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Scathing Report Casts Cloud Over ‘Reading First’

Federal officials encouraged use of specific programs, inspector general finds.

The findings of a scathing report on the federal Reading First program continued to reverberate last week following its Sept. 22 release, fueling debates in Congress, on the Internet, and among professionals in the field about their gravity and potential impact.

Critics of the program’s implementation said the conclusions drawn in the report by the U.S. Department of Education’s inspector general validate complaints that federal officials may have steered the grant-application process to ensure that particular reading programs and instructional approaches were widely used by participating schools, and that others were essentially shut out.

Some supporters of the program characterized the findings as overblown and charged that they constituted a personal attack on department personnel, rather than a verdict on the $1 billion-a-year program itself, which was rolled out 4½ years ago as part of the No...