Failing in reading

Los Angeles Times: With the No Child Left Behind Act, President Bush took a major role in bringing accountability to public education. No longer would the federal government give unfettered money to schools that weren’t using it wisely to raise student achievement. Failing schools would be required to put Title I money toward offering private outside tutoring; over time, they could be shut down and revamped altogether.

Now it’s time for the administration to walk its accountability talk. Its Reading First program has proved to be a $1-billion-a-year ethical disgrace that hasn’t helped children read better. Congress was right to cut the funding by more than 60 percent for the next budget round; in fact, it was being too generous.

That’s a sad thing to say, considering the good idea behind Reading First: Fund literacy education for children in the earliest grades, using phonics-based curricula that have been found effective in research studies.

Narrow focus

But nearly from the start, schools complained about the program’s narrow focus and its dictatorial approach to how reading was taught. Two years ago, a scathing internal review found that some U.S. Education Department officials had steered Reading First money to companies in which they had financial interests, and had stacked review panels to reflect the views of program director Chris Doherty, who has since resigned.

In one e-mail, Doherty directed a staff member to discourage a rival of his favorites, referring to the company as “dirtbags” and saying, “We need to beat the (expletive deleted) out of them” to show all would-be competitors that they were unwelcome.

The Education Department released a new study last week that found, despite the $6 billion spent thus far on Reading First, that it hasn’t improved reading either.