But is it the program that is under attack, or the people who abused their positions of authority in the course of its implementation?

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

The U.S. Department of Education today released new state-by-state data on the effectiveness of Reading First, indicating that students who receive instruction through the program achieve strong gains in reading proficiency. Another measure of the program's success since its launch in 2002, the state-by-state data demonstrate that Reading First is working to help our nation's neediest kindergarten through third-grade students significantly improve their reading skills.

"These results are yet another confirmation that Reading First is working on behalf of our children," said Deputy Assistant Secretary Amanda Farris, who oversees the program office responsible for the implementation of Reading First. "Reading First students and teachers are demonstrating tremendous progress in a remarkably short period of time. We rarely see this kind of success from a federal education program."

Press Release, April 19.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

No one your editor knows of disputes the Reading First program or its goals. The "reading wars" are not the proximate cause of the crisis. The first problem - the one motivating tomorrow's hearings, is the gross abuse of discretion by Department officials, their consultants, and other government advisors guided not by evaluations of program efficacy, but vague bodies of research and their own beliefs. In House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller's own words

This is an inquiry into troubling evidence of waste, fraud, and abuse in the Reading First program. The Committee is investigating the corrupt process by which the program was implemented. Press Release, April 19.

The Department release cited at the top of this page suggests the emergence of a second problem -  the Administration's willingness to misuse the language of science on behalf of its own political objectives.

The Department has just spent a week or so defending the relevance of its report on education technology - largely because it compared the academic performance of students who used ed tech with similar students who did not - the much touted "gold standard." That study has flaws, but the basic principle that proper program evaluation compares control and experimental groups - is not among them. Here, in an effort to suggest the "attacks" surrounding Reading are on the programand so deflect attention from the real targets - officials, the Depatment has willingly tossed tha tbasic principle of the scientific method out the door. When bad science is accepted as a legitimate tool of political discourse, the end of scientific prowess as a source of national advantage cannot be far behind.

Your editor, a long-time pro-market Republican cold warrior, finds a disturbing pattern of "blame management"in this Administration:

• If you are against the war in Iraq, you are not supporting the troops.
• If you raise concerns that political motives were behind the firing of U.S. attoneys, you impugn the integrity of those who still hold jobs.
• If you suggest that a pattern of arbitrary and capricious management dominated the implementation of Reading First, you are against teachers efforts to adopt effective reading practices.

This is completely absurd (but can be an effective PR device).

This Secretary needs to face up to the substantive problems of federal program management involving the sale and purchase of competitive products - a cornerstone of NCLB; the vague definition of SBR in regulation and its impact on sales and purchasing practices, the lack of any strategy to deal with the fact that $1 billion of potential sales in Reading First is just part of billions more in federal spending feuling an emerging a school improvement industry, and an Elementary and Secondary Education bureacracy with literally no experience in the regulation of an emerging market.

To some extent, these made the Reading First fiasco inevitable and predictable - but also forgiveable. What is not forgiveable is the Secretary's unwillingness to admit the systemic nature of the mess, and work with Congress to start fixing it. Since when were Republicans so protective of the federal k-12 bureacracy anyway?