'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.'
Alice was too much puzzled to say anything; so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. 'They've a temper, some of them - particularly verbs: they're the proudest - adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs - however, I can manage the whole lot of them! Impenetrability! That's what I say!'
'Would you tell me, please,' said Alice, 'what that means?'
'Now you talk like a reasonable child,' said Humpty Dumpty, looking very much pleased. 'I meant by "impenetrability" that we've had enough of that subject....Lewis Carrol, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, 1871.
An email uncovered by Title I Monitor reporter Andrew Brownstein and Travis Hicks links major publishers to Reading First through Reid Lyon to Spellings via Beth Ann Bryan, reportedly the eyes and ears of the White House in the Department of Education. The communcation contains protests from a senior manager at Houghton-MIfflin of New York City's likely decision under the program to purchase products based on "whole language and incidental phonics window-dressing", when that publisher's staff was in the midst of becoming "true believers" in Reading First.
As far as anyone watching Reading First knows, no major publisher actually developed programs demonstrated to improve student achievement by rigorous evaluations. So - what gives?
It takes a bit to untangle this mess, but please bear with your editor....
‘‘PART B—STUDENT READING SKILLS IMPROVEMENT GRANTS
‘‘Subpart 1—Reading First
‘‘SEC. 1201. PURPOSES.
‘‘The purposes of this subpart are as follows:
‘‘(1) To provide assistance to State educational agencies and local educational agencies in establishing reading programs for students in kindergarten through grade 3 that are based on scientifically based reading research, to ensure that every student can read at grade level or above not later than the end of grade 3....
‘‘SEC. 1208. DEFINITIONS.
‘‘In this subpart:...
‘‘(6) SCIENTIFICALLY BASED READING RESEARCH.—The term ‘scientifically based reading research’ means research that—
‘‘(A) applies rigorous, systematic, and objective procedures to obtain valid knowledge relevant to reading
development, reading instruction, and reading difficulties; and
‘‘(B) includes research that—
‘‘(i) employs systematic, empirical methods that draw on observation or experiment;
‘‘(ii) involves rigorous data analyses that are adequate to test the stated hypotheses and justify the general conclusions drawn;
‘‘(iii) relies on measurements or observational methods that provide valid data across evaluators and
observers and across multiple measurements and observations; and
‘‘(iv) has been accepted by a peer-reviewed journal or approved by a panel of independent experts through a comparably rigorous, objective, and scientific review.
No Child Left Behind Act of 2001
Under No Child Left Behind's Reading First program, the phrase "scientifically-based reading research" does not mean what a reasonable person would presume. The definition itself says everything the intelligent layperson or informed legislator might expect - essentially that it embodies experimentation, program evaluation and peer review - all in the best tradition of scientific inquiry.
But the law permits an entirely different interpretation when it comes to what schools may purchase with federal Reading First program funds. In this instance, products and services need only be "based on scientifically-based reading research." They need not actually be the direct product of that research or evaluated themselves. A close reading of the law allows a plausible albeit unreasonable argument for separating what's offered in the Reading First market from education science.
The question remains, if any provider could simply make the claim in marketing materials, who would determine what programs are based on scientifically-based reading reasearch? The Reading First hearing of April 20 demonstrated that "the deciders" were government officials exercising incredibly broad discretion (i.e., political preferences, ideological prejudices and personal inclinations) - Chris Doherty, Reid Lyon and, very possibly, then-White House education advisor Maraget Spellings.
(Parenthetically, this interpretation is supported to some extent by the Bush Administration's complete disinterest in continuing the bi-partisan Porter-Obey Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration Program - a 1998 law also requiring schools to purchase "research-based" programs. In that case, the leading providers actually had program evaluations to support the efficacy of their (imperfect) offerings. Success for All was one of CSRDP's leading programs. The Administration eventually succeeded in killing the program under NCLB. Again, evidence that scientific research is a matter of politics.)
This brings us to Brownstein's reporting:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Despite Spelling’s attempts to distance herself from the controversy.... e-mails show that, as domestic policy advisor, she had a role in handling hot-button Reading First issues in Texas and New York City.
Additional e-mails, recently obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the Title I Monitor, suggest that her role extended possibly further. One exchange between Reid Lyon, former chief of child development and behavior for the National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development, and Beth Ann Bryan, former senior advisor to the secretary at the Education Department (ED), centered on concerns that New York City would use Reading First funds on a program called Month by Month Phonics....
Lyon, also known as Bush’s unofficial “reading czar,” forwarded Bryan a message from a top executive at Houghton Mifflin, a major publisher of reading materials. The executive warned that if New York City’s action went unchecked it could jeopardize efforts by the publishing industry to change its textbooks to align with Reading First. “The actions in New York City have put an enormous chill over our people,” said Maureen DiMarco, a senior vice president with the company. “They feel they have invested huge amounts of money and effort and have become educated to be true believers … but if NYC is allowed to put in whole language and incidental phonics window-dressing, then they realize that the federal government has thrown in the towel on its effort and it will collapse faster than it took to create it.”
In a forwarding message to Bryan, Lyon said, “Can you forward to Margaret? We have to discuss publishers today with Margaret. We have been meeting with some CEOs from the industry and they want to play ball.”
An ED spokeswoman declined to discuss any aspect of the Reading First program. In an interview, Lyon said he met twice with groups of publishers at the department at the request of the American Association of Publishers to discuss scientifically-based reading research (SBRR) and the kinds of funding mechanisms that were available to them. It would not have been surprising, Lyon said, for him to seek Spellings’ help in emphasizing the importance of changing the textbook industry. Publishers, he said, “were a constituency that obviously played a major part in the previous reading failure rates” and, due to Reading First, also constituted “a hope for the future.”
Andrew Brownstein and Travis Hicks, Title I Monitor, March 21.A second article by Brownstein in today's Title I Monitor helps explain the true nature of Reading First regulation....
(Edward Kame’enui) [t]he former leader of the Western Regional Technical Assistance Center had ties to commercial reading programs created by Pearson Scott Foresman.... The co-authors of the Scott Foresman program, Edward Kame’enui and Deborah Simmons.... were called to testify before the House committee (April 20). Kame’enui... also co-authored with Simmons a widely used “Consumer’s Guide” to evaluate core reading programs that would later be used by states, districts and schools under Reading First....
Kame’enui, who has a temporarily appointment as ED’s commissioner of Special Education Research, and Simmons, now a professor at Texas A&M University, said they received $150,000 last year in royalties from the Pearson Scott Foresman Early Reading Intervention, first published in 2003. That does not include royalty income from a 2006 core reading program they co-authored for Scott Foresman called “Reading Street.”... Reading First schools may have provided a sizeable portion of the income for these products....
The committee hearing was notable for the absence of some key figures in the Reading First story. Susan Neuman, the reading specialist who served as assistant secretary at ED and who coordinated the Reading Leadership Academies, was not there. Nor was Sandy Kress, an architect of No Child Left Behind who, as a lobbyist for Pearson Scott Foresman, helped arrange the deal with Kame’enui and Simmons that resulted in “Reading Street,” the core reading program released in 2006. (In an e-mail to the Monitor, Kress said he was not in government when the deal took place, and that “my representation of Pearson was perfectly ethical.”)
Andrew Brownstein, Title I Monitor, April 27.
Untangling the mess reveals two, maybe three, overlapping motives for abuse of the Reading First program.
First and foremost is a uniform political commitment to phonics instruction by the winning side of the reading wars, with vistory decided when President Bush won the 2000 election. The President was a proponent of phonics from his time as Governor of Texas when he first met Lyon. It would not be too much to argue that phonics was part of the President's platform - and Reading First was intended to carry out his campaign promise. Spellings was a proponent as the President's education person in the White House. From Assistant Secretary Neuman down to program Director Doherty, the political class of the Department was committed to phonics. To this group, the term "scientifically-based reading research" was simply the label on a jar that contained only phonics programs.
Second is a group of bureaucratically savvy academics revolving around the University of Orgegon. They were apparently proponents of phonics, but they also had strong pre-existing ties to major publishers. We can believe that this group: was simply naive about actual conflicts of interests and their appearance; didn't think it was important because apparently no one in the Department of Education thought it was important; found it hard to resist the opportunity to favor their own materials in their advisory work on Reading First implementation (half of $150,000 a year is not a trival addition to the salary of a professor - or a government official); or truly believed they were doing "god's work" in pushing their own views of reading instruction and leaving out others. It also appears that they too believed the term "scientifically-based reading reseaech" only required program providers to reference a body of research, not subject their programs to direct evaluation. Not one alternative casts this group in a favorable light.
Third, a possibility raised by the email uncovered by Brownstein - and the connection of publishing superlawyer, Bush confidant and NCLB author Sandy Kress, is a willingness of government to tilt policy in directions that favored the large publishers. Maureen DiMarco's communication to Reid Lyon over Houghton's concern's about specific purchasing decisions in New York was worthy of Margaret Spelling's attention at the White House. The communication is directed through the Administration's political channel. Bob Slavin's emails about one of the best evaluated reading programs in history being frozen out of the program in general - sent through official administrative channels - are not worthy of White House attention. Something is wrong with this picture.
Why Lyon and apparently others in official positions would consider his a perfectly reasonable course of action for any government official - let alone someone so close to the White House and so tied to one view of education science - is impossible for your editor to fathom.
Imagine if the chief science advisor to the Central Intelligence Agency on satellite intelligence - and a long time advisor to the President on matters of reconnaisance - forwarded an email to a close aide to the President's national security advisor. That email contained a complaint by the senior sales manager of a major defense contractor about the likelhood that an upstart competitor would win a large spy satellite contract from the Defense Department's National Reconnaisance Office, after the complaining contractor had "invested huge amounts of money and effort and have become educated to be true believers" in Administration policy on surveillance technlogy. Imagine if the science advisor had then said this should be on the agenda of his next meeting with the national security advisor because the big contractors "want to play ball." Everyone involved would have resigned a long time ago.
Alternatively, imagine a pile of emails and other correspondence from a small defense contractor complaining to the National Reconnaisance Office that his firm wasn't even invited to contractor meetings on a new spy satellite program - at a time when everyone involved in the reconnaiance field considered the firm a technological leader - and the National Reconaissance Office officials responsible for the new program didn't really even respond to the firm's repeated complaints. Imagine that the Inspector General of the Defense Department investigated and found the other emails discussed above, plus a rat's nest of conflicts of interest around the satellite program - except now the national security advisor was Secretary of Defense and the science advisor had left government to work for a businessman whose company had profited from the spy sattelite program. Again, everyone involved would have resigned a long time ago.
Explain the legal, moral and political difference between Reading First and the Spy Satellite hypothetical. And please, after Sputnik and now a decade of rhetoric leading up to STEM legislation, don't say that education is not a matter of national security.