May 2003 — Special Feature

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Challenging Districts to 'Put Reading First'

By Larry Berger and Greg Gunn

When it comes to the legislation known as Reading First - a law with profound implications for how our children will learn to read - President George W. Bush's administration has backed up its words with forceful policy, its policy with unprecedented amounts of money, and its money with a plan for vigilant enforcement. As one education publishing executive put it, "The feds are serious about these reading issues - they are playing to win."

Reading First is one of the largest single initiatives within the No Child Left Behind Act. It is expected to deliver more than $5 billion to eligible districts over the next five years for K-3 reading - the curriculum area that is considered the crucial early warning system for leaving a child behind. The evidence concerning the role that reading plays in the rest of academic success or failure is overwhelming, as is the documentation of the inadequate reading instruction that disadvantaged children receive at home and in school. Education policy needs to be ambitious if it is going to confront these problems, and even Reading First's critics concede that it is ambitious.

Reading First and the District

The challenge for ambitious federal education policy is always the issue of local control. If you read through the first 500,000 phonemes of NCLB, you eventually come to this passage: "Nothing in this title shall be construed to authorize an officer or employee of the federal government to mandate, direct or control a state, local educational agency or school's specific instructional content, academic achievement standards and assessments, curriculum or program of instruction." In other words, the federal government cannot tell schools precisely what reading programs and assessments to buy. Still, the Reading First policy wields as much influence as it can over the types of reading programs and assessments that will be purchased by Reading First schools. This influence, and how it will filter down to the district level, has been a cause of much confusion for district administrators.

The legislation exerts this influence by insisting on "scientifically based reading research" (SBRR), citing this phrase more than 20 times as it defines what makes reading products and programs fundable. The "science" it refers to is based upon the principles of rigorous experimental design, which test reliability, validity and efficacy, or the predictive value of reading products and practices. These principles guided the findings of the National Reading Panel (www.nationalreadingpanel.org/Publications/publications.htm), an interdisciplinary team of reading experts who were tasked by Congress to determine what the research has proven about how to help children learn to read. The panel recommended that instruction, assessment and professional development should focus on the "five big ideas": phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension. The panel favors explicit instruction in phonics and phonemic awareness. In following the recommendations of the panel, Reading First lands closer to what has been called the "phonics" camp of reading instruction and further from what has been called the "whole language" camp. The report also encourages the use of technology to support the teaching and learning of reading, although it laments the dearth of scientific research to support the selection of technology products.