Federal Review of Reading First Identifies Serious Problems

A long-awaited inspection of the federal Reading First program found today that federal education officials may have steered the grant-application process for the $1 billion-a-year initiative to ensure that particular reading programs and instructional approaches were widely used by participating schools, and that others were essentially shut out.

The final inspection report by the U.S. Department of Education’s inspector general’s office concluded that department officials may have intended to “stack” the panels of grant reviewers with those who favored a particular teaching methodology. Moreover, the department’s method of screening the panelists for conflicts of interest—particularly panelists with financial connections to commercial publishers—was ineffective. Requirements for receiving grants under the program were expanded beyond what the law required, forcing some states to revise their applications several times to meet them, the audit found.

Federal education officials may also have overstepped provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act that prohibit them from influencing or dictating the curriculum, assessments, or instructional approaches used by schools or districts. Indeed, the Education Department “intervened to influence a state’s selection of reading programs, and … to influence reading programs being used by local educational agencies after the application process was...