A RECENT study by the Institute of Education Sciences, the research arm of the US Department of Education, raised doubts about the effectiveness of the Reading First program. The study indicates that despite the $6 billion spent on the program by the US Department of Education since 2002, students scored no better on comprehension tests than their peers who didn’t participate, The Associated Press has reported.
The Reading First program was created in 2002, aiming to ensure that all students can read at or above grade level by the end of grade 3. US President George W. Bush and Education Secretary Margaret Spellings have championed the program as an important part of the No Child Left Behind Act. About 1.5 million children in about 5,200 schools in 13 states have participated in the program.
The study looked at students in first through third grade from 2004 through 2006. For each of three samples, researchers studied 30,000 to 40,000 students. Researchers found that teachers in Reading First classrooms spent about 10 minutes more each day on instruction in the five areas emphasized by the program — awareness of individual sounds, phonics, vocabulary, reading fluency and comprehension — than colleagues in schools that didn’t receive program grants. But for all their effort, their students’ reading scores on standardized tests were nearly indistinguishable from those of students in other schools.
The study suggests that a greater emphasis on decoding skills and not enough emphasis on reading comprehension may be one reason that the program has not raised reading comprehension scores.
The US Congress, against the wishes of President Bush, recently reduced Reading First’s funding for fiscal 2008 from $1 billion a year to $393 million annually. Previously, funding had been $1 billion annually. “It’s no surprise that Reading First has been a failure,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, who led the fight to cut the program’s budget.
President Bush’s fiscal 2009 budget seeks to restore funding to previous levels. In addition, the US Department of Education has been coaching states on how to find other federal dollars to preserve the program.
Officials of US Department of Education said the study would help them better implement the Reading First program.
