Reading Recovery… has gotten a rare thumbs-up from the federal What Works Clearinghouse…. The positive rating comes after prominent researchers and federal reading officials tried to dissuade states and districts from paying for Reading Recovery with funds from the $1 billion-a-year Reading First program….

On the clearinghouse’s “improvement index"... researchers found that the average 1st grader who completed Reading Recovery could be expected to score 32 percentile points higher in general reading achievement than similar students not in the program…. That’s high praise from the clearinghouse, which the Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences created in 2002 to vet research on “what works” in education. So few education studies meet the clearinghouse’s tough research-quality criteria that some critics have dubbed it the “nothing works” clearinghouse….

(Jack M. Fletcher, one of 32 researchers who signed a widely circulated 2002 letter critiquing the program) raised questions about the measures researchers used to track reading progress in the five studies on which the clearninghouse’s Reading Recovery report is based. The studies used a mix of standardized reading tests and a scale called the Clay Observation Survey, which was developed by Reading Recovery founder Marie Clay....

Those objections were countered last week by Richard L. Allington, an education professor at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and a former president of the International Reading Association. “I don’t think [the Clay Observation Scale is] any more of a concern than using DIBELS…. The question now is are we going to take all the interventions off the Reading First Web sites that don’t meet the What Works criteria…. don’t have a lot of confidence that anyone in Washington actually cares about the evidence.”…

Reading Recovery proponents... filed complaints in 2005 with the inspector general alleging that federal Reading First officials and consultants tried to steer states and districts toward reading programs and assessments that they favored—and, in some cases, had financial ties with—and away from other programs with substantial research track records…. The inspector general largely substantiated those complaints in a series of reports issued over the past five months....

For instance… then-Reading First Director Christopher J. Doherty, in a conference call in late 2002 with six Kentucky school officials, told the group that Reading Recovery was “not scientifically based.”… Susan B. Neuman… assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education at the Education Department… advised Mr. Doherty in January 2002 that the language in the program guidelines should not encourage the use of Reading Recovery…. According to an Education Week review of e-mail documents, federal officials repeatedly discussed Reading Recovery, and their desire to prevent states from allowing use of the program in Reading First schools, during 2002 and 2003, when states were submitting their grant proposals.

Debra Viadero and Kathleen Kennedy Manzo, Education Week, March 28.