Goodling Meshes Priorities With 'Even Start'

By Anjetta McQueen

Washington

Years before he came to Congress, Rep. Bill Goodling began sowing the seeds of a federal family-literacy program.

As a school superintendent in southern Pennsylvania in 1967, Mr. Goodling found that, despite years of federal funding targeted to the poor, children from such families were not good readers or learners. In response, he made sure the Spring Grove Area School District's early-childhood specialist visited preschoolers and their parents at home, showing both better ways to learn to read together.

"It made all the difference in the world," Mr. Goodling, the Pennsylvania Republican who now chairs the House education committee, recalled in a recent interview. ''It took us so long to understand that family literacy is the name of the game. If you can't deal with the whole family, you're not going...