Reading First: 'Science' or Politics?

The Bush Administration has been using the Reading First program to reward political cronies and ideological allies, ignoring a legal mandate to make funding decisions that reflect "scientifically based research," according to federal investigators. These and other findings are detailed in a report by the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Education, released on 22 September 2006.

As a result of favoritism and conflicts of interest, the IG found, states were pressured to approve materials from only a handful of preferred publishers. Virtually all others were excluded from participating in the Reading First program, which has provided $4.8 billion in grants to states and school districts since 2002.

The disclosures brought calls to hold Bush Administration appointees accountable for the alleged abuses. Rep. George Miller (D-Calif), the ranking Democrat on the House Education and Workforce Committee, charged that Reading First officials had "wasted taxpayer dollars on an inferior reading curriculum for kids that was developed by a company headed by a Bush friend and campaign contributor. Instead of putting children first, they chose to put their cronies first." Miller asked the Justice Department to initiate a criminal investigation.

One beneficiary of Reading First has been SRA/McGraw-Hill, whose CEO, Harold McGraw, has been a major donor and fundraiser for Republican candidates, including George W. Bush. Another is Voyager Learning, headed until 2004 by Randy Best, a "Bush Pioneer" from Dallas who raised more than $100,000 for the Bush-Cheney ticket.

The IG report quoted extensively from emails by Chris Dougherty, director of Reading First, who made no effort to conceal his biases. In advising his staff to reject the application of one publisher, he wrote: “They are trying to crash our party and we need to beat the [expletive deleted] 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."

In another message to President Bush's "Reading Czar," Reid Lyon, Dougherty gloated about having "beaten Maine" – that is, forcing the state of Maine to switch to a favored publisher. "I like your style," Lyon replied.

Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings promised to rectify "individual mistakes" in the Reading First operation, noting that they "occurred before I became Secretary of Education." But she maintained that the program overall "is producing positive results for America's students."

Spellings cited "long-term trend data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) [indicating] that over the last five years, more reading progress has been made among nine-year-olds than in the previous 28 years combined." In fact, as Stephen Krashen and Gerald Bracey have shown, virtually all of these gains appear to have occurred before Reading First was created.

Further Reading