Reading First…. which gives $1 billion a year in grants to states, was supposed to end the so-called reading wars — the battle over the best method of teaching reading — but has instead opened a new and bitter front in the fight.

According to interviews with school officials and a string of federal audits and e-mail messages made public in recent months, federal officials and contractors used the program to pressure schools to adopt approaches that emphasize phonics, focusing on the mechanics of sounding out syllables, and to discard methods drawn from whole language that play down these mechanics and use cues like pictures or context to teach….

Federal officials who ran Reading First maintain that only curriculums including regular, systematic phonics lessons had the backing of “scientifically based reading research” required by the program…. But in a string of blistering reports, the Education Department’s inspector general has found that federal officials may have violated prohibitions in the law against mandating, or even endorsing, specific curriculums. The reports also found that federal officials overlooked conflicts of interest among the contractors that advised states applying for grants, and that in some instances, these contractors wrote reading programs competing for the money, and stood to collect royalties if their programs were chosen.

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings… declined a request for an interview…. Both the House and the Senate are laying the groundwork for tough hearings on Reading First, which is up for renewal this year.

Robert Sweet Jr., a former Congressional aide who wrote much of the Reading First legislation, said the law aimed at breaking new ground by translating research into lesson plans. Under the law, the yardstick of a reading program’s scientific validity became a 2000 report by the National Reading Panel…. Mr. Sweet firmly believes that phonics is the superior method of instruction; he is now president of the National Right to Read Foundation, a pro-phonics group…. “You’ve got billions used for the purchase of programs that have no validity or evidence that they work, and in fact they don’t, because you have so many kids coming out of the schools that can’t read.”…

[R]eading experts, like Richard Allington, past president of the International Reading Association, also challenge the case for phonics. Dr. Allington and others say the national panel’s review showed only minor benefits from phonics throug first grade, and no strong support for one style of instruction…. “This revisionist history of what the research says is wildly popular…. But it’s the main reason why so much of the reading community has largely rejected the National Reading Panel report and this large-scale vision of what an effective reading program looks like.”

Under Reading First, many were encouraged to use a pamphlet, “A Consumer’s Guide to Evaluating a Core Reading Program Grades K-3,” written by two special education professors, then at the University of Oregon, to gauge whether a program was backed by research…. But the guide also rewards practices, like using thin texts of limited vocabulary to practice syllables, for which there is no backing in research…. Deborah C. Simmons, who helped write the guide, said it largely reflected the available research, but acknowledged that even now, no studies have tested whether children learn to read faster or better through programs that rated highly in the guide.

Diana Jean Schemo, New York Times, March 9.