The debate surrounding the Reading First intervention program is raging as recent studies dispute its effectiveness while many state and local education officials celebrate their students' success with the program.
As the major feature of No Child Left Behind, Reading First is a $6 billion federal program to help struggling readers in the earliest grades. Based heavily on the 2000 National Reading Panel report, the Reading First program requires schools that receive grants to focus their reading instruction on phonemic awareness, phonics, developing fluency, vocabulary, and text comprehension. The panel report's underlying research deemed these elements essential to ensuring that children were reading well by the end of 3rd grade.
School districts also use grants to train teachers throughout the district in instructional techniques for the five target areas. States give funding priority to districts in which at least 15 percent of the students live in poverty.
Although its critics say the program is ineffective and a waste of federal funds, many educators believe that Reading First has succeeded in improving student reading.
"It's literally one of the most effective federal programs that I've ever seen in the history of federal involvement in this domain," says Michael Kamil, a reading researcher at Stanford University. "We've seen reading scores go up. Prior to [Reading First], the trend line was absolutely flat for many years."
Federal Report Incites Controversy
Its proponents hope Reading First data on student achievement outweigh the bits of notoriety the program has picked up along the way.
First, there were the allegations of conflicts of interest because some reading programs seemed to get the nod from federal or state education officials while others were frozen out. Congress responded to ethical lapses or mismanagement by slashing the billion-dollar-a-year program by nearly two-thirds.
Then earlier this year, the Department of Education's research arm, the Institute of Education Sciences, issuedThe Reading First Impact Study: Interim Report saying there was no difference in student achievement between schools with Reading First funds and schools without them. The Interim Reportignited a controversy that has played out in the national media and the halls of Congress. Opponents of Reading First felt the study proved the ineffectiveness of the program, vindicated Congress's drastic budget cuts, and foreshadowed the program's demise.
Critics of the Interim Report note that the researchers' methodology actually compared Reading First schools with schools that had implemented similar programs using different funds. Reading researcher Reid Lyon, a coauthor of Reading First legislation, noted in a USA Today article that the Interim Report "compared schools that implemented the programs funded through Reading First with schools that implemented the same programs funded through district or state funds."
Then, an independent Department of Education panel later issued a similar but more detailed critique of the Interim Report and raised concerns about the forthcoming companion final report from the Institute of Education Sciences.
Russ Whitehurst, director of the Institute of Education Sciences, defends his department's evaluation of Reading First, saying it was assessing the impact of federal funding rather than the effectiveness of specific approaches to reading instruction.
"The question we addressed and have answered in a rigorous way is whether the substantial increments of funding for Reading First schools had impacts," Whitehurst explains. "The answer is, first, that they did have an impact on what teachers did in the classroom. Teachers in schools with Reading First funds engaged in substantially more of the practices favored by the Reading First legislation than did teachers in the comparison schools. Second, we found no impacts on student reading comprehension scores."
The reading researchers who comprised the Reading First Federal Advisory committee urged Congress to avoid further budget cuts until Reading First data from a variety of sources, including state-by-state data, could be analyzed as a whole. Echoing the advisory panel, the Center on Education Policy's (CEP's) Caitlin Scott pointed out the difficulty of finding comparison groups for a study of Reading First effects, based on data the CEP collected about how districts used their education funds.
"The CEP study documented that more than half of the Reading First districts reported using elements of Reading First in non-Reading First schools. It's very hard at this point to find comparison groups that haven't been contaminated by that spillover," Scott says.
State and Local Support for Reading First
Controversy aside, many state education officials and schools have reported high satisfaction with Reading First and increased reading achievement among poor and minority students, according to annual state reports filed with the U.S. Department of Education.
Education officials in North Carolina are among those who strongly believe that Reading First has increased student achievement. The state's K–3 students from all subgroups in the 90 Reading First schools made double-digit gains in reading comprehension in the 2007–08 school year alone, according to state Reading First Director Jackie Colbert.
For example, as measured by beginning-and end-of-year scores on the students' Texas Primary Reading Inventory, proficiency rates for 1st grade black students rose from 26 percent to 75 percent, proficiency rates for 2nd grade Hispanic students rose from 15 to 51 percent, and proficiency rates for 3rd grade students on free and reduced-price lunch rose from 58 percent to 72 percent.
North Carolina also uses state funds to pay for professional development based on Reading First for teachers in 60 other non-Reading First schools.
As a result of such marked improvements in test scores, some education groups have even called for expansion of the Reading First program. CEP, a Washington think tank, has published three reports analyzing Reading First since the program started in 2002. CEP's 2007 Reading First: Locally Appreciated, Nationally Troubled called for increased funding for Reading First to reach more districts but agreed with watchdog groups that the program needed safeguards to avoid conflicts of interest or program mismanagement. These have since been implemented.
A CEP survey of 50 state departments of education showed that 82 percent of officials said Reading First was "very or moderately effective" in raising student achievement. A sampling of school district leaders found similar support. Districts, however, must now contend with lower funding, according to Scott, who authored the CEP report. Whether Reading First funding will be restored remains to be seen.
"Reading First schools are very concerned about reduced funding or loss of funding and how they'll sustain elements of Reading First without the funding," Scott says. "Some districts are looking at ways to use other types of funds. Some districts are looking at ways to sustain some of the elements of Reading First—but not all."
Reading coaches who run school programs and paraprofessionals who assist in reading classes may have to go if funding remains low, Scott adds.
Sustaining Success in Florida
Florida has been working hard to sustain reading programs jump-started by funding, says Evan Lefsky, executive director of Just Read, Florida!, the state's K–12 reading initiative. Despite the loss of 62 percent in federal Reading First money this year, Florida was able to fully fund its schools by using the declining funding model, which reduces the grant amounts in successive years as schools develop their program infrastructure and train teachers.
"All of the principles of Reading First have been incorporated in Florida statewide—the focus on high-quality professional development, the use of strong research-based instructional materials and assessments," Lefsky says. "We've seen a lot of improvement in the capacity of these schools to do their professional development in-house."
Most of the 583 schools in the state that have implemented the program have a strong track record of improving students' reading scores. Since 2002, the number of students performing at or above grade level in 3rd grade has gone from 49 percent to 60 percent at the state's initial cohort of 318 schools, Lefksy says. In addition, the percentage of students with serious reading difficulties at the 3rd grade level has dropped from 35 percent to 25 percent. Schools involved with Reading First for four years have seen improvements of several percentage points in each of those goals.
"All the data across the grades 1–3 have shown continual progress in reading comprehension," Lefsky says. "On average, we've seen very good progress over the last five years."
Nonetheless, there are still low-performing schools, Lefsky says. When Reading First schools do not both increase grade-level performance and reduce the number of reading difficulties, districts must make a plan detailing additional resources they can provide those schools. The list might include assigning a state-level reading coordinator to work with school staff on a regular basis or having state education officials conduct an observation.
- Strong leadership.
- Dedicated teachers convinced that all students could read regardless of language barriers, limited home support, or low socioeconomic status.
- Regular discussion of reading data from a variety of sources.
- Effective scheduling that included a 90-minute reading block, plus time beyond that for intervention.
- Professional development for teachers.
- Scientifically based reading programs that included a variety of material and computer-based intervention.
- Parental involvement.
Looking Forward
Many state education officials are encouraged by the literacy gains achieved through Reading First intervention, but they also realize that there's room for improvement. Colbert would like to see a stronger tie between reading and writing.
"It's not allowable to teach students the writing process during that time, and I do not think that reading and writing should be separated," she notes. "In North Carolina, the standard course of study is that children learn to write from reading."
Reducing the amount of assessment involved would also help, says Colbert, who worked with federal education officials to scale back the testing and still fulfill the intent of the law. Nonetheless, despite its flaws, Colbert still considers the Reading First program an excellent resource for meeting the needs of academically at-risk students.
"Some teachers and administrators were leery going into [Reading First] because they seemed to think it would be very rigid. They have seen the results, and teachers tell us, 'Now I understand how I'm supposed to teach reading,'" Colbert says.
"I've been in education for 37 years, and this has been the first time to my knowledge that schools have had the access to the professional development, the equipment, and the materials they need to implement scientifically based reading instruction with all subgroups of students."
Learn More About Reading First Online
Reading First Awards Database (Southwest Educational Development Laboratory): <LINK URL="http://www.sedl.org/readingfirst">http://www.sedl.org/readingfirst</LINK>
Reading First Impact Study: Interim Report (Institute of Education Sciences):<LINK URL="http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20084016/index.asp">http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20084016/index.asp</LINK>
Reading First: Implementation Issues and Controversies:<LINK URL="https://www.policyarchive.org/bitstream/handle/10207/2719/RL33246_20060120.pdf?sequence=1">https://www.policyarchive.org/bitstream/handle/10207/2719/RL33246_20060120.pdf?sequence=1</LINK>
Reading First: Locally Appreciated, Nationally Troubled:<LINK URL="http://www.cep-dc.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=document.showDocumentByID&nodeID=1&DocumentID=228">http://www.cep-dc.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=document.showDocumentByID&nodeID=1&DocumentID=228</LINK>
Response to the Reading First Impact Study Interim Report:<LINK URL="http://www.ed.gov/programs/readingfirst/statement.pdf">http://www.ed.gov/programs/readingfirst/statement.pdf</LINK>
U.S. Department of Education: Reading First:<LINK URL="http://www.ed.gov/programs/readingfirst/index.html">http://www.ed.gov/programs/readingfirst/index.html</LINK>
U.S. Department of Education: Reading First Advisory Committee:<LINK URL="http://www.ed.gov/programs/readingfirst/advisory.html">http://www.ed.gov/programs/readingfirst/advisory.html</LINK>
