's a mistaketo blameonly the vendorsfor theproblemswhen lawmakersarenotoriousmisersin

funding statetestingagencies,saidToch, from EducationSector.

Statesspendlessthana quarterof 1 percentofschoolrevenue- or between$10 to $30 a student- on

testingprograms,eventhoughfederal,stateandlocal spendingper pupil addsup to more ttran$8,000a
year,Toch said.

"That'snot enoughto producehigh-qualitytestsin the tight timelinesthat NCLB requires.It's

ludicrous,"Toch said.

The Office of InspectorGeneralat the U.S. Departmentof Educationsaidlastyear it would study

whetherhigh-stakestestsneedfederaloversight.The office hasnot begunworking on the study,but
officials hopedto do so this year,saidspokeswomanCatherineGrant.

Last year,Congressgavestates$408million to developstandardized

testingunderNCLB, but the states

9t4n.o09
 Page7 of 10
Page64 of 88

can usethe moneyin lots of ways, andmany of themuseit fortasks unrelatedto test-building,Toch
said.

The U.S. Departrnentof Educationmustbe moreactive,Toch said.

"Instead,Secretary(Margaret)Spellingshaslargelywashedher handsof this problem,said it's a state

problem,which is a peculiar... responsebecauseit's the federalgoverrmentthat hasrequiredthe states
to take theseactions,"Toch said.

Arizona State: A university tries to be both big and great

By Justin Pope
AssociatedPress
March 24,2007

EDITOR'S NOTE - It's oneof the fundamentalchallengesfor collegesin the 21stcentury:how to make
higher educationservea growing and diversifyingpopulationwithout compromisingquality.
Universitiesarebeing calledon to do more for the bestandbrightest,but alsoto help morepeopleget a
bachelor'sdegreein a professionalworld wherea collegeeducationis vital.

TEMPE, Arizona(AP) _ Like the stateit serves,Aizona StateUniversity is big, bustlingand

relentlesslynew.

If collegeswere countries,mostwould resemblethe developednationsof the West _stable,working to

improve but changingonly graduallyandgrowing slowly, ilat all. fuizona Statewould be China. Iti
campusesare giant constructionsites.New schoolsandprogramsspringup nearlyeveryweek.
Hundredsof faculty arebeinghired,thousandsof dorm rooms arebeing built.

There are280 undergraduate

majors,threeseparateschoolsof business,32 on-campusdining options,
and 601 studentclubs.

ASU is a city in itself.With 51,000studentson themain campus,plus 10,000moreat threebranches

aroundPhoenix,it is alreadyamongthe largesttraditionaluniversitiesin the United States.But unlike
any currentrivals for that title, ASU plansto keepgrowing_ to about90,000studentsover the next
decade.That would makeit easilythe largestuniversityof its kind in America.

Michael Crow, ASU's president,calls his schoolthe "new Americanuniversity"and seesit asthe
university of the future.

It's a model that takeson two challengessomeseeas conflicting: to be a greatuniversity,and to be an

enorrnousone,with its doorsopento a hugenumberof studentswith widely varyingabilities.

Arizona,Crow says,needsASU to be a greatuniversity,with toptier researchers

solvingpressinglocal
problemslike waterresourcemanagement. But it alsourgentlyneedsto expandaccessto four-year
The state'spopulationis growinganddiversi$ing,with a half-dozennew high schools
collegedegrees.
openingeachyear.But therearejust threepublic universitiesto accommodatethe growth.

"This is a universityon the front line of dealingwith a 300 million-personAmericagoingto a 450-

million personArnerica,"Crow says.

Schoolsin Mexico,EuropeandAsia haveenrolled100,000sfudentsor more,but traditionalAmerican

oneshavetoppedout at around50,000,excludingmulti-campusstatesystemsand for-profit chainssuch

9/4/2009
 Page8 of l0
Page65 of 88

asthe University of Phoenix. Most havepreserveda flagship campusfor the strongeststudentsand

channeledgrowth elsewhere.

Crow doesn'tbelievequality hasto sufferwhen a university scalesup to this size.

"In higher ed,that'swhat peoplethink is needed:to createthis very grandsohoolfor the best,and give
everybodyelsegenericcampuses,'r Crow says."We're like,'Why?"'

And so, ASU is a place of extraordinaryvariety.Thereis a growing rosterof high-profile faculty doing
cutting-edgeresearch,working alongsideinstructorsin more vocationalprogramslike golf-course
management.There'san elite honorscollegefor exceptionalstudents,but ifs setwithin the larger
university that accepts92 percentof its applicants.

Somecritics saysit's a fantasyto think a universitycan simply ignorethe quanity-vs.-qualitytradeoff.

"ASU will very clearly get worse,muchworse,not better,so long asthey keepdriving the enrollment,"
saysGeoffrey Clark, an anthropologyprofessorand 35-yearfaculty veteran.He saysthe university is
overcrowdedandhassold it soul for corporatesponsorship.ASU could havebecomea distinguished
public researchuniversitylike University of Califomia,Los Angeles,he says;insteadCrow hasturned it
into just anotherstatecollege.

"The new Americanuniversity in my opinionis a fraud," Clark says."You can'tget big and good at the
sametime."

But evenskepticssaythat, if anyonecanpull it ofi it's Crow.

After holding senioradministrativejobs at lowa StateUniversity and ColumbiaUniversity, Crow came

to ASU in2007 andhasbeenbusy since_ building,recruiting,fundraisingandlobbying, and generally
kicking up the desertdust.

There'sa massivenew campusin downtownPhoenix.Eight newsschoolswithin the universityhave

openedin the currentacademicyear alone.There'sa new BiodesignInstitutethat went from idea to
functioning laboratorywith 500 workersin just a few years_ a paceunimaginableat many universities.

Crow hasraisedASU's profile substantiallywith donors,voters,the legislatureandthe regents,who

have forked over new moneyand freedomto a schoolthat traditionallyhasplayedsecondfiddle to the
University of Arizona in Tucson.

He's alsobroughtin sometop-shelftalent_ a businessschooldeanfrom Whartonbusinessschool,a top

fundraiserfrom Harvard.WellingtonReiter,the deanof the Collegeof Design,saidhe was drawn by
"the chanceof making a differenceon a scalethat was inconceivablein a placelike MIT," wherehe
was a professor.

ASU hasa strongrecordluring top students,too. Test scoresarerising. They are lured with sunshine
and accessto the small classesof the BarrettHonorsCollege.And they'reluredwith money.

Of the cashASU awardsas financialaid, nearly 80 percentis given on the basisof merit much of it for
out-of-statestudentswith good grades.

"After visiting MIT andHarvardI just felt like a number,"saidCary Anderson,a junior from Apple
Valley, Minnesota."Then I found out I cango herefor nothing_ actuallyget paid to go to school."

9t4t2009
 Page9 of l0
Page 66 of 88

Threepersonalphonecalls from the deansealedthe deal.

Ambitious universitieslike ASU havefacedcriticism for spendingtoo muchmoneyto attact bright

studentswho improvea college'sacademicranking,but don'tnecessarilyneedthe moneyto attend
college.Rankingsareclearly importantat ASU: In an unusualarrangement,Cro#s contractincludesa
$10,000(euro7,490)incentivefor boostingASU's standingin U.S. Ne-s & World Reportmagazine's
rankingsof thetop U.S. schools.

But Crow saysrecruitingtop studentsimprovesthe intellectualatmosphereon campus andthat ASU

is still backingup its commitmentto widen the gate.About trvo-thirdJof ASU's financialaid, evenif it's
awardedfor merit, goesto studentswith need.The numberof studentsfrorn the poorestfamilies has
increasedby about500 percentsince2002while the numberof black, nativeAmericanand Hisoanic
studentshaveall morethandoubledover the last decade.

ASU's graduationrateis alsoimproving,thoughstill a problem.Only 56 percentof freshmenenteringin

2000 had a degreeby 2006.Ratesfor Hispanics(51 percent)andNative Arnericans(23 percent)are
lower still.

One of the key factorsin stronggraduationratesis closeattentionfrom faculty.That'sa challengehere.

ASU's student-facultyratio is22-1, and eventhen only 63 percentof faculty aretenuredor tenure-track;
the othersare lecturers,instructorsand adjuncts.Overall spendingper studentis low, largely because
ASU hasreceivedcomparativelylittle statesupport

In the Schoolof Life Sciences,ProfessorRonaldRutowski saysfacuhy aretrying to give the 1,000or so

majors,plus studentsfrom outsidethe department,an engagingexperiencein thJclassroom.But
capacityis crunched,with classesand labsoversubscribed
and lecturehalls in shortsupply.
"We're trying," he says.But "there's no questionthe demandfar exceedswhat we're
ableto offer at this
point."

Honors collegestudentsget morepamperedtreatmentandpraisethe ASU experience.Still, somesay

they have concernsaboutthe scaleof growth.

Adding 30,000students is "too much,"saidseniorTaylorJackson,a seniorfrom Hattiesburg,

Miss. "I
worry the moneywill becomeeventhinnerandthe classsizeswill becomeevenlarger."

Clgt saysASU plansto hire 500 more faculty abovethe enrollmentgrowth rate in the comingyears,
which would improveits ratios.It alsoplansto add 6,000new dormitory bedsoverthreeyears;Crow
guesses$l billion (euro750million) worth of new residence
hallsarein theworks.Studentswho live
on-campusaretypically more successful,so that could improvethe graduationrate.

But therewill still be thousandsof studentswho haveto commute,and areinevitablylessconnectedto

the university.

"I wish I couldbe in the bandandthe ChristianBible groupsherebut I justidon't

havetime for it," said
Tim_White,a geographymajor from nearbyGlendalewho commutesfrom homeon Mondaysand
Wednesdays. He callsASU "satisfactory"but sayshe doesn'treally feel like part of a community.

Crow sayshis goal is to build a greatuniversity,wheregreatnessrubs off on and inspiresstudentsin

every cornerof the institution and he insistsASU is on its way to makingthat happen.

9/412009
 Page10of10
Page 67 of 88

fast, dorngtoo manythings hut none of themwell

Still, someffitics maintainASU is growingtoo
enough.
..We,reincreasinglyrelying on part-timers,contractfacrl{V, grad students'adjuncts"'saysClark' the
up tuiti"onl'which costs$4,690(euro3'510)for in-
anthropologyprof.rro. "Xnd yet *"'r. ,ui"t "tittg
statestudentsthis Year'
(four-year)universitytuition and
"ASU students,or a good chunkof them,are going-tobe paying
educationfor it."
,n#ri t. g.ttirg u 1t#o_y"*) communitycollege

91412009
 Page 68 of 88

ry
From: Ruberg, Casey
Sent: August16,20077:57AM
To: Cariello,
Dennis;Halaska, Terrell;
Dunn,David;Terrell,Julie;Rosenfelt,
Phil;Pitts,Elizabeth:
Tucker,SaraMartinez;MacGuidwin, Katie;Ruberg,
Casey;McGrath, John;Kuzmich, Holly;
Scheessele,Marc;Mcnitt,Townsend L.;Flowers,Sarah;Young, Tracy;Williams,Cynthia;
Toomey, Liam;Tada, WendyReich, Heidi;Landers,
Angela;Talbert,Kent;Colby,Chad;
Briggs,Kerri;McLane, Katherine;Private
- Spellings,
Margaret; Neale,Rebecca; Morffi,
Jessica;Evers,Bill;Ditto,Trey;Maddox,Lauren;Beaton,ltileredith;Yudof,
Samara; Gribble,
Emily
Subject: Reading CurriculaDon'tMakeCutForFederalReview (EDWEEK)

Reading
Curricula
Don'tMake
GutForFederal (EDWEEK)
Review
ByKathleen Kennedy Manzo
Education Week, August 16,2007
A long-awaited reviewof beginning-reading programs bythefederalWhat WorksClearinghouse foundfewcomprehensive
or supplemental programs thathaveevidence ofeffectivenessin raisingstudentachievernent. Butwhatis missing fromthe
reviewmaybeevenmoretelling: Noneofthemostpopular commercial reading programs onthemarket hadsufficiently
rigorousstudies tobeincluded inthereview bytheclearinghouse.
"Someoftheveryplominent, full-yearreading curricula
weren't prioritizedforthisreview,l' saidJillConstantine,theprincipal
directorofthereview. 'Theytendednotto havestudies withrandomized-control trialsorwithexperimental designs thatmet
theclearinghouse's evidence standards."
Mostoftheprograms deemed tohave"positive or"polentially
effects" positive effects" inthereview weresupplemental or
interventionprograms, notcorereading series.Moreover,those resultswerebased onjustoneortwostudies thatmetthe
clearinghouse's standards, andjusta handful werefound tobeeffective inseveral areas studied.
Justoneprogram wasfound tohavepositive effectsorpotentiallypositive effects across allfourofthedomains inthe
review-alphabetics, fluency,comprehension, and generalreading achievement. Thatprogram, Reading Recovery, an
intensive,one-on-one tutoringprogram, hasdrawncriticism overthepastfewyearsfromprominent researchers andfederal
whoclaimed
officials itwasnotscientifically based.
Federalofficialsandcontractors triedtodiscourage statesanddistrictsfromusingReading Recovery inschools
participating
inthefederal Reading Firstprogram, citing
a lackofevidence thatit helpsstruggling readers.
Otherpopular programs werefound tohavepotentially positiveeffectsaswell.Success fbrAll,a whole-school-reform
program developed byresearchers atJohns Hopkins University
inBaltimore, gotthefavorable ratingonalphabetics and
generalreading achievement, butmixed results oncomprehension. Voyager Universal Literacy System, a productofthe
Dallas-based Voyager Learning,wasfoundto havepotentially positive effectsonalphabetics butpotentiallynegative effects
oncomprehension, Accelerated Reader, distributed
byRenaissance Learning Inc.,wasfound tohavea potentially
positive
impactoncomprehension andgeneral reading achievement.
Severalotherproducts-such asStartMaking a Reader Today, Kaplan SpellRead, andPeer-Assisted LearningStrategies,
or PALS-also got positive reviews.
Ongoing Reviews
Theclearinghouse, which theU.S.Depaftment ofEducation'sInstituteofEducation Sciences created in2002tovet
research on"what works" ineducation; hasgivenfewofitscoveted positive ratings. Sofeweducation studies
meetthe
clearinghouse'stough research-quality criteria
thatsomecritics havedubbed it the "nothiqrg
works" clearinghouse.("'One
Stop'Research Shop Seen asSlowtoYieldViews ThatEducators CanUse," Sept. 27,2006.)
Thereading review,whichhasbeenunder wayformorethantwoyears, isthefirstinanongoing appraisal
ofreading
programs, according toPhoebe H.Cottingham, thecommissionerof theNationalCenterfor Education Evaluationand
Regional Assistance, which oversees theclearinghouse. ("Oufof-Favor Reading PlanRa(ed Highly,"March 28,2007.)
We expect theWhatWorks Clearinghouse tocontinue andexpand," Ms.Cottingham said,"We're notfinished
with
beginning readingbyanymeans."
 report
Infact,theclearinghouse thatarei'itftt"ptio3L33
lists36products thateachhavejustone
reviewed,.but
ofb-eing
studyinatmeets "withreservations."
tie criteria Among thoseproducts areOpen CourtandReading both
Mastery,
publishedbytheMcGraw-Hill Cos., Reading'
Mifflin
andHoughton
Vol.27
 Page70 of88

From: Landers,Angela
Sent: July09, 20076:58PM
To: Private- Spellings,Margaret
Subject: RE: WeeklyStandardon ReadingFirst

The article is on vour desk now

-----OriginalMessage-----
From: Pdvate - Spellings,Margaret
Sent Monday,July 09,2007 6:l2PM
To: Landers,Angela
Subject Fw: Weeldy Standardon ReadingFirst

Can I get the whole article

Sent from my BlackBerryN7irelessDevice

-----Onginal Message-----
From: Mclane, Katherine
To: Private - Spellings,Margareq Landers,Angela; Evers, Bill; Colby, Chad; Williams, Cynthia; Dorfman, Cynthia;
Mesecar,Doug; Dunckel, Denise; Dunn, David; Pitts, Elizabeth; Flowers, Sarah;McGrath,John; Talben, Kent;
Briggs, Kerri; Kuzmich, Holly Toomey,IJam; Maddox, Lauren; Scheessele, Marc; Private - Spellings,Margaret;
Mcnitt, Townsend L.; Beaton, Meredith; Moran, Robert; Tucker, SaralMartinez;Tada,S7endy;Halaska,Terrell;
Tncy WH <tracy-d.-young@who.eop.gov>; !7urman, Ze'ev;Young, Tracy; Quarles,Karen; Bannerman, Kristin;
Watkins, Tiffany; Sampson,Vincent
CC: Ditto, Trey; Neale, Rebecca;Reich, Heidi; Ruberg,Casey;Terrell,Julie; Yudof, Szman
Sent Mon Jul 09 16:36:1 5 2007
Subject Weekiy Standardon ReadingFirst

ReadIt and Weep

Why does Congresshate the one part of No Child Left Behind that works?
by Charlotte Allen
07/1,6/2007,Volume 012,Issue41
Richmond, Virgrnia In a classroom at Ginter Park ElementarySchool,a century-old brick schoolhouseon a dreary,
zoned-commercialtruck route that bisectsa latgelyAfrican-American neighborhood in Richmond, a third-grade
teacher,Laverne Johnson, is doing something that flies in the face of more than three decadesof the most advanced
pedagogicalprinciples taught at America's top-rated educadonschools.Seatedon a chair in a corner of her
classroom surroundedby a dozen youngsterssitting ctoss-leggedon the floor at her feet,Johnson is teaching
reading--asjust plain teadrng.Two and a half hours everymorning, systematicallygoing over such basicsas phonics,
vocabulary words, and a crucial skill known as "phonemic awareness"that entailsrecognizingthe separatesound
components of individual words--that the word "happy," for example,contains five letters but oniy four sounds, or
phonemes. Phonemic awa-teness is an important prelude to phonics: learning which phonemesare representedin
wdtten English by which graphemes,or combinations of letters.According to the principlesJohnson is following, it
is the mlx of phonemic a$/arenessand phonics that enableschildren (and adultslearninghow to read for the frst
time) to sound out, syllableby syllable,unfamiliar-looking words they might encou{rteron a page and then link
those words to meaning.In the world of forward-thinking educationalpedagogy,phonemic awarenessis deemed
useless,phonics of only intermittent value, and the sounding out of words deadeningto a child's potential interest in
books.As her main teachingtool,Johnson is using somethingthat alsomakesthe rnost advancedminds at
America's educationschools blanch: z reader.Thosea.Ph1%?[13[?3"tboots that were the stapleof grade school
until the 1.970sxe out of fashion thesedays,replacedin most elementary-schoolclassroomsin America by
"authentic literature": illustrated trade-presschildren'sbooks of the sort that patenm buy to entertaintheir offspring
at bedtime (or that older youngsterscheck out of the public libtary to read for pleasure)and entirely lacking in
teachers'guides or cluesas to hovzthey might be used asinstructional tools. Ag"io, flot so at Ginter Park. Every one
of the dozen children sitting atJohnsonrsfeet holds an open copy of the very sametextbook thatJohnson holds,
whose no-nonsensetitle makesits purpose plain: Houghton Mifflin Reading,Grade 3. It comes supplementedwith
such fashionablydisdainedmaterialsas vocabularylists, ready-madecomprehensiontests,and teachers'guides that
include built-in lessonplans and scripts.Indeed,Johnson is handing out one of those very vocabularylists: 30 new
words that they will encounterin the story to ruhich their books are open but which they haven't started yet:
"Poppa's New Pants."Johnson is sounding out the rvords with the children and going through their meanings:
"pattem," "plaid," "draped," "hem." "lfhat can you tell me about a hem?" she asks.A little gul prompdy flips up the
hem of her T-shirt and showsit off to the group. "Sew--S-E-W,"saysJohnson."Now, doesanyoneknow a
homonym for sew?""So--S-O!" shoutsanother girl. "Yes!" saysJohnson, explaining how it is that rwo different
words with two different meaningscan sound the same.A homonym-they really still teachsuch things these days?
The education establishmentmay sneerat the techniquesJohnson uses,but they are part of a srnall-scalemiracle:
Ginter Park, despitean unpromising location and a high-poverry-levelsnrdentbody, now ranks rr the top third of
more than 1,100public elementaryschoolsin the stateof Virginia, holding its own againstschoolsin the ultra-
affluent, highly educatedsuburbancounties of northern Virginia just acrossthe Potomac River from Washington,
D.C. Until only five yearsago, Ginter Park, locatedin a once-upscaletrolley-car suburb that has seenbetter days,
was near the bottom of the state'sacademicbarrel the second-worst-perfotmingelementaryschool in the
Richmond Public Schoolsdistricr-which was itself the second-worst-performingschool disuict in the state.
Richmond, state capital and onetime capital of the Confederacy,is a classicexampleof a southern city neady
collapsedin on itself after decadesof worsening economic forrunes and out-migration to its exurban ring. The city
boasts a handful of genuinelywealthy or artfirlly gentrified neighborhoods,but there is also much poverty, with its
attendantsocialproblemsof cdme,drugs,teenpregnancy,and single-parenthouseholds.Of Richmond's25,000
youngstersenrolled in public school, 95 percent are African American, and 70 percent qua[ry for free or reduced-
price lunches, a marker of poverry.At Gintet Park Elementary,where all but a tiny handful of srudentsbelong to
minority groups, the children are on aver:'geevcn poorcr, with 83 percent qualifying for the free-lunch program.
During the year 2000, only five publ-icschoolsin Richmond (and certainly not Ginter Park) were fully accreditedby
the state of Virginia. Accreditation means that75 percent of studentsate proficient at gradelevel in English,
mathematics,science,and history, as measuredby a seriesof tough standardizedteststhat the stateput into place in
1999.This year, thanks in part to a revolution in instructional methods in which the readingprogram at Ginter Park
Elementary playeda key role, and thanks in part to a controversialBush administration gtants program called
Reading First, a ptovision of Bush'sNo Child Left Behind Act that funded the teachingmethods on view in
Johnson'sclassroom,45 of Richmond's49 public schoolsenjoy full stateaccreditation.DespiteRichmond's
successstory--detailedby educationanalystSol Stern in an article for the Winter 2007 issueof the Manhattan
Instirute's Ciry Journal and duplicatedin school districts acrossthe nation that have availedthernselvesof Reading
First grants--it is safeto saythat phonics and its relatedinstructional components are no more popular in the public
education establishmentthan they were five yeaff ago.This despitethe fact that the literacylevels of America's
schoolchildren range from appallinglylow to mediocre by both nat-ionaland comparativeinternational standards.
For example,nearly rwo-thirds of America's fourth- and eighth-gtadersfaiied to attain scoresof proficient (again
meaning "at gradelevel") in readingin 2005 on the National Assessmentof Educational Progress(IrlAEP), a
nationwide samp]lngsurvey of academicachievement.Even worse, some 40 percent of thoseyoungsterscould not
even read at the "basic" level for their grade:a barebonesstandardof fluency and comprehensionthat would mean
that as adults they would be able to make senseout of a bus scheduleor a simple instruction manual.Poor and
minority children fared even worse, wlth 65 percent of them unable to read even at the basiclevel for their grade
and less than 16 percent reachingthe proficiency level. American young people are 2lso significantlybehind their
counterparts in other developedand even some developingcountries.On the Progtessin International Reading
Study (PIRLS), a multinational test for fourth-gradersadministeredrn2001, the United Statesplacedonly 9th out of
35 participating nations,traiJingtop-rated Sweden,the Netherlands,and England--despitespendingmore per
shrdent on educationthan any other nation in the wodd. On the Program for Intetnational Student Assessment
 (PISA), a test of 1S-year-oldsn 2003,AmedcanstudenlsaffJg$ffit uUootin the nriddle in literacy skills, way
behind their coevalsin top-ranking Finland and a score of other countries rncluding South Korea, Canada,
Australia, and New ZeaLand.Itis an educationalcommonplacethat children who cannot rcad atgrade level by the
fouth grade areunlikely ever to be able to read well enough to tackle the specializedtextbooks they will encounter
in science,history and other subjectsas they move to higher gtades.More likely, they will fall further and further
behind in school, eventualiydropping out in many cases.Despite all this less-than-encouraging data, efforts to teach
the elementsof readingin a direct and systematicfashion--theway LaverneJohnson does at Ginter Park--are
derided at most U.S. education schools as "cutling learningup into itty-bitry pieces,"or "one-size-fits-all,"or "the
factory model," to borrow the words of Yvonne Siu-Runyan,a recendyretired educationprofessor at the Uruversity
of Northern Colorado in an interview for this article. Siu-Runyanis an influential proponent of a competing theory
of reading instruction known as "whole language"that is favored by such influential entities as the National Council
of Teachersof English and the Internarional ReadingAssociation,neady the entire faculty at the prestigious
Columbia TeachersCollege,and the vast majority of American elementary-schoolteachers,according to a 2002 polJ.
conductcd by the Manhattan Institute. Siu-Runyanand her counterpartswould probably find much to cirttcizeat
Ginter Park, where the mandatory two and a half hours of reading instnrction vasdy exceedthe hour or so a day
that most elementaryschools devote to readingin the primary grades.After two hours ofJohnson's direct teaching,
her pupils reftrn to their desks,arrangedin clumps of four around the classroom,or take seatsat one of the four
computer workstations lined up at a wall, or iust sit on the floor vdth a book. It's time for a half-hour of
"enrichment"--independentreading from books of their choice for the more proficient students--and
"intewention"--individual or small-groupwork under supervision fiomJohnson on reading components on which
lessproficient studentsneed extra help. Every child in Ginter Park's five third-grad,eclassrooms,T2youngstersin
all, is testedweekly,along with the rest of the school'sK-4 students,and their number scoresare posted on stickies
in the frst-floor teachers'conferenceroom at the school, so that every teacheris awareof the fluctuating strengths,
'u/eaknesses, and progressor lack thereof of everychild. Futherrnore, every third-gade classroomfollows the same
daily scheduleof instruction in the five componentsof literacy that reading researchersat Harvard University and
elsewherehave identified over the past four decadesand that, it would seem,everyteacherat Ginter Park can rattle
off the tip of his or het tongue: phonemic awareness,phonics, fluency (recognizingwords and their letter-
components quickly and easily,usually testedby having individual studentsread ou[ loud), vocabulary,and
comprehension.All third-gradersat Ginter Park read one story a week fiom Houghton Mifflrn Reading,Grade 3.
In one third-grade classroom,a teacherhelps a boy with phonics, g"tdi"S him as he picks out and lines up, from an
arrayof word-flashcards, everyword that contaixsthe short "e"-soufld:"step," "set," "hotel." In another classroom,
a pile of in-classexercisessitting on a teacher'sdesk have askedthe youngstersto look at a &awing of a common
object (a couch, for example)and identify the one word out of five multiple-choiceitems that contains a letter
combination that is alsoin the word pictured (here,the correct answeris "lunch"). A little girl inJohnson's
classroomwho is clearlyan accomplishedreaderis standing,acruallydancing in slow, swayingcircles,while she
reads aloud to herselfthe story of SleepingBeauty,picked out from one of the nuffrerousattractive chjldren's books
arrangedfor the taking on tables or propped up againstwhiteboards around the room: Grandfather and I, Froggy
Gets Dressed,All the Placesto Live, Androcles and the Lion, The Ufe Cycle of a Salmon.The girl has turned
SleepingBeauty into a private performance for the audienceof one that is her own imagination: reading the
dialoguein different voices for the diffetent characters,following the words on the pagewith her finger, sashaying
in place, so engrossedand so captivating that another advancedreader,inspired, joins in with her own book, R.L.
Stine'sMosdy Ghostly, and her own swayingdance.Johnson's classroom,like the other third-grade classroomsat
Gintet Park, is stuffed with a tidy jumble of visual and written material pitched at 8-year-olds:a wodd globe, a
portrait of Georgel7ashington, and on everywall, postersillustrating simple machines,grasslandsanimals,and the
water cycle from rainfall to faucet, a set o[ multiplication tables,a cursive alphabetwith arrow-direct-ionson how to
form the letters,"The Gifts of the Ancient Greeks,""The Gifts of the Romans,"a [.istof values("compassion,"
"petseverance,""responsibiliry").There are certificatesof "Math Whiz Achievement" for studentswho have worked
their way successfullythrough 100 addiuon problems (Ginter Park teachesarithmetic the old-fashioned way, just as
it teachesreading the old-fashionedway). And lest one think that Poppa'sNew Pants,this week's srory, is dull see-
Spot-run fare reminiscentof the 1950s,it is actuallyas "authentic" a piece of children'sliterature as Charlie and the
Chocolate Factory.Its author, Angela Shelf Medearisof Austin, Texas,is a widely read writer of dozens o[
children'sbooks aboutAfrican-Americanlife (indeed,Poppa'sNew Pantscan be bought on Amazon.com as a
 qfi"*"g illustratorJohn Ward help tell Medearis's
freestanding title). Colorfrrl, highly detailed pictures by tfi8sre#r$
warm and humorous story abour a black farm family and its eccentricmembers in the Depression-eraSouth.
Eisewhere in Houghton Mifflin Reading,Grade 3, are lushly illustrated,information-packed chaptets about
plymouth plantation, Ernest Shackleton'sexpedition to Antarcticz n1'9141916, and BessieColeman, America's
frst black licensedpilot. The materialis not only interestingin itself, but it introduces young readersto worlds and
vocabulariesthat extendwell beyond their own neighborhoods.Being on the premisesof Ginter Park Elementary--
with its high-ceilinged,tall-windowed classrooms,its wide, spodesshallwayswhose walls are decoratedwith samples
of student*art,its riell-stocked Iibrary (calledthe "media center" becauseit also featl.rescomputers and DVD
players),its attentive and energeticteachers,its lively but well-manneredyoungstersin gradesranging from pre-K to
hftit, its ultratraditional curriculum, is like passing*rough a t-imewa{P to the wodd of, say,your grandmothet's
"nd
public school--exceptbetter, becausethe classesat Ginter Park are smallerand the instructional materialsare
Lveter, richer, .not .o-ptehensive, and fortified by up-to-date technology.The miracle at Ginter Park is pardy,
perhaps hugely, due to an aggressivenew school superintendent,DeborahJewell-Sherman.In 2001, the year before
ir"r p--otion to the top posr, while shewas still director of instmction in Richmornd,Jewell-Shermanhad already
in.oqporuted a set of instructional materialscalledVoyager Universal Literacy, healy on phonics and phonemic
u*..n.rr, into the lowest-performing of Richmond's elementaryschools,including Ginter Park. Then, when she
took over the city's educationsystemin2002, one of her fust stepsu/asto standardizethe reading curriculum,
mandating Voyager and the Houghton Mifflin readersfor all Richmond elementaryschools,and then to start
training teacherson how ro use them. Before that, everyteacherhad been fiee to piick his or her own reading
mat.rials and designhis or her own curriculum. This led to rvidespread"hobby teaching,"as one Richmond teacher
called it Instructors left to their own deviceswould sometimesspend the entire school yearworking with their
students on art and other projects that suitedthe teacher'sinterestsand skipping testsand other written assignments
that could be assessed, with the upshot being that the teachersoften "never got alound to teaching anlthing." The
results fiom Jewell-sherman'splan of attackwere immediate.By 2003,22 schoolsin Richmond had achievedfull
state accreditation.The real boost to Ginter Park, and to the Richmond school systemin general,however, also
came in 2002, when Jewell-Shermanarrangedfor the Richmond public schools to accePta modest grant of about
g450,000a ye r, made availablethrough the stateof Virginia, from the ReadingFirst program, which hands out
abour $1 biltion a year nationwide for usein kindergartenand the first three gtadesat schoolsin high-poverry
districts so that the schoolscan set up programsderiving from "scientificallybased"reading research.The programs
must also incorporate the five-part approachto teachingreading--"essentialcomPonentsof reading instruction
well. fuchmond's grant funded a pilot
@CRI)" in the ianguageof rhe srarute--thatthe Ginter Park teachersknow so
program at Ginter park and another bonom-of-the-barrel elementary school in RiChmondthat paid for the hi.itg
tf f"U-ti-e reading consultantat eachschool, comptehensiveinstructional materials,a systemof regular reading
^
assessmentsso that yorrngrt.rr could be given extra help either individually or in small groups, and more teacher
training. Sfithin a coupletf y.^tr, rhe srateof Virginia raisedGinter Park's classificationfrom "low-proficiency" to
"high-proficiency," ,.rd io 2005, the U.S. Education Departrnent recognizedGinter Park as "distinguished" among
el.ir.ntury schools receivingTitle I antipoverty funds. The two ReadingFirst schoolshave become models for
other Richmond schools,as teachersreachedout to train other teachersin the program'smethodology. Reading
First has recently been the subject of a major government scandalof sorts (for the few who know or care about it
outside the Washington Beltway and the wodd of educationinsiders).Last Septemberthe Education Department's
inspector general,John C. Higgins Jr., issuedan audit report concluding that ReadingFirst's administrator,
Chiistopher Doherry, had stackedthe panelsthat reviejwedstates'applicationsfor ReadingFirst grants with experts
who steeredthe starestoward using certainreadinginstructional materialsfavored by Doherty at the expenseof
others, and that some of those experts,ripically collegeprofessorswith backgroundsin readrngscience,had either
personally developedthe approved materialsor actedas paid consultantsto the companiesthat developedthem.
Although Higgini's teporr made no finding of corruption or conflicts of interest, financial or otherwise (the report
referreJ only to "potential" confLictsand the "appearance"of conflict), and there was no evidencethat anyone
connected to the ReadingFrst program had improperly mandatedor recommendedany specific matedalsby name
(the languageof the iSo Cfrla Left Behnd Act forbids this, in fact), Doherry, whose wife had been a part-time
consultant io or. approveclprogram, Direct Instruction, was forced to resign under threat of being fred' One of
the first actions of the new Democratic Congresssworn in this year was a four-hour hearingin April before the
House Comrnittee on Educauon and Labor devoted to rehashingHiggins's report. Higgins disclosedthat he had
refened I'zffureReading First to theJustice D.pot r,.nfF8F 668[fi1. prosecution, and Rep. Geotge Miller, D-Calif.,
chairman of the House Education Committee, stated thag in his opinion, Doherry had turned Reading First into a
"criminal enterprise.rrLately, however, litde has been heard fromJustice or any other federal enuty about Reading
Firsg although Congressis expected to vote on whether and how to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind law
sometime this year,with much pressurefrom the educationestablishmentto changeits provisions drastically.(Ih"
Iaw, which dispersesup to $20 billion rn federal funds to school disuicts annually, is higtdy unpopular with most
teachersbecauseit conditions receipt of funds on student progresson state-administeredstandarcliredtests.)One
reason many critics of ReadingFirst havegrown silent of late is that what Rep. Miller deemsa criminal enteqpriseis
possibly the most successfirlfederaleducationprogram in history. According to an April 19 report ftom the
Education Department, 97 percent of the school districts participating in ReadingFirst reponed gains from 2004 to
2006 of.16 percentagepoints for first-gradersand 15 percentagepoints for third-gradersin meeting fluency goals.
Comparablegainswere reported in reading comprehension:15 percentagepoints on averagefor first-gradersand
72 percentagepoints on averagefor third-graders.The progresswas acrossthe board: for African Americans,
Hispanics, English-languagelearners,disabledstudents,and the economicallydisadvantaged,as well as for the white
middle class.Theseresults have confounded both the education-schooltypes who hate the idea of intensive
phonics, vocabularydrilling, and standardizedtesting,and also the many small-govetnmentconseryativeswho
believe that the entke No Child Left Behind Act tepresentsunprecedentedfederalintrusion into education,which
has traditionally been stricdy a state and local concem. Furthermore, and ironically, the instructional materials from
Houghton Mifflin and Voyager that Doherty's panelsdeemedacceptablein order to qualifir statesfor Reading Frst
grants--andwhich Higgins testified at the House hearinghad generatedan "unprecedented"number of complaints
for having been produced by "commercialinterests"--arethe very materialsthat Richmond educatorscredit with
totrrirg Ginter Park into a model school. (Voyagerwas developedby Reid Lyon, a friend of Bush from Dallas who
was chairman of child development and behavior for the National Institute of Child Health and Human
Development (I{ICHD) from 1991 to 2005;Lyon subsequentlysold the program to ProQuest, an educational
company basedin Ann Arbor.) The materialsmarketedby Houghton Mifflin and Voyager might strike an education
ptofessor as ovedy "commercial," but accordingto the teachersat Ginter Park, they do the job. "We selecteda
program that fit our needs,"said Lynn Smith, Ginter Park's reading coach,concerningthe Voyager materials."It
provided for small, flexible groups so that with the changingdata,we could respond to children's needsin an
individualized way, it encourageddeep thinking by the children, and it included strong phonics. It also contains
extra support for the strong students.It's just a real nice fit." ReadingFirst and the changein Richmond's
pedagogicalculture over the past five yearshave hrd a gilvanzing effect on the morale of Richmond teachers."We
could seeimmediate results," said Cathy S. Randolph, Ginter Park's principal "It's exciting to be successfi:I."In his
CiryJournal article about ReadingFirst, Sol Stern crunchedthe numbers and discovetedthat in 2005 Richmond's
third-gradershad outperformed, by 15 percentagepoints on the statereading test, the black third-gradersin the
pubJic schools of affluent Fairfax County in Northern Virginia, which had tutned down federal ReadingFirst
money on the theory that the program'srestrictionswould interfere with Fairfax teachers'classroomcreativity. C)nly
59 percent of the African-American chiidren in Fairfax were teadingat gade level in 2005, comp'aredwith 74
percent of their counte{partsin Richmond. The Richmond percentagebarely lhgge{ the 79 percent grade-levelratio
for Fairfax's affluent white youngsters.That ReadingFirst has proved to be a runawaysuccessought to be a no*
brarner.Phonics in a manner of speakingis reading:the almost instantaneousprocessby which the human brain
links the troika of spoken sounds,those symbolson the printed page that we call wtiting, and meaning.The pivotal
moment in the movie The Miracle !florker in which the blind and deaf Helen Keller suddenlymakesthe connection
for the frst time betweenthe wodd outside her and the letten that her teacherhas traced on her arm, is a
paradigmaac dramaazattonof the power of the written word as a code of communication. It would seemobvious
that children learning how to read for the frst time might benefit from a thorough and systematicgrounding in
phonics and phonemic awareness.The English languagecontains zlarger number of sounds than many other
languages,thanks to English's heavyinfusion of French after the Norman Conquestand centuriesof changing
pronunciation. While English spellingis lessarbiuary than most people think, the 26 letters of the English alphabet
often have to do double, triple, and quadrupleduty in order to accommodatethe large number of English sounds.
This can be highly confusng to a begrnningreaderwho cannot understandwhy the word "was," for example,might
look like "wass" on the page but is pronounced "wuz"--a pronunciation that is actuallylogical and regular if you
know something about phonics. It would seemobvious, too, that learning how to tead involvds real learrung--
 receiving and internalizing step-by-step instructionr oo tl8$ity'o58t88a"the symbols on the page, fit them to spoken
sounds, and then link those soundsto meaning.Hence vocabularylists and the old,fashionedtechnique of having
novice readers "sound out' words by reading aloud in classin order to associatesounds and letters. Children also
need to learn how to make all those connections quickly and almost unconsciously,,orreadingwill alwaysbe
difficult and unpleasant for them, which is why fluency and comprehension are ke;r measuresof reading skill.
Learning how to readwould seemanalogousto leaming how to play the piano, in rirhich practicing scales,mastering
fingering technique, decoding the notes, and developing a feeling for the rrythm and beauty of the music are
simultaneousbut separatecomponents of the ptocess.All this cofirmon-senseintuition--much of which underlay
the famous phonics-intensiveMcGuffey Readersof the 19th cennrry--isin fact supportedby decadesof 20th-
century scientific researchinto how people actuallylearn how to read, starting with the work ofJeanne Stern licht
Chall, a psychologistwith a specialinterest in fostering the literacy skills of poor chjldren who founded the Harvard
Reading Laboratory at Harvard's graduateschool of education tn1966, Startingin trhe1970s,a flood of reading
studies--anestimated10,000in all--appliedquantitativeanalysisand experimental,control-gtoup-basedresearchto
identif/ the instruction strategiesthat teachteading most effrciendy.The researchersincluded not only specialistsin
education and eady childhood developmentbut also expeftsin such fields as linguistics,psychology,neurology,
genetics,anthropology,and sociology. The resolutelyapoliticalNICHD, part of the National Institutes of Health,
has been funding studiesof reading development since 1964, and has sponsoredlongrtudinalstudiesof 44,000
children in more than 1,000 schoolssince the early 1980s,tracking some of those children and their reading
progressfor more than 20 yearsas they gtew to adulthood. It was all that researchwhich led the NICHD to idenrifr
the five componentsthat appearin ReadingFirst's enablinglegislation(phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency,
vocabulary,and comprehension).The value of thesestudies,their proponents argue,is that like all scientific studies,
they are basedon rigorous methodologies--assessments, for example,not only of how well children can read using
various instruction strategies,but even how they move their eyesas they scana printed page.And, like all valid
scientific findings, the results can be replicated."We know how readingis acquired,"saysLouisa Cook Moats, a
prot6g6eofJeanne Chall's ztHarvard and ditg61e1of the NICHD's Eady ReadingInterventions project ftom'1997
to 2001. "It's learning to processvery specific kinds of linguistic information and build networks that coordinate
phonological processingto the patterns of printed symbolsthat the eye sees,and it's also connecredto meaning and
the building of vocabulary.When I explain how the processworks to teachers,I compareit to an unraveledrope
with the strandssticking out. The strands are all those beginning skills to be woven togetherin the ropel" Reading
looks automatic and natural,Moats explains,but only becauseskilled readersare practicedenough to decode the
symbols at lightning speed. There are many causesfor the resistanceof the educationestablishmentnot only to the
conclusions that Moats and others have drawn about readinginstruction but to the researchthat undedies those
conclusions.One bedrock philosophical principle, however,unites all those who oppose the step-by-stepteaching
of literacy skills: the notion that learning how to read is not at all like learning how to play the piano. Instead, the
proponents of "whole language"instruction contend, it is a natural processakin to learninghow to speak--
something that chjldren don't have to be taught formally but pick up automaticallyif exposedto a sufficiendy print-
rich environment. StephenD. I{rashen, a professor emeritusof education at the University of Southern California
and self-describcd"staunch defender" of whole-languagestrategies,explainedin an email: "[f ny child exposedto
comprehensibleprint wiil learn to read, barring severeneurologicalor emotionai problems." Or, as I{rashen
amplified in a telephoneinterview: "Kids leatn to read by reading."Hence the antipathyof the wholeJanguage
proponents to having childten reada story out of a readersuch as Houghton Mifflin's; that doesn't count as rrreal
reading," to borrow a phrase from Krashen's email. Indeed, textbooks or any other kind of formal instructional
materialate eschewed. In elementary-school classroomsacrossthe country,readinginstructionrypicallyconsistsof
what is called "sharedreading." The teacherreadsa story aloud to the class,often from a "Big Book," an oversized,
large-typeedition of an illustrated children's book of the teacher'schoosing that is propped up on a table or on the
floor in front of the class.The teachermight read the story out loud severaltimes,pointing out rvords that may be
drfficult, and then have the classread the story aloud in unison while the teacherturns the pages.Thete is almost no
individual readingaloud, and the sounding out of words phoneticallyis actively discouragedas tgnding to trun
youngstersinto rote parsersof syilableswho fail to understandwhat they are reading. As for phonics per se, both
I(rashen and Yvonne Siu-Runyaninsist that they indeed incoqporatephonics instrucuon into their reading
staategies,but only in elementaryfashion and on an as-neededbasis--"basicphonics," as lftashen puts it. Whole-
languageinstruction also typically includes pedods of independentsilent reading--"Drop Everything and Read" is
the name for theseimpromptu sessions--inwhich the cfif&"eloffiout and peruse,mzteialof their choice fuom a
classroom library of "leveled books"--that is, books that the teacher deems approprtiatefor theit reading level.
Dudng these sessionsthe teacher typically "models" the process by dropping everything and readiflg silendy from a
children's book, too, on the princrple that seeingother people read encoruagesre"diinr. As for vocabulary,whole-
languageclassroomstypically incoqpotatea "word wall"--an ever-changingcollection of latgeJetrerwords wdtten
on postersthat the children chant together cheedeader-styleand then wtite out. The instructional pdnciples behind
whole language-light on formal content and heavy on assumptions that children vdll leam to read by feeling
enthusiasticabout reading--arc far from new. Indeed, they date back to the end of dhe19th cennrry,to the
educationaltheoriesofJohn Dewey (1859-1952),the pragmatistphilosopher and educationaltheorist who held that
children learn best not by direcdy absorbinginstruction from their teachersin specific subjectssuch as mathematics
or history, but by interacting with the real wodd. School,in Dewey's thinking, should offer a simulacrumof real-
wodd experiencein which learning takes place obliquely as the child explores his or her suroundings under the
guidanceof a teacher.Dewey was in turn influenced by the romantic philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau,who
believed that children were naturally perfect and that educationought to consist of allowing them maximum
freedom to developtheir innate talents.In 1904 Dewey joined the faculty of Columbia TeachersCollege,regarded
rhen as now asAmerica's premier education school p.S. News currendy gives Columbia Teachersits No. 1 rating).
From there Dewey's "progressive"theoties oF pedagogyprofoundly influenced sevetalgenerationsof American
teachersand school boards,nght up until the Sputnik launch of 1,957,when it suddenlylooked as though the Soviet
Union, whose Communist leadershad kept in place a decidedlynon-progressiveeducationsystemdating from
czaristdays,had the United Statesover a barrel in scienceand technology.The Dick andJanereaderswidely used in
American elementaryschools from the 1930sthrough the 1950swere offshoots of a branch of Dewey-ism that held
that phonics instnrction was backwardand proposed that the way to make children literatewas to exposethern to
simple words repeatedinterminably. ("SeeDick, SeeDick run. SeeDick run fast.') This so-called"look-say"
pedagogy(a forerunner to whole languagein its emphasison context and meaningrather than soundsand letters)
met its end after Rudolf Flesch published his bestselling\X/hyJohnny Can't Readin 1955,two yearsbefore Sputnik.
By the eady 1960sit looked as though progressiveeducationhad run its coursein all but the most outr6 private
schools.JeanneChall's 1967 book Learning to Read:The Great Debate, proposed a retrun to thorough grounding
in phonics, but in up-to-date combination with interesting children's literature.Then carnea revolution in pedagogy
that swept through the K-12 gradesin the 1970sand 1980sas thoroughly asits college-levelsister,postmodernism,
swept through the academy.The revolution was called "constructivism." Uke postmodernism,it had its grounding
in arcaneFrancophonetheory: the ideasof the Swisscognitive psychologistJeanPiaget.Piagetproposed that
children progress through distinct developmental stagesduring which they acquire knowledge not simply by
learning it from the outside but by "construcdng" it from within, building upon and reflecting upon what they
alreadyknow in order to dse to new levels of knowing. In Piaget'stheoreticaldialectic,the subjectiveprocessof
Iearning was more important than any parucular content leatned.Indeed, Piagetargued,it was crucial that the
developmentalprocesstaking placewithin eachindividual child's mind not be interfered with, but rather nurtured
and encouragedby the child's teachers.As the ubiquitous mantra of Piaget-influencededucationaltheory later put
it, the teachershould be "a guide on the side,not a sageon the stage."The essenrialconstructivistprinciple is that
teachersshould teachnothing direcdy, but rather function as coacheswhile their studentsbasicallyteach
themselves.This was Dewey's progressivismwith a new, fashionablyContinental face. "The idea is that education is
growth, educationis development,and that childten grow all by themselves,"saidDiane Ravitch, an education
policy analystand autlor of Left Back: A Century of Batdes over School Reform, a mordant critique of
constmctivism. "The idea is that children figure everythingout for themselves,"Ravitch added."There's no
authority." Piagetacquiredan army of American aposdesat education schoolsand elsewhere.Chief among them
were Ftank Smlth, an Australian journalist-turned university instructor, and Kenneth Goodman, an education
professor at the University of Arizona. Smith, whose 1971 book UnderstandingReadingderided the teaching of
phonics, and Goodman are credited as the creators of whole-languagetheory. In a 1967 anicle in an education
journal, Goodman had describedthe ptocess of learning to tead as a "psycholinguisticguessinggame" in which
childten decipherwords on not by decoding them phonetically as Chall maintained,but by following "cues."
^p^ge,
The cues,Goodman maintained,can be the individual letters and soundsin the word--or they can be the larger
context of the story in which the word appears,the artist'sillustrations, or even (and perhapsespecially)the ch.ild's
own previouslyacquiredknowiedge.Likc Smith, Goodman arguedthat phonics instruction was uselessat best,
downright harmfrrl ar worst. "Match-ingletters with sourfdg?r%ff ?%"rttt view of the world," he declaredn a 1,986
boolq What's Whole in Whole Langaage.Dramatically turoing centuries-old principles of reading instruction on
their heads,Goodman maintained that"a story is easierto read than a page, Lpa;geeasierto read than aparagraph, a
pangraph easierthan a sentence,a sentenceeasier than a word, and a word easierthan a letter." Both Smith, who
had never taught readingin an elementary-schoolclassroom,and Goodman, rvho had, deridedthe use of textbooks,
worksheets,and other fonnal instructional material.Smith's 1986 book, fnsult to Irttelligence:The Bureaucratic
Invasion of Our Classrooms,complained about children being forced by their eldensto memorize mountains of
uselessdata. (l\4emonzanonisgenerallyconsideredin constructivisttheory to be developmentallyinappropriate for
elementaryschool) In whole-languagetheory, the teacher'sjob is to identify the child's errors--or "miscues," as they
are called--andnudgethe child in the direction of the coffect cues."Drill and KiJI" is theit dedsive term fot
pedagogythat emphasizesthe systematicteachingof content. Thus began the practice,now a bedrock of whole-
languagepedagogy,of teachers'encouragingbeginning readersto look at the ftst letter of any difficult word they
encounter in a story and guessthe rest, or if that strategyfails to produce results,sirnply to skip the word a:rd return
to it later. Although Goodman refusedto be interviewed for this arricle,statingin a pair of dyspepticemails that he
would not respond to "negative" criticism of his theories,Yvonne Siu-Runyanprovided an exampleof how a
whole-languagereadinglessonworks in practice. "A child encountersthe word'butterflies' in a story," said Siu-
Runyan. "The flrst time he readsit as 'b-flies.' Maybe the next time he readsit as 'butt-flies' and the next time as
'betterflies.'For me to assumehe's not going to get it would be a mistake,because6"ully he'll sayto himselt 'Does
this make sense?'He'll look at the pictures of butterflies [in the bookl and sayto himself, 'Oh, this is a story about
butterflies!'And he'll get it right after that. It's a lot more complicateda processthan handing a child a list of
words." Whole languageand other aspectsof constructivist theory swept through the educationschools,starting
rvith the flagship Columbia TeachersColiege,where Dewey'sprogressiveinfluencehad neverwaned, where courses
on reading pedagogyto this day concentrateon erectinga "theoretical framework" for instruction rather than
teaching teacherswhat actuallyworks in classrooms,and where the school'spublishing affiJizte,TeachersCollege
Press,churns out dozensof constructivist treatiseseveryyear. Smith and Goodman crisscrossedthe country on the
ed-school lecrurecircuit, where they were weicomed with open arms and standingovations by professorsand
srudentsalike. Whole languagecleady appealedbecauseit allowed teachersto do essentiallywhat they liked in their
reading classes,and it relieved them of the arduouswork of ensuringthat their studentshad masteredspecific
literacy skills. Teachersand administratots rushed to create"child-centered" and "learnef-centered"curricula in
every field and at everygrade level ("learner" being the fashionableed-speakword thesedaysfor "student," asit
connotes the constructivistidea that children take chargeof their own education). SandraWilde, an education
professor at Pordand StateUniversity in Oregon, deemedthat learning how to spell,like learninghow to read,
"should ultimately be as natural, unconscious,effortless,and pleasantas learning to speak,"so spellerswent the way
of readersin classroomsacrossthe country. Teachersencouragedyoungstefsto make up their own "invented" or
"independent" spelling,also under the influence of !7ilde's self-described"holistic" approach,which theorized that
children could learn from their spelling "miscues."!7ilde drafted a "Speller'sBill of R.ights"that included "the right
to be valued as a human being regardlessof your spelling."\X/hole-language advocatesand other constructivists also
abandonedconventional tests and letter gradcs,which they thought slighted youngsters'inclividuality,in favor of
what they called "authentic assessment."That usuallymeanshaving studentsassemblesamplesof their work in a
"portfolio" (the oversizedenvelopethat artists take to job interviews) that the teacherthen evaluatesverbally.
Systematiclessonsin gtammar, handwriting, and punctuation also went by the boards,thought to be
developmentallyinappropriate for young children. The teachingof rvriting completelychangedfocus. Teachersin
the primary gradeshad traditionally taught their studentsftst how to construct grammaticaland propedy
puncnrated sentences,then how to form paragraphs,and finally how to build paragraphsinto simple essaysand
stories.All this was abandonedin favor of a kind of writers'workshop approach that focusedon students'self-
expressionand personalreactions.'Journaling," which allows youngstersto choosetheir own topics to write about,
becamea favored classroomwriting activity, even for kindergartnersand first-graders.Studentswere encouraged
not to woffy about grammaticaland spelling errors, as thesecould be cleanedup in an "editing'' processwith the
teacher.Imitating the gtaduatervriting program at the University of Iowa and the copy-deskproceduresat the New
Yorker was supposedto turn 6-year-oldsinto sophisticatedwriters, critics, and thinkers.Two educationprofessors
at Indiana University of Pennsylvania,Donald A. McAndtew and C. Mark Huribeft, in an award-winning 1993
article in the journal of the National Council of Teachersof English, went so far as to urge studentsto indulge in
 "intentional errors" of syntax and usage away of reUeTffl$7affift the ''tyranny" of stand.ardEnglish usage.In
^s
2003 the National Council took its ourn insurtectionist stand against standard English, voting to endorse a
manifesto tided "Snrdents'Right to Their Own Language"--namelythe right to wtite thek homework in hip-hop-
ese,Spanglish,Valley Girl talk, ot whatever othet nonstandarddialect they believebest expressestheir "communiry"
or "personal" identities.Many wholeJanguageteachersdo not bother to prepate leqsonplans or syllabi,relying
instead on queryingtheir studentson what they would like to learn on any particular day. Iike their opposite
numbers in the reading sciencecommunity, whole languageadvocatescan point to plenty of published tesearch,
fattening the education jorunals and bolstering what the wholelanguage proponents insist is their superior approach
to teaching literacy. That reseatch,howevet, almost uniformly consists of anecdotal recollections by its authors of
eureka!moments in their classrooms.The story that Siu-Runyannarratedabout the child who fiodly deciphered the
word "butterflies" is a petfect example.The education-schoolslangterm fot such "qualitative" (in contast to
quantitative) obsewations,analogousto the materialthat anthropologistsrecord in their field notebooks, is
"lddwatching." Almost all kidwatching researchconsistsof teachers'frst-person successstories--because whole-
languageadvocatesate human and they almost never report their classroomfailures."But they're sure that those
reports [in the educationjournals] are 100 percent scientific," saysPatrick Goff a professor emeritus of education at
San Diego StateUniversity in California and reading scienceadvocate."That's becauseyou can get a Ph.D. in
education without ever having to read a singlequantitativestudy. Even my own university would not teach its
students about the empirical evidenceconceming the teachingof reading."Forn-rnately,perhaps,for about 40 to 50
percent of children--the socioeconomictop 40 to 50 percent hailing from upper-middle-class-to-wealthy"print-
rich" homes where the reading of books, magtzlnes,and newspapersis an everydayoccurrence--whole-language
reading pedagogy does litde if any harm. The most verbal of these youngsters, the gifted offspring of lawyers,
collegeprofessors,and Holly'riroodscreenwriters,either akeadyknow how to read by the time they get to
kindergarten or pick up readingquickly no matter how they are taught. Others who are not so nanrally verbal
strugglewith whole language'sguessinggamesand unsystematicinstruction but eventually man^geto read at gnde
level and to write and spell passably.Furthermore,many wholeJanguageproponents, such as Siu-Runyanand
Krashen, are clearlypatient, gifted, imaginativeteacherssensitiveto their studentsasindividuals (Siu-Runyansays
she slips structureinto her student-interest^drivenlessonplans, and Krashen,who currendy teachesin a suburb of
Pordand, Oregon, where whole languageis officially verboten, mns his classesas a kind oF l)ead Poets Society,
ignoring the ban while the administrationlooks the other way). Indeed, even the staunchestsupporters of the five-
component scientific approach to Jiteracyacknowledgethat whole language'semphasison child-friendly classrooms
and high-qualiry children'sliterature are valuablecontdbutions to pedagogy.Those desksarrangedin clusters,not
rows, the children sitting on the floor, and the plethora of stimulating books in LaverneJohnson'sclasstoom at
Ginter Park representsome of the best of whole language'slegacy.Finally, many affluent parentswith progressive
political leaningsactually.prefer the unstructured,arts-and-crafts-orientedmethodology of constructivism, which is
why private progressiveelementaryschoolssuch as the Dalton School in Manhattan and the PeninsulaSchool near
San Franciscocontinue to flourish @y th. time those children enter high school, though, SAT cram coursesand the
r^t racefor Ivy Leagueadmissionsare the order of the day; few of America's top private prep schools operate on
progressivepedagogicalprinciples).The children who suffer fiom the whole-languagerevolution are that bottom 40
percent of American children, the poor and near-poor who come from householdswhere books are seldom seen
and where unschooledparents have starvedtheir offspring of the rich vocabulary and cultural exposureto which
better-off children are accustomedas a matter of coutse.Children whose parents don't speakEngJishat home fare
worst of all in whole language.This gtoup of low-income, print-deprived children is the group that needsdkect
teading instruction most desperately,and as the resultsin Richmond indicate,benefits from it most dramatically.
Long before ReadingFirst becamelaw in 2002, there had been a backlashagainstwhole languageby parents and
school superintendentsunimpressedby their snrdents'low test scoresdespitebeing assuredthat their children were
being taught accordingto the most up-to-date ideas.In 1987 the stateof California mandateda wholeJanguage
approach to readingand writing. Within a few yearsCalifornia'sreading scoreson the NAEP test plummeted to
third-lowest in the United Statesand its overseasterritories; only Louisiana and Guam ranked lower. The decline
stretched acrossthe socioeconomicboard, among the offspring of the college-educatedas well as the offspring of
Hispanic immigrants. Jill Stewan, a writer for the Los AngelesWeekly,visited a second-gradeclassroomat a highly
regardedschool on Los Angeles'swealthy Westside.There she met a litde girl who wrote "I go t gum calls" for "I
go to g).rynclass"in a journal that was entirely free of punctuation (which hadn't been taught yet). In another
classroom, a7-year-oldboy had gotten by with *.-orifift"t1l9.ol&{rt.d reading" story that the teacherhad read
over and over but could not achrally read a singleword of the story on his own. At one Los Angeles school parents
held nacho salesto buy their classroomsforbidden spellers.In ChadesSykes'sbook Dumbing Down Our Kids, a
mother complained that her fourth-grade daughter had received a gade of check-plus (above average) and a
teacher'snotation of "'V7ow!"for these senteflces:"I'm goin to has majik skates.Im goin to go to disenelan.Im goin
to bin my mom and dad and brusr and sisd.We t go to semickey mouse." In 1996 California officially dumped
whole language. (After parents there discovered that their fourth-graders couldn't do long division, a similar, equally
successfulgrassrootsrebeliion overthrew anofher constructivistfad promoted by educationschools, "fizzy"
mathematics--inwhich children aren't taught standardcomputations,the multiplication tables,or conunon
formulas, but spend hours of classtime pretending to be Pythagorasand trying to rieinventhis theorem with sheets
of colored paper.) A short time after the wholeJanguager'evolt,the Los AngelesUnified School District mandated
rhe use of Open Court Reading,a phonics-basedinstruction program marketedby McGraw-Hill that happens to
passmuster with ReadingFirst. DeborahJewell-sherman'sdecisionto mandateVoyaget Universal Literacy in
Richmond also precededReadingFitst. Indeed, after the Califomia debacle,the education-schoolestablishment
began a strategicretreat in its antagonismtoward phonics instruction. Many wholeJanguagepeople now prefer to
use the term "balancedliteracy," which meansweaving a bit of phonics weft into the wholeJanguagewaqp. The
scandal that prompted Christopher Doherty's resignation from Reading First last fall was essentially a plapng out of
the decades-oldantagonismbetween the whole-languageproponents,whose numbers are huge, representingmost
of the faculty members at most education schools,and the reading-scienceproponents,whose numbers are small
but whose philosophy of readinginstruction the No Child Left Behind Act was specificallydesignedto protect.
Doherty's behavior was crude and imprudent--it is dways a mistake to send,ashe did, emailsusing four- and seven-
letter r,'ulgaritiesto refer to his whole-languageantagonists--buthe was certainlywi&in his dghts under the law he
administratedto do exacdyas he did, which was to prevenrwhole-languageprograms from benefiting from Reading
First grants. The chargesof "steering" largely stemmedfrom Doherty's targeting for exclusion one particular
program called ReadingRecovery,a widely used but controversial$9,000-a-year-per-student rutorial systemthat
it
says is scientifically based but actually uses a methodology similar to that of vzholelanguage that has been
criticized as ineffective by some researchers.Doherty's abrasivepersonalirygot him into trouble, but he also got
caught between the languageof No Child Left Behind, which forbids the recommendationof specific instructiond
programs, and the brute reality of reading politics, which hasmeant that only a handful of experts have developed a
handful of products that Me genuinelybasedon scientificreseatch. Doherty's downfall turned out to be a godsend
to the whole-Ianguagepeople, who had hitherto been graspingat such strawsas possiblemiscalculationsin the
improved tesr scoresreported by the Education Department, doubts about the efftcacyof instruction in phonemic
awareness,hints that whoie language,like Marxism, had never been propedy tried, and the perennial complaint that
chjldren taught how to read direcdy don't understandwhat they read.Attacking the very idea of standardizedtesting
rvas anorher perennial tactic, as was politicization. I(enneth Goodman accusedreading-scienceexperts of being
"part of an orchestratedcampaign by the far tight" to discredithis theories,itplyt"g that phonics advocateswere
mosdy home-schooling fundamentalistswho spent their spatetime bombing abortion clinics.Actually, many of
those experts are far morc likely to vote the straight Democratic ticket. Diane Ravitch is a fellow at the Brookings
Instirution in !?ashington, Louisa Moats is a Bush antagonistquick to point out that she believesin global warming
and opposesthe war in Iraq, and Reid Lyon servedat NICHD throughout the Clinton administration. Now, after
the Doherty scandal,there is a new bullet in the anti-ReadingFirst clip: the argumentthat the program mosdy
benefits the "commercial" companiesthat publish readersand other textbooks for profit. That might be a damning
accusationwere it not for the fact that most textbook companiesastutelyplay both sidesof the reading
science/whole languagefence. Houghton Mifflin, for example,publishesthe basalreadersused at Gintet Part<
Elementary and also the storybooks used in many a wholc-languageclass.CertainlyReadingFirst has its defects:
Dohety got caught in the trap of the law's insufficiendy specificlanguageabout which programs are sufficiently
proven to qualiff for grants. And No Child Left Behind has defectsof its own. It is loathed on the left becauseof
its strict accountabilityrequirementsand on the right becauseit doesn'trequire enough accountability.It leaves
statesfree to irggertheir tests so that studentswill shovi enoughprogressto keep the fedetal money flowing. Both
ends of the ideologicalspectrum are likely to push hard for changes,but with a Democratic Congressit is highly
likely that "changes"will mean a watedng down of standards.For the dazzlinglysuccessfirlReadingFirst program,
that would be too bad. Both housesof Congressapprovedlegislationlast month cutting appropriations for Reading
Firsg an ominous sign. Last week in Philadelphia, ull th.l8g8$!ffSmocratic presidential candidates stopped in at
the annualmeeting of the National Education Association,where No Child Ireft Behind has the samestatus as pet
food from China-and duly promised drastic "overhauls" in the act that could scutdeReadingFirst altogether.The
fun:re of Gintet Park Elementary is uncertain, too. Richmond's school systemis expensiveto opefate, and Jewell-
Sherman is often at loggerheads'urith the city's mayor, Douglas Wilder, the former governor of Virginia. Right now,
the third-gradersof Ginter Park go to school in a cocoon of lavish attention and top-notch instruction. Soon
enough, though, they will reach inner-city adolescencevdth all its temptations,and Richmond, despiteits
tremendous educationalstrides,is still besetwith hellhole middle and high schoolsand a dropout rate of nearly 47
percent. Yet Ginter Park's principal, Cathy Randolph, has plenty of hope. "I feel thesechildren will be successful,"
she said. "I know they'll be successfirl."Certainly her school has done more than most to give them that chance.
Charlotte Allen, a writer in Washington, D.C., is the author, most recendy,of THE HUMAN CHRIST,

11
 Page81 of88

Reich,Heidi
May10,2007 9:01AM
Beaton, Meredith;Briggs,
Kerri;Cariello,
Dennis;Colby,
Chad;Ditto, Trey;Dunn,David;
Evers,Bill;Flowers,
Sarah;Gribble,Emily;Halaska,
Terrell;Herr,John;Kuzmich,Holly;
Landers, Angela;MaeGuidwin, Katie;MaddOx,Lauren;Private
- Spellings,
Margaret;
McGrath, John;Mclane,Katherine;Mcnitt,TownsendL.;Morffi,
Jessica;Neale,Rebecca;
Pitts,Elizabeth; Phil;Ruberg,
Reich,Heidi;Rosenfelt, Casey;Scheessele, Marc;Tada,
Wendy;Talbert, Julie;Toomey,
Kent;Terrell, Liam;Tucker,
SaraMartinez;Willibms,Cynthia;
Young,Tracy;Yudof,Samara
Subject: ReportDetailsReading Program Conflicts(AP)

Report
Details
Reading
Program (AP)
Gonflicts
ByNancy Zuckerbrod
AP,May10,2007
WASHINGTON - Officialswhogavestatesadvice onwhichteaching materialsto buyundera federal reading program had
deepfinancial tiestopublishers, according toa congressional reportWednesday.
Thereport, compiled bySenate Education Commiftee Chairman Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., detailshowofficials contracted
byffiegovemment to helpruntheprogram wereat lhesametimedrawing payfrompublishers thatbenefited fromthereading
initiative.
Kennedy's report added newdetailtoa conflict-of-interest investigationbytheEducation Department's inspector general, John
Higgens, whoearlierhadfoundthattheReading FirstProgram favored some programs overothersandthatfederal officials
and
contractors didn'tguard against conflicts.
Thenewreport focused onfourcontractors whoheaded centersthatguided states inchoosingreading programs aimedat
kindergartners through thirdgraders.
It foundthecontractorc "hadsubstantial financialtiesto publishing companies whilesimultaneously beingresponsible for
providing technical assistance to statesandschool Thatdamaged
districts." the program's integrity
andillustrated theneedfor
Congress toheadofffuture thereport
conflicts, concluded.
Thereport zeroed inonfourpeople whodirected theprogram's regionalTechnicalAssistance Centers:
_Edward Kame'enui, who headed thewestern technical assistance centerbased at the Universityof Oregon. Between 2002
and2004,whileholding positions in whichhewasevaluating Reading Firstassessment programs andgiving stateeducation
agencies technical assistance, Kame'enui entered intothreedifferent mntracts withthepublisher Pearson/Scott Foresman, the
report said.
"Duelargely to hiscontracts withPearson/Scott Foresman, Dr.Kame'enui's income soaredin theperiodfollowing the
implementation oftheReading Firstprogram," thereport said,adding thatthemajority of hisroyalties
werederived fromproducts
usedbystates anddistricts inconjunction withReading First.
Kame'enui, whonowworks asa commissioner attheEducation Departments research arm,eamed hundreds ofthousands of
dollarsin royalties fromPearson/Scott Foresman between 2001and2006,thereportsaid.Healsoreceived tensofthousands of
dollars inconsulting feesfromVoyager, another publisherofproducts usedbystates under Reading Firstfrom2000to2003.
ScottForesman alsotapped Kame'enui totravel toeducation conferences andworkshops onthecompany's behalf whilehe
wasthewestern center thereport
director, said.Kame'enui didnotrespond torequests forcornment.
_Douglas Carnine, whoreplaced Kame'enui asthewestern centefsdirector in 2005,whenKame'enui leftto takeuphis
federal position.Previously Camine hadotherrolesrelated toReading First.
Evenasheheaded thewestern center, Carnine worked withandcontinues toworkwithnumerous publishers, thereport said.
Heearned hundreds ofthousands ofdollans in royaltiesfrompublishen thatdidwellunderReading First,suchasHoughton Mifflin
Company from2002to2006.
However, Camine saidin aninterview Wednesday thathisroyalties fromHoughton andotherpublishers
Mifflin werefor
educational programs thathadnothing todowithK-3reading, thefocus ofReading Finst.
_Joseph Torgesen, whodirected theeastem regional atFlorida
district StateUniversity from2003untilthepresent. Torgesen
is co-author of a McGraw Hillreading program thatcanbeusedunderReading First.Thestudyfoundthatfrom2002to 2006,
Torgesen earned thousands of dollarsin royaltiesandotherFdffi8n1Etf8r companies suchas McGraw HillandPearson and
SoprisWest, which laterwas acquired byCambium Leaming,
Inoneintemal +mail,Torgesen questioned whether heshould seekspecial permission friom he department toreview thenew
ScottForesman cuniculum forMaine, "l hada discussion withsomefolksinWashington yesterday wfrorightlypointedoutthatwe
mightwanttothinkaboutrewarding Peanson (/ScottForesman) forsignificantly
strengtheningttreirprogram,nTorgesen wrote.
Torgesen, inaninteMew Wednesday, saida review forthestateofFlorida hadinitially identified
a ScottForesman reading
program asweak.However, Torgesen saidScoftForesman subsequently madesignificant improvements to theprogram, afier
which educationofficialsinMaine asked Torgesen's center toreview theprogram again,
"Thatprompted mye-mail tothefolksinWashington, whosuggested pertaps wemightmakeanexception to rereviewing
ScoftForesman, since theyhadworked sodiligently toimprove theirprogram,"Torgesen said,
_Sharon Vaughn headed thecentral technicalassistance center attheUniversity of Texas-Austin from2003to 2005.She
receivedtensofthousands ofdollarsinroyalties fromPearson Education Inc.and"otherincome" fromVoyager Expanded leaming,
twoprograms usedunder Reading First.
Vaughn's lawyer, Gaines West,saidit wasnoteworthy thatthereportdidnotsaythatVaughn wasimproperly influenced by
withpublishers
herrelationship whileshewasthecentefs director.
Thereportmncluded byrecommending thatCongress adoptnewrestrictions tosafeguard againstfinancialconflictsinfederal
education programs.
"lndividuals
serving onadvisory committees or in thepeerreview process forthedepartment should be prohibited from
maintainingsignificant
financialinterestsinrelated educational products oractivities,"
thereportsaid.
Education Secretary Margaret Spellings is scheduled totestifyin Congress onThursday onffreReading Firstprogram and
problems inthestudent loanindusfy.
SpellingssaidinanAssociated Press interview Wednesday thatshehadnotyetthoroughly reviewedKennedy's reportbut
thatanynewfindings ofwrongdoing would beaddressed bythedepartment.
Shesaid,however, thatit wouldbeimpossible to rundepartment programs withoutrelying onsomepeople withtiesto the
private "We
sector. wantandneedexpertise policy
aswemake anddothiswork," shesaid.
From: katherine
Sent: May 10,20076:58AM
To: Oldham,Cheryl;Conklin,Kristin;Schray,Vickie;Dunckel,Denise;Shaw,Teni; Sampson,
Vincent;Quarles,Karen;Bannerman, Kristin;scott_m._stanzel@who.eop.gov;jeanie_s.
_mamo@who.eop.gov; Manning,James;Beaton,Meredith;Briggs,Kerri;Ruberg,Casey;
Colby,Chad;Williams,Cynthia;Dunn,David;Dorftnan, Cynthia;Evers,Bill;Kuzmich,Holly;
La Force,Hudson;Landers,Angela;MacGuidwin,Katie;Maddox,Lauren;Private- Spellings,
Margaret;McGrath,John;Mesecar, Doug;Neale,Rebecca;Reich, Heidi;rob Saliterman;
Yudof,Samara;Scheessele, Marc,Halaska,Terrell;Toner, Jana;Mcnitt,TownsendL.;
Young,Tracy;Ditto,Trey;Tucker,SaraMartinez;Zeff,Ken
Subject: HousePassesBanon GiftsFromStudentLenders(NYT)

May 10,2007
House PassesBan on Gifts From Student Lenders

By SAM DILLON andJONATHAN D. GI-ATER

$TASHINGTON, May 9 - The House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly Wednesdayto ban gifts and
payments by student loan companiesto universities,showing bipartisan resolve to clean up the $85 billion industry.

The vote, 414 to 3, demonstratedhow politically potent the issueof paying for collegehas become at a rime when
tuition is steadilyrising and millions of srudentsdependon borrowing to finance college.

'cWith this vote," said RepresentativeGeorgeMiller, the Califomia Democrat who leadsthe House education
committcc, "the Housc has takcn a huge step in the right direction to put a stop to those practicesand make sure
that the student loan programs operateon the level,in the best interests of studentsand families trying to pay for
college."

The bill passeda day before Education SecretaryMargaretSpellingswas scheduledto testi$r before the House
education committee about oversight oF the industry.

It comes in the wake of revelationsthat lenderspaid universitiesmoney contingent on student loan volumer gave
gifts to the financial aid administratorswhom shrdentsrely on to recommend lendcrs, and hired financial aid
officials as paid consultants.

The nation's four largeststudentlendersand at least

22 collegeshave alreadysignedon to a code of conduct developedby Attorney GeneralAndrew M. Cuomo o[ New
York.

Mr. Miller was joined by the tanking Republicanon his committee, RepresentativeHowatd P. McKeon of
California, in promoting the bill.'1We're steppingup today for a single, fundamentalreason," Mr. Mcl(eon said
before the vote, "to ensureour nation's financialaid systemcontinues to servethe needs of ow students."

But he also urged that Congressbe careful"not to oveffeach."The bill hasbipartisansupport in the Senate,said
SenatorEdward M. I{ennedy,Democrat of Massachusetts and chairmanof the educationcommittee.

A senior Education Department official said that the agencywas prepared to move qurckiy to draft regulations to
enforce the bill.
Ms.SpellingsisexpecedtofacetoughquestionsThorsdaJFsfd,ilffi.department'spolicingoftheindustry,aswell
rhzt an official with oversight
pori.i", or, .orrfli.t, of interest aftet reporis
as about enforcementof its own internar
orrarrfr"studentloandatabaseheldstockinastudentloancompany'
to "set the record straight"
saidin an interview that the secretarywanted
Ms. Speilrngs,schief of staff, David Dunn Spellingshas convened a task
,fr. tipt it:?r11d * lS"l^t" lenders' Ms'
and show that the a.p^rt n.nt had taken lenders at
make recommendations by tt . of May on how to regulatethe lists of recommended
force that is to "l-ra
university aid offices.
designedto teach
is arsoexpectedto face questionsabout the oversight of ReadingFirst, a program
Ms. Spe[ings
fi. rqgi"r, hasissuedreportsfinding
e.
general,Johi
inspectot
poorchildrer,,o.""afr"iri.l;;;. $eprtllntls prirrut! consultantsoperatedthe program
and awatded
in ho'w officials
conflicts of interest,cronyism anclbias ".ri
grants.
contracted by the education agencyto
Kennedy, in a reporr, added new d_et{l\?ednesdayon how four officiars
IVfr.
publishers'
advise srareson Uffi t.^ding materialshacllucrative ties with
from2002 through
western technicarassistancecenter in oregon
Edward Kame,enui,head of the department,s Foresman from
oilou"t in royalties from Pearson/Scott
May 2005, earnedhundreds of thousand, Kame',enuiin 2005, also earned
that Douglas Carnine,*t o '"pt"..d Dr.
2001 to 2006, the repoft said.It also said
Houghton Mifflin and Pearsonlast year'
royalties_ $168,476*o- i'r.craw-Flill,
also
and Sharonvaughn' who advisedcenual states'
Torgesen,who advisedEastern statesabout matedals, department' the report
Joseph
rro- publisherswhile representingthe
receivedthousandsof dollars in royalties "a".raional
said.
..The department is deeply concernedabout conflicts of
said:
Katherirre Mclane, a department spokeswoman,
in senator Kennedy's feport very seriously'
interesr and takesthe allegationscontalned
will act ag3ressivelyif any wrongdoing
.{wc are studying this report to determineif furthcr actions are necessaryand
is found."

Do You Yahool?
'^r I\'{'il hac the
NIail has thc hest spam protecuon aroun( t http://mail'yahoo'com
best st
Tired of spam? Yahoo!
From: Margaret
Private- Spellings,
Sent: March09,20079:07AM
To: Halaska, Terrell
Subject: Fw:In WarOverTeaching Reading, Clash(NYT)
a U.S.-Local

Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Device

-----Original Message---;
From: katherine mclane
To: rebeccca.neale@ed.sov (tebeccca.nezle@ed.gov>;
Quesinberry,Elaine; Conaty,Joseph;
scott_m._stanzel@ed.gov<scott-m.-stanzel@ed.gov>; Beaton, Meredith; Briggs, Kerri; Ruberg, Casey;Colby,
Chad; S7illiams,Cynthia; Dunn, David; Evets, Bi[ Kuzmich, Holly; La Force, Fludson; Landers,Angela; Maddox,
Lauren; Private - Spellings,Margaret; Mesecar,Doug; Simon, Ray; Reich, Heidi; rob Salitetman
<Robert-W.-Saliterman@who.eop.gov>; Yudof, Samara;Scheessele, Marc; Halaska,Terrell; Toner,Jana; Mcnitt,
Townsend L.; Young Tracy; Ditto, Ttey; Tucket, SataMartinez
Sent Fri Mar 09 05:50:172007
Subject In War Over Teaching Reading,a U.S.-LocalClash Q.{YT)

March 9,2007
In \Var Over Teaching Reading,a U.S.-Local Clash

By DIANAJEAN SCHEMO
MADISON, S7is.- Surrounded by five first graderslearning to read at Hawthorne Elementary here, Stacey
Hodiewicz listened as one boy struggledover a word.

"Pumpkin," ventufed the boy, Parker Kuehni.

"Look at the word," the teachersuggested.Using a method knorvn as whole language,she prompted him to
consider the word's size. "Is it long enough to be pumpkin?"

Parker looked agaln."Pez," he said,correcdy.

Call it the $2 mrllion reading lesson.

By sticking to its teachingapproach,that is the amount Madison passedup under ReadingFirst, the Bush
administration's ambitious effort to turtr the nation's poot childten into skilled readersby the third grade.

The program,which gives$1 billion tngrantsto states,was supposedto end the so-calledreadingwars - the
^year
batde over the best method of teachingreading- but has instead opened a new and bitter front in the fight.

According to interviews with school officials and a suing of federal audits and e-mail messagesmade public in
fecenr months, federal officials and contractors used the program to pressureschools to adopt approachesthat
emphasizephonics, focusing on the mechanicsof sounding out syllables,and to discardmethods drawn fiom whole
languagethat play down these mechanicsand use cueslike pictures or context to teach.
Federal officials who ran Reading First maintain ttt"t ott$tit?f.8i$P"s including regular, systematicphonics lessons
had the backing of "scientifically based reading research" required by the program.

But in a string of blistering reports, the Education Deparment's inspector generalhas found that federal officials
may have violated prohibitions in the law against mandating, or even endorsing, specific curriculums. The reports
also found that federalofficials overlooked conflicts of interest among the contractors that advisedstatesapplying
for grants,and that in some.instances,these contfactorsw'rote readingprograms competing for the money, and
stood to collect royaltiesif their programs were chosen.

Education SecretaryMargaret Spellingshas said that the problems in ReadingFirst occurred largelybefore she took
over in 2005, and that her office has new guidelinesfor awardinggrants. She declineda request for an interview.

Madison officials saythat ayear after Wisconsin joined ReadingFirst, in 2A04,contactors pressuredthem to drop
their approach,which blends some phonics with whole languagein a program calledBalancedLiteracy. Instead,
they gave up the money - about $2 million, accordingto officials here,who saytheir program raisedreading
scofes.

In New York City, under pressurefrom fedetal officials, school authoritiesn 2004 dropped their citywide balanced
literacy approach for a more structured program stonger in phonics, in 49 low-income schools.At stakewas $34
million.

Across the country - in Illinois, Kenrucky, Massachusetts,Maine and NewJersey - schoolsand disuicts with
programs that did not stressphonics were either rejectedfor gtants or pressuredto changetheir methods even
though some argued,as Madison did, that their programs met the iav/s standard.

'qWehad data demonstratingthat our children were learning at the rate that ReadingFirst was aiming for, and they
could not produce a singleounce of datato show the successrates of the program they were proposing," said Art
Rainwater,Madison's superintendentof schools.

Both the House and the Senateare Iaying the groundwork for tough hearingson ReadingFirst, which is up for
renewal this year.

Robert SweetJr., a former Congressionalaide who wrote much of the ReadingF-irstlegislation,said the law aimed
at breaking new ground by translatingresearchinto lessonplans. Under the law, the yardstick of a reading
program's scientific validity becamea 2000 report by the National ReadingPanel.

That panel,createdby Congress,with membersselectedby G. Reid Lyon, a former headof a branch of the
National Institutes of Flealth, set out to review the researchand tell Americans what worked. It named phonics and
related skills, vocabulary,fluency and reading comprehensionas the cornerstonesof effective reading instruction.

Mr, Sweet fuoriy believesthat phonics is the superior method of instruction; he is now presidentof the National
Right to Read Founda:non, pro-phonics group. His e-mail addressbeginsphonicsman.
^
With Reading First, he said,"we felt we could put educationon a new path."

Dr. Lyon, another architect of the legislation,also strongly favors phonics. Teaching children to read by reasonand
context, as Parker did in Madison, father than by sounding out letters to make words, is anathema,he said in an
interview, suggestingthat teachersof the whole languageapproachbe prosecutcd for "cducational malpractice."

Mr. Sweetagreed.'You've got billions used for the purchaseof programs that have no validity or evidencethat they
wotk, and tn fact they don't, becauseyou have so many kids coming out of the schoolsthat can't read," he said,
 of phonics, and saytheir results prove
But educatorsin Madison and elsewheredisagreeaUo"t R?g%Pf.8fdo%tt.tt
their method works.

Under their system,the share of third gradersreadingat the top two levels,proficient and advanced,had risen to 82
percent by 2004,from 59 percent six yearseadiet, even as an influx of studentsin poverry, to
42 percentftom 31 percent of Madison's eruollment, could have &iven down test scores.The shareof Madison's
black studentsreading at the top levels had doubled to 64 petcent ifl 2004 from 31 percent slx years earhet.

And while 17 percent of African-Americans lacked basic reading skjlls when Madison startedits reading effort in
1998, that number had plunged to 5 percent by 2004.
The examschanged after 2004,making it impossible to compare tecent resultswith those of 1998.

Other readingexperts,like Richard Allington, past president of the International ReadingAssociation,also

challengethe casefor phonics. Dr. Allington and others saythe national panel'sreview showed only minot benefits
from phonics through first grade, and no strong support for one style of instruction. They also contend that
children drilled in phonics end up with poor comprehensionskills when they tackle mote advancedbooks.

"This revisionist history of what the researchsaysis *ildly popular," Dr. Allington said."But it's the main reason
why so much of the reading community has largelyrejected the National ReadingPanel report afld this large-scale
vision of what an effective reading program looks like-"

Under ReadingFirsq many were encouragedto use a pamphlet, "A Consumer'sGuidc to Evaluating a Core
Reading Program Grades K-3," wrimen by two specialedu'cationprofessors,then at the University of Oregon, to
gaugewhether a program was backed by research'

But the guide also rewards practices,like using thin texts of limited vocabularyto practicesyllables,for which there
is no baiking in research.Dr. Allington said the central role Washington assignedthe guide effectively blocked from
approval all but a few reading Programsbasedon "made-up ctjteria-"

Deborah C. Simmons,who helped write the guide, said it largely reflectedthe availabletesearch,but acknowledged
that even flow, rro studieshave testedwhether children learn to read faster or better through programs that rated
highly in the guide.

Fatally for Madison, the guide does not consider consistentgains in readingachievementalone sufficient proof of a
program's wofth.

In making their case,city officials furned to Kathryn Howe of the ReadingFirst technicalassistancecenter at the
Univemity of Oregon, one of severalnationwide paid by the federal Education Department that helped statesapply
for grants. But eady on, they began to suspectthat Dr. Howe wanted them to dump their program.

At a workshop, she showed them how the guide valued exposing all children to identical instruction in phonics.
Madison's program is based on tailoring strategiesindividually, with lessemphasison drilling'

Dr. Howe used the Houghton Mifflin program as a model; officials here believedthat approval would be certain if
only they switched to that program, they said.

In interviews, Dr. Howe said she had not rneant to endorse the Houghton Mifflin program and used it oniy for
illustration, and had no ties ro the company. She added that she might have been misunderstood.

"I certainly didn't say,You should buy Houghton Mifflin,' " she said."I do temernbersaying:You can do this
without buying a puichased program. It's easierif you have a purchasedprogram, so you mrght think about that.' "
Dr. Howe said Madison's program might have suited but not those in the five schools applying for
-68f8tt8dE[r?g,
grants. "Maybe fhose snrdentsneededa different approach," she said.

Mary !ilatson Peterson,Madison's reading chief, said the city did use intensive phonics instruction, but only for
struggling chfldren.

After providing Dr. Howe extensive docurnentation, Madison officials received a lettet fiom het and the center's
directot, sa)4ngthat becausethe city's program lacked uniformity and relied too much on teacher judgment, they
could not vouch to Washington that its approachwas grounded in research.

Ultimately Madison withdrew ftom ReadingFirst, saidMr. Rainwater,the superintendent,becauseeducatorshere

grew convinced that approval would never come.
"It really boiled down to, we were going to have to abandonow reading program," the superintendentsard.

A subsequentletter from Dr. Howe seemedto confirm his view. "Madison made a good decision" in withdrawing,
sh_e wrote, "since ReadingFirst is prescriptive program that does not match your district s readingptogram as
^venl
it'standsnow."

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