A preliminary study of Reading First finds no improvement in reading comprehension by third grade compared to schools that didn’t receive RF funds.
Jay Greene says it’s a well-designed study. The lack of effect may reflect weak implementation or the fact that some control-group schools used the same reading curriculum without federal funds.
Fordham’s Mike Petrilli says the study didn’t look at a nationally representative sample of RF schools. Early adopters weren’t included in the study; neither were the lowest scoring schools that probably are the most likely to benefit. Instead the study compared schools that barely qualified for funds with those that barely missed qualifying. If RF makes a difference in very needy schools but not in borderline schools, that wouldn’t show up.
The Bush administration already has slashed RF funding; it would be a shame if one interim study causes it to vanish. Many principals and superintendents think it’s working in their schools.
But this is just special pleading. They compared schools that used Reading First with similar schools that didn’t use Reading First, and the Reading First schools did no better. That’s bad news, no matter how you spin it. It means that Reading First, as practiced, isn’t better than whatever the other schools are using.
Maybe there’s a way either to change Reading First, or to get schools to follow the program better. But we have to look at whether, in the real world of real schools, Reading First is better. We want it to be better, because we want children to learn to read. We hope it’s better. But wanting and hoping don’t make it better.
“But remember that this is the program that many touted as the thing that would cure what ails us,” Jay Greene remarks in the comments at his blog. Right. And it isn’t curing what ails us. That’s sad.
Cardinal Fang said, “And it isn’t curing what ails us. That’s sad.”
Yes, it is sad. And it will become sadder and sadder over time. Reading First did not fail because it is a poor program. Programs don’t teach children to read. Teachers teach children to read and the average teacher does not know enough about the structure of the English language to help children learn to read, spell, and write very well. Teacher education majors have the lowest ACT/SAT scores of all college majors. Prior to college, they have learned little about language when they were in elementary and high school. (In a recent study, 7 of the 10 lowest scores on the GRE were achieved by education majors.) Teacher education majors must take their courses in education departments that are dominated by whole language proponents and constructivists who not only teach them little or nothing about the English language (or anything else for that matter) but also tell them that knowing about language is unimportant. Teacher education majors become teachers who cannot teach the language because they know little about language. Moreover, those of us who try to teach them about language are criticized for doing so.
I’ll know things have changed in the education field when I stop meeting teachers at all levels of education who don’t know the short /a/ sound, who can’t identify the number of phonemes in the word /plant/, who think that the word boy is a verb, who can’t divide words into syllables, who think that it’s a good idea to teach kids that when two vowels go walking the first one does the talking, who don’t know that the letter y is both a consonant and a vowel, who don’t know the difference between a prefix and a suffix, who think that learning to read is natural, and on and on and on. I’m not going to hold my breath.
It’s not the program that’s important–it’s the knowledge that the teacher has about language structure that is important for teaching children to read and spell.
More money will make the program more better, won’t it?
“Instead the study compared schools that barely qualified for funds with those that barely missed qualifying.”
If I understand the sample from this study, the schools were in the same district. They compared those that were on the bottom of the most eligible schools in a district to the next school that was not eligible. So if there were 15 schools ranked and 7 became RF schools, the 7th (RF) and the 8th (non-RF)ranked schools were compared. This makes logical sense if those schools had nothing whatsoever to do with each other. But it does not tell us much when these two schools likely had the same curriculum and, eventually, many non-RF schools in a district look very much like RF schools. I asked an assistant sup. recently if I would be able to tell a RF from a non-RF classroom in her district and she didn’t think I would be able to. That is what is at the heart of RF–sustainability. Teachers get good professional development in the RF schools and it carries over to those in the same district that were not selected. Good instruction (which I have witnessed in RF schools) can be contagious.