Michael Grunwald writes in The Washington Post today about the political, intellectual and economic inbreeding NCLB has spawned (and that spawned NCLB). Below are a few excerpts from The Education Issue:
The centerpiece of the new research-based approach was Reading First, a $1 billion-a-year effort to help low-income schools adopt strategies "that have been proven to prevent or remediate reading failure" through rigorous peer-reviewed studies. "Quite simply, Reading First focuses on what works, and will support proven methods of early reading instruction," the Education Department promised.
Five years later, an accumulating mound of evidence from reports, interviews and program documents suggests that Reading First has had little to do with science or rigor. Instead, the billions have gone to what is effectively a pilot project for untested programs with friends in high places.
On Sept. 22, the department's inspector general released a report exposing some of Reading First's favoritism and mismanagement. The highlights were internal e-mails from then-program director Chris Doherty, vowing to deny funding to programs that weren't part of the department's in-crowd: "They are trying to crash our party and we need to beat the [expletive] out of them in front of all the other would-be party crashers who are standing on the front lawn waiting to see how we welcome these dirtbags."
Doherty has since resigned, and Education Secretary Margaret Spellings has pledged to review Reading First, emphasizing that the "individual mistakes" detailed in the report occurred before she became secretary. Still, Spellings expressed full confidence in the overall program: "Thanks to Reading First, struggling students are far more likely to get the help they need from teachers using scientifically based classroom reading instruction."
But the report barely scratched the surface of the incestuous process that dominated the formation of Reading First. The initiative didn't promote scientifically based reading instruction, the third goal of No Child Left Behind. And it's providing ammunition to critics of the second goal, strong national standards. The billion-dollar question is whether it may imperil the first goal: Will some children get left behind?
I highly recommend the article!
more @
http://tinyurl.com/nw8mq