NAEP Reading 2009: Had Enough Direct Instruction and Testing Yet?

(Click on any of the charts to enlarge.)

After 7 years of the nation's incredibly expensive subscription to the crackpot school of reading instruction, and after 20 years of non-stop testing with increasingly higher stakes, and after tens of millions of children have been abused, labeled failures, and permanently turned against reading, and after hundreds of billions have been wasted on corporate tests not worth the paper they are printed on, and after thousands of school libraries have been shuttered and librarians cut loose, finally, do you think the geniuses in Washington will get the message?

Fourth grade gaps:
Eighth grade gaps: