February 20, 2007
An Education Week review of hundreds of e-mail exchanges details a pattern of federal interference in the program that skirted legal prohibitions.
December 12, 2006
Despite Reading First's $1 billion-a-year investment in improving reading instruction, little has changed in the kinds of reading products and programs being offered since the initiative was rolled out, according to some experts.
October 10, 2006
Two prominent Democrats are demanding to know more about the problems identified in the implementation of the federal Reading First program, including whether criminal violations may have occurred and what Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings may have known about the problems while she was a White House aide.
September 29, 2006
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.
September 26, 2006
The federal Reading First initiative has led to improved reading instruction, assessment, and student achievement in schools taking part in the $1 billion-a-year grant program, as well as in some of the nonparticipating schools in districts that have widely adopted its principles, a study released last week concludes.
August 8, 2006
Schools in the federal Reading First program dedicate more time to reading instruction and teacher professional development, and are more likely to use assessment data to inform teaching, than Title I schools that are not in the grant program, concludes a study on the $1 billion-a-year initiative.
December 13, 2005
Michael Pressley thinks that we should view the recent complaints from educational vendors in the Reading First marketplace as an extension of the list of concerns over federal reading efforts that have accumulated over the past six years.
November 8, 2005
A federal investigation into Reading First will include several broad audits of the policies and procedures involved in implementing the $1 billion-a-year program, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s inspector general’s office schedule of reviews for 2006.
October 11, 2005
Republican and Democratic leaders of the U.S. Senate education committee have joined the debate over the implementation of Reading First, with a call for an investigation into the federal program by the watchdog arm of Congress.
September 27, 2005
Just a few years ago, a set of tests known as “dibbles” would have elicited little more than a chuckle from educators or anyone else. Today, they’re taking it seriously, because the acronym DIBELS has come to symbolize the standard for early-literacy assessment throughout much of the country.
September 7, 2005
State grant reviewers gave Dr. Cupp’s Readers a big, fat zero rating on one Georgia school’s Reading First application. Only later did its publisher find out that at least one of those reviewers had never laid eyes on the program.
October 1, 2004
A number of commercial reading programs have satisfied the requirement under the federal reading law for embodying a strong research base, yet there appears to be limited outside evidence that any of them produces a conclusive and consistent effect on overall reading achievement.
February 5, 2003
The specificity of some sections of the reauthorized Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and the way certain provisions are being implemented, are raising concerns that the federal government is encroaching ever more on decisions historically made by local communities.
November 13, 2002
The Department of Education is warning states that the agency will more closely monitor how they are spending money under a waning federal reading initiative, after reports that local grant recipients may not be following "scientifically based" principles or other requirements.
