Re: University of Oregon program scrutinized

["Robert Debuhr" <bdebuhr@bresnan.net>]

ARNers,
I recently had a request for informtion about the PAL and KPALS program, so 
went searching for the reseach. Didn't find much, but learning that it is a 
scripted program from Sopris West I was drawing the connection to the all the 
Reading First dialog on this list. I find it referenced on SMU site as well as 
Virginia Dept. of Education.
I was thinking that I'd seen something about this program in connection with 
U. of Oregon, could that be true - connection with DI stuff?
As anyone experiences and or knowledge of research validating this program?







On Sat, 30 Sep 2006 12:13:38 -0400
 "Nancy Patterson" <patterna@gvsu.edu> wrote:
> These are the folks who have brought DIBELS to schools.
>
> Nancy
>
> Scandal touches on UO reading program
> By Anne Williams
>
> The University of Oregon College of Education figures prominently in a 
> blistering federal review that found breaches of ethical standards - and 
> possibly the law - by a top official in the Bush administration's $5 billion 
> Reading First program. 
> The Inspector General's report, released Friday, is laced with references to 
> the UO and four well-known reading experts with current or past UO 
> affiliations - Edward Kame'enui, Doug Carnine, Jerry Silbert and Deborah 
> Simmons. 
> The report suggests the first three were involved, at least peripherally, in 
> Reading First Director Chris Doherty's attempts to steer states toward 
> adopting reading assessments and programs he favored - particularly those 
> aligned with Direct Instruction, a highly structured, phonics-based teaching 
> model developed at the UO 30 years ago. 
> Since its launch in 2002, Reading First, a key component of President Bush's 
> No Child Left Behind legislation, has awarded nearly $5 billion in grants - 
> including $36 million in Oregon - to boost reading at low-achieving schools 
> with high poverty rates using research-based programs. No Lane County schools 
> received Reading First money. 
> The 33-page Inspector General's report includes excerpts from e-mail 
> correspondence among Doherty, Carnine, Kame'enui and Silbert that bolster 
> allegations of ethical lapses by Doherty and other U.S. Department of 
> Education officials. 
> It also underscores the singularly powerful role the UO College of Education 
> has played in shaping the Reading First program. 
>
> Many of the e-mail excerpts in the report revolve around the release of a 
> 2002 review meant to guide Reading First grant recipients and other educators 
> in selecting and using reading assessments for children in kindergarten 
> through grade 3. 
> That review, by the UO's Institute for the Development of Educational 
> Achievement, was commissioned by the National Institute for Literacy, a 
> federal agency separate from the Department of Education that provides 
> leadership on literacy issues. Kame'enui, then director of IDEA, led a 
> seven-member Assessment Committee that researched and reviewed 29 different 
> assessments. 
> The report touches on potential conflicts of interest within the Assessment 
> Committee, and implies that the review may have been narrow in its scope. It 
> notes that, while there are dozens of assessments on the market, the 
> Assessment Committee reviewed just 29, 24 of which were deemed sufficiently 
> effective. 
> In the case of seven of those 24 approved assessments, members of the 
> committee had either developed the programs, provided professional technical 
> assistance or run the company selling the product. 
> The report says Kame'enui decided to present the final review as "a singular 
> effort" on his part, rather than as the collective work of the committee. One 
> of his explanations, according to the report, was that because several of the 
> committee members were authors of the assessments reviewed, "the perception of 
> a conflict of interest in shaping the final report was a concern." 
> In an interview Tuesday, Kame'enui said he alone wrote the report and noted 
> that it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to avoid such 
> conflicts, given the small pool of national reading experts. 
> "Unfortunately, the people who you find who know the psychometrics 
> (measuring mental functions) and who know the research and know reading are 
> obviously going to be authors of instruments," said Kame'enui, who has been on 
> leave from the UO since July 2005 to serve as Commissioner of the Department 
> of Education's National Center for Special Education Research in Washington, 
> D.C. 
> As for the report's implication that his committee's review was too limited, 
> "It reflects a supreme naivete about the time it takes to review a technical 
> instrument," he said. 
> According to the report, Doherty inappropriately pushed for the review's 
> release on the IDEA Web site prior to approval by the NIFL, which had 
> commissioned it. In several e-mails, Kame'enui and Carnine sought advice from 
> Doherty about when and how to release it, and what to say if asked who 
> initiated and paid for it. 
> The extent to which the Inspector General found fault with actions relating 
> to the review's release isn't clear from the report. A spokeswoman from the 
> office, Catherine Grant, said she could not clarify. "The answer is the report 
> speaks for itself," she said. 
> In Tuesday's interview, Kame'enui stressed that he, as an independent 
> contractor, had to defer to federal officials as to the timing and nature of 
> the review's release, as well as its sponsorship. He said the Inspector 
> General's report should not reflect poorly on the UO. 
> "On its face, it may appear to be guilt by association, but what it reveals 
> is the University of Oregon faculty were important players in this whole 
> enterprise - important because we did a lot of research, and we did the work 
> with integrity," he said. 
> Both Carnine and Kame'enui, as well as Silbert, are mentioned in a section 
> of the report alleging that Doherty intervened in 2003 to influence 
> Maryland's selection of reading programs. Under the No Child Left Behind law, 
> the U.S. Department of Education is prohibited from endorsing curriculum or 
> mandating, directing or controlling a state's programs. 
> According to the report, it was a tip from Silbert - then a consultant with 
> RMC Research Corp., which contracted with Reading First to provide grant 
> assistance to states - that prompted Doherty to contact the Maryland State 
> Department of Education and try to thwart the state's plans to relegate 
> Reading Mastery to supplemental status. Reading Mastery is a Direct 
> Instruction program. 
> In an e-mail to Silbert and Carnine, Doherty said not having Reading Mastery 
> as a core reading program would be "HORRIBLE" for many Baltimore schools. 
>
> Doherty asked Carnine and Silbert if they knew Michael Coyne of the 
> University of Connecticut, who was working with Maryland education officials. 
> Carnine, then an associate at IDEA, sent an e-mail to Kame'enui, asking him to 
> forward it to Coyne; it also was copied to Doherty. 
> It said: "Just mention that [Baltimore] has many schools using RM [Reading 
> Mastery] as a core program with EXCELLENT results but that [the Maryland 
> department], for all the wrong reasons, left to its own devices could well 
> shunt RM off to the side with the kiss-of-death as a 'supplemental' or 
> 'intervention' program. And, once [the Maryland department] did something like 
> that, it would be much harder to have them undo it." 
> With further guidance from Deborah Simmons - who, with Kame'enui, wrote the 
> 2003 "Consumer's Guide for Evaluating a Core Reading Program" - Maryland 
> adopted Reading Mastery as a core program. Simmons has since left the UO. 
> Carnine, a co-developer of Direct Instruction and UO professor emeritus, 
> declined comment in an e-mail to The Register-Guard. He said he expected the 
> College of Education to issue a statement; as of Tuesday night it had not. 
> "We're still going through the report right now to determine what the 
> implications are," UO spokesman Phil Weiler said. 
>
> In an interview Monday, Silbert, a developer of Direct Instruction writing 
> programs, explained that there had been a "misconception" among Maryland 
> officials that Reading Mastery could only be used as a supplemental program, 
> and that someone from the Baltimore schools had called asking him to help 
> clarify that that wasn't the case. 
> He said the Inspector General's report is off the mark and praised Doherty's 
> commitment to lifting achievement among underprivileged children. 
>
> "From my perspective, (Doherty) was really very strong about us not 
> specifying any curriculum, and he kept saying it over and over again," 
> Silbert said. Silbert now works for the UO's Western Regional Reading First 
> Technical Assistance Center, which works under contract with the state 
> Department of Education to administer Reading First grants. 
> Doherty stepped down as Reading First director on the eve of the report's 
> release and will resign from the U.S. Department of Education effective Oct. 
> 1, a department spokesman said. 
> Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings said last week that she would 
> follow all the recommendations included in the Inspector General's report. 
>
> While an independent research group recently found Reading First to be 
> highly effective, last week's Inspector General's report also alleges, among 
> other things, that program officials: 
> * Stacked grant-application review panels with experts who favored Direct 
> Instruction. 
>
> * Screened panelists for conflict of interest, which was not required under 
> the law, but then failed to identify those with professional connections to 
> favored programs. 
> * Made states meet additional conditions in grant applications that were not 
> required by law. 
>
> * Withheld and/or edited the full comments of review panels, giving states 
> summarized responses to grant applications. 
>
>
>
> Nancy Patterson, PhD
> Literacy Studies Program Chair
> College of Education
> Grand Valley State University 
> 920 Eberhard Center
> 301 W. Fulton
> Grand Rapids, Michigan 49504
> 616-331-6226
> patterna@gvsu.edu
> http://faculty.gvsu.edu/patterna
> -------------------------------------------------------
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Bob DeBuhr
"One needs to be slow to form convictions, but once formed they must be
defended against the heaviest odds."
    Mahatma Gandi