The National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance's July 2 Practice Guide on teaching students English as a second language reflects changes in Department of Education policy towards academic advisors prompted by the exposure of abuse in the Reading First program.  Unfortunately, while they are a step in the right direction, the new policy looks more like a knee-jerk response to get Congress and the press off the Department's back than a well considered streategy to guide the development of an emerging market.

The report, Effective Literacy and English Language Instruction for English Learners in the Elementary Grades, has all kinds of caveats, but inevitably it will be referred to by educators and administrators as a set of federally approved practices. In this respect, think of the Practice Guide as the pedagogical equivalent of Informal Guidance issued by the Department on the administration of NCLB provisions. Those who follow it will be in a regulatory "safe harbor."  Those who do something else will bear the burden of proving that they are acting within the law. As a practical matter, few will choose to brave the open waters.

In this case, unless the Department or Congress makes clear that SBR refers to specific programs subject to evaluation rather than broad practices, educators who follow a Practice Guide would seem to have a basis for appropriating the "Scientifically Based Research" label for their activities and for purchases related to their activities. Similarly, Practice Guides will be used by school improvement providers to claim that their commercial offerings meet NCLB's SBR requirement.

Given all this, it is important that the Department do its utmost to avoid actual conflicts of interest in the development of Practice Guides and, post-Reading First, their appearance.

The fist step is disclosure. The Department has required the academic team contracted to write this guides to disclose their business and other relevant relationships.

Dr. Gersten, the panel chair, is a co-author of a forthcoming Houghton Mifflin K-6 reading series that includes material related to English learners. The reading series is not referenced in the practice guide.

Dr. Baker has an author agreement with Cambium Learning to produce an instructional module for English learners. This module is not written and is not referenced in the practice guide.

Dr. Linan-Thompson was one of the primary researchers on intervention studies that used Proactive Reading curriculum, and she developed the ESL adaptations for the intervention. Linan-Thompson co-authored the research reports that are described in the Guide.

Dr. Shanahan receives royalties on various curricula designed for elementary and middle school reading instruction, including
Harcourt Achieve Elements of Reading Fluency (Grades 1-3); Macmillan McGraw-Hill Treasures (Grades K-6); and AGS Glove-Pearson AMP (Grades 6-8). None of these products, though widely used, are aimed specifically at the English learner instructional market (the focus of this practice guide). Macmillan publishes a separate program aimed at the English learner population. Shanahan is not involved in that program.

Dr. Scarcella provides on-going teacher professional development services on academic vocabulary through the University of California Professional Development Institutes that are authorized by the California State Board of Education.

The second step is establishing some criteria for the Department to disqualify consultants. After the Reading First fiasco, it would be prudent for the Department to set the bar for participation quite high.  On its face, it's just not clear that the Department has done a good job here. Determining that would require greater knowledge of the ELL literature and the team members' work than any reader of the guide is likely to have. It really requires another expert in the field.

The third step is outside review of the consultants' work. "The practice guide is subjected to independent external peer review prior to publication, with particular focus on whether the evidence related to the recommendations in the practice guide has been has been appropriately presented." However, the identity of the reviewers is not disclosed.

The fourth step is barring consultants to use their relationship to the guide to market any of their products or services in the subject covered by the guide, as Department consultants and their publishers did in Reading First. Whether this is part of the Department's new rules is not clear,

What the school improvement market needs is a thoughtful dialogue. The question comes down to whether we should separate program developers from program evaluators on matters of standards, best practices, and program-wide evaluation policy and evaluation. Bar developers and the market rules are likely to bring the industry to a halt. Allow developers in unchecked and expect more Reading First scandals. There must be a way to balance these national interests. It does not seem that the Department is trying very hard.