Reading Recovery Receives Top Marks in Federal Research

Six years ago when Margaret LaMontagne (Spellings), Reid Lyon, and Doug Carnine loaded the Reading First review panels with their direct instruction stooges and cronies, they set back reading instruction by decades, who knows how many. As ED's own Inspector General's reports have shown, states that applied for Reading First grants were manhandled into choosing reading programs aligned with the Lyon and Carnine back-to-brutality phonics orthodoxy. And if grantees ended up off the direct instruction reservation, Reid Lyon's Reading First Director, Chris Doherty, could simply pull the plug, as he did in Rockford, Illinois:

Mr. Doherty then directed the state to freeze the district’s funding, and ultimately to withdraw the grant. Those actions prompted another e-mail from Mr. Lyon: “wow – Talk about a guy with smarts, integrity AND balls,” he wrote. “I am talking about you Chris.”

The Lyon and Carnine Cabal's most hated reading program was the balanced literacy methodology of Reading Recovery, a holistic and humane literacy approach grounded by empirical research. It is suitably ironic, then, that Ed Week reports that Reading Recovery has emerged in the latest federal research from Spellings's own shop as the only program "found to have positive effects or potentially positive effects across all four of the domains in the review—alphabetics, fluency, comprehension, and general reading achievement:"

. . . .That program, Reading Recovery, an intensive, one-on-one tutoring program, has drawn criticism over the past few years from prominent researchers and federal officials who claimed it was not scientifically based.

Federal officials and contractors tried to discourage states and districts from using Reading Recovery in schools participating in the federal Reading First program, citing a lack of evidence that it helps struggling readers. . . .

How sweet it is!! It's just too bad that so many states are now stuck with the McGraw-Hill Open Court parrot reading system that they were force fed by hacks and crooks in order to get Reading First grants.

More Investigations at US DOE

The Reading Recovery Council of North America (RRCNA), which offers a truly balanced reading alternative to the drill and kill phonics approach favored by the current regime in Washington, has requested a federal investigation into the implementation practices of Reading First. Reading First is part of the NCLB reading improvement initiative that shovels out a billion dollars a year to raise reading scores, most of it going to test prep and scripted teaching programs developed by McGraw-Hill (click here for an interesting article on the Bush/McGraw Hill connection), Harcourt, and other friends and large contributors.

Cited in RRCNA's letter to the Inspector General are these points:

1. State and local control. The implementation of Reading First has restricted state and local control in the selection of scientifically based reading programs.

2. One-to-one instruction. The Department has excluded one-to-one instruction in the Reading First program, contradicting the authorizing statute, congressional intent, and scientific research findings of effectiveness for the lowest-achieving children.

3. Selective application of scientifically based research criteria. In the implementation of Reading First, the Department has systematically favored some programs while excluding other programs with a scientific research base.

4. Misinformation about Reading Recovery. The Department has supported a quiet yet pervasive misinformation campaign against Reading Recovery despite a large body of research demonstrating Reading Recovery’s effectiveness and long-term results.

Complaint #4 focuses on an administration that has perfected the art of sliming its opponents, and the hacks running the show at US DOE are no different. The sham of "scientifically-based research" has been made clear by Gerald Coles (reviewed here) and others who have examined the propaganda piece, the National Reading Panel Report, that provides the foundation for all this fanatical phonics phenomenon that dismisses any study that does not echo the party line--and eventually disregards excellent well-documented strategies that improve literacy and thinking.