Reading First program is under investigation

09/27/05 -- The Reading First program, one of President Bush’s major education initiatives under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), is under scrutiny following complaints of mismanagement and conflicts of interest.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General has opened a preliminary investigation into the $1 billion-a-year program, designed to help schools teach reading to disadvantaged children in grades 1-3.

Allegations against the program center on two issues: One is that federal officials and government-hired contractors improperly directed or pressured states and school districts to use a specific assessment tool to test student reading skills and also, on occasion, encouraged the use of select reading programs.

Such pressure, critics maintain, violates NCLB’s prohibition that federal employees must not “mandate, direct, or control a state, local education agency, or school’s specific instructional content, academic achievement standards, assessments, curriculum, or program of instruction.”

Allegations also have been directed at government-hired contractors and advisers who helped implement the program because of apparent financial ties -- as authors or consultants -- to publishers and assessment centers that have much to gain from federal grant monies.

The growing chorus of complaints prompted Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) to write to U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings in June to express his concern.

Lugar, a supporter of the Reading First program, wrote “at best it seems that there has been a lack of clarity” flowing from the Education Department about which programs qualify for funding. “Even more disturbing,” he added, there are reports that one or more officials involved with the Reading First program “may have a conflict of interest in promoting” the selection process for reading materials.

‘No federally approved list’

Deputy Secretary for Education Raymond Simon wrote back to Lugar July 11 in defense of the program’s management. According to Simon, department officials have been “clear and unequivocal” and “have repeatedly stated that the department does not approve reading programs or materials for use with Reading First funds and there is no list of approved materials.”

A department spokesperson told School Board News it would not be possible to interview Reading First officials until the department’s inspector general has completed an “audit” of the program.

But, she noted, “we stand by the Reading First program and its requirements for high-quality, scientifically based classroom reading instruction and assessment. There is no federally approved list of instructional materials or assessments.”

In previous public statements, Chris Doherty, director of the Reading First program, also has rejected the allegations. “We take that stuff as seriously as it can be taken, because we feel that would be a death blow to the program,” he told USA Today in August.

Few question the basic goal of Reading First -- to raise student reading skills by directing funds to train teachers and pay for textbooks, assessments, and other instructional material that is based on scientifically based reading research.

Since the program’s 2002 launch, it has distributed $4.3 billion to states and more than 4,700 schools in 1,400 districts nationwide.

But critics of the program contend federal officials and their agents were heavy-handed in their implementation of the program. For example, during the initial grant application process, education officials in several states reported feeling pressured to drop the reading assessments they were using -- and adopt the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS), an assessment tool developed at the University of Oregon.

Conflicts of interest

Others reportedly have complained that federal advisers hired to help states review their grant applications went beyond their scope -- and made clear that focusing on certain instructional materials would speed up grant approval. The result, critics contend, was that states and districts favored some reading programs over others.

One of those making such an allegation is Robert E. Slavin, co-founder of the Success for All Foundation, a nonprofit organization with a widely respected reading program used in 1,100 schools in 46 states.

Success for All has been subject to extensive research -- more so than many reading programs. But Slavin claims school officials have told him they felt pressure from state officials and federal reviewers to drop Success for All in order to qualify for Reading First funds.

Another educator who filed a complaint, with Georgia education officials, is Cindy Cupp, a retired director of curriculum and reading for the Georgia Department of Education.

Cupp produces a modest reading program, called Dr. Cupp Readers, which is used in about 100 Georgia schools. She says several schools have dropped the program after their districts applied for Reading First grants.

According to Cupp, consultants hired to review districts’ grant applications evaluated the reading programs the districts planned on using. She says at least one district received a low score on its application, with a reviewer expressing concern about the Dr. Cupp Readers. Yet, the reviewer later acknowledged having never even seen the program.

The allegations have sparked considerable speculation about what is happening inside Reading First. Some have attempted to explain away the allegations as part of the inevitable problems associated with the fast start-up of a large program. Others says federal advisers share similar views about reading instruction and were simply too aggressive in pushing those views.

A more inflammatory explanation, however, is that some federal contractors and advisers were influenced by their association with assessment and reading programs that stand to gain financially from the massive grant program.

The widespread acceptance of DIBELS is a case in point. According to a report by the Center on Education Policy (CEP), a nonpartisan, Washington, D.C.-based research group, at least 42 states use the assessment tool or include it on a list of assessments available to local school districts.

Some argue DIBELS has been so widely embraced because it was an assessment tool well-fitted to Reading First. But others see a darker motive, noting that several federal advisers had links to the DIBELS program.

For example, according to Education Week, Kentucky officials complained in 2003 that a member of the federal review team working on the state’s grant application was a DIBELS trainer and the committee formed to evaluate the state’s assessments was a researcher who had designed DIBELS.

A matter of perception

For Slavin, these relationships deserve closer scrutiny. “It is quite extraordinary, in my experience, that the U.S. Department of Education has a very small office that runs Reading First . . . and the people who really run this are a set of technical assistance centers [at three universities], all of which are led by people who are authors or have been beneficiaries of the very programs that have dominated Reading First.”

Yet, even critics cannot offer proof that some contractors involved with the program have actually taken advantage of their position to seek financial gain. For now, it is the perception that rankles -- and has publicly been refuted by several of the contractors identified.

With the issue now before the Education.Department’s inspector general, however, some educators are suggesting a larger question still looms over Reading First: Is it successful?

Although advocates of the program point to anecdotal evidence of student progress -- and many local school officials have expressed satisfaction with the program -- CEP President Jack Jennings says it’s too soon to tell how the program is doing.

The program “is one of many things going on in schools,” he says. “You also have NCLB demanding accountability. You have states with accountability programs. Local schools are trying to raise test scores. All these things are happening at the same time, so it may be hard to isolate the effects of Reading First.”

At the local level, Jennings says, the allegations give school board members good reason to at least ask questions if their schools receive grant money. Are reading scores going up? Do teachers think the program is making a difference?