On paper, No Child Left Behind changed everything. The legislation gave the federal government unprecedented power over state and district decisions on the products, services and programs they purchased with federal funds. In so doing, the law opened up the possibility for a new breed of k-12 firm driven by results to wrest unprecedented market share from the established publishers.
The figure below illustrates the changed position of academic consultants in the industry after No Child Left Behind.
On paper, Reading First was NCLB’s roll out. In practice, the new law changed the industry much less than promised. With Chris Doherty as point man (and later fall guy), the Administration equated Scientifically Based Reading Research (SBRR) to programs associated with phonics, and wielded its new power over state and district purchases as a dictator.
The definition of SBBR as association with phonics served publishers well and blunted the new market entrants. Without a requirement for program evaluation, textbooks that claimed a basis in research on phonics were in. And this put the basis of competition back to the status quo ante bellum – marketing and sales channels. The decision to disregard program evaluation made it inevitable that the bulk of Reading First purchases would be made with one of the multinational publishers. However, it does not seem that this decision was directly influenced by publishers. The truth is likely to be far more insidious; the decision was a matter of pedagological politics and ideology.
On the other hand, it does not appear that the academics called in to work with the Department of Education on Reading First implementation were disinterested third-party experts who the government intended to come up with list of appropriate reading programs and assessment tools based on strong evaluations. Rather, they were soldiers in the Reading War's phonics army and selected to fulfill the Administration’s intent that Reading First be a phonics program.
NCLB did change the role of academic consultants in the federal-state dialogue from useful go-betweens to federal agents. Where before they had only the power of persuasion - and were as likely to use it on their federal employers as their state and district interlocutors, now they were actively engaged in carrying out federal law.
But it did not change the academic consultants' relationship with publishers. They authored textbook before and they continued to do so under NCLB. Once the Department decided to equate SBBR with phonics, it is quite possible that the Reading First program's academic consultants did not see a conflict of interest in working with publishers. The decision did keep out a wide variety of new market entrants, but the law was intended to be a screen (notwithstanding the fact that the screen selected was not the one intended by Congress). Most important, the screen did not eliminate competition. Districts and schools had a variety of product, service and program choices. The academic consultants could not necessarily steer sales to the textbooks they authored.
By lobbying Assistant Secretary of Education Susan Neuman with Pearson’s top executives, Edward Kame' ennui clearly placed his duty to provide unbiased advice to the Department - and to appear unbiased to the marketplace, in conflict with his business interests in Pearson. Still, as far as we can tell, after fulfilling their employer's interests in making Reading First a phonics program, most academic consultants did little more than write textbooks and take in royalties.
Your editor has no doubt that the academic consultants and Administration officials were engaged in a massive conflict between their duty to carry out the law of NCLB faithfully as office holders or their agents and their personal loyalty to ideology, pedagogy or financial self-interest. Still, when the roles of the officials and the academics are untangled it is possible to see how most might honestly rationalize their actions.
Part V: Lessons Learned