Fordham Revives Reading First Debate, SFA’s Slavin Replies (Stern Responds)

Dear Checker:

I just read “Too Good to Last”. I hope you will print my response to it, below, in the Gadfly.

“Too Good to Last: The True Story of Reading First,” by Sol Stern, is a highly selective and misleading recounting of the Reading First. It is correct in two key respects: that the adoption by Congress of a loose definition of “based on scientifically based research” was a key reason for the problems of Reading First, and that Chris Doherty was probably just doing what he was told to by his superiors. However, Stern unaccountably leaves out the most important elements of the scandal.

1. Stern says nothing about the fact, prominently reported by the Inspector General (IG) and the press, that leaders of the Reading First Technical Assistance Centers, Edward Kame’enui, Deborah Simmons, and Sharon Vaughn, were also authors of the Scott Foresman basal text and authors of Voyager Passport, and yet were making key decisions from the outset that favored basal textbooks and Voyager Passport.

2. Stern says nothing about the fact, reported by the IG, that in the early Reading First Academies, when state leaders were learning how Reading First would operate, they were exposed to speakers representing only Direct Instruction and selected basal textbooks, and were given notebooks full of information on DIBELS and no other assessment.

3. Stern says nothing about the fact, reported by the IG and the press, that the Simmons & Kame’enui “Consumer’s Guide,” based in detail on elements of Direct Instruction, was given by Department officials as the de facto official criterion for “scientifically based research”. The Oregon review of reading programs, based on the guide and carried out in part by University of Oregon researchers who were authors of one of the programs, was frequently recommended by the Department as a list of programs to be used under Reading First.

4. Stern fails to mention how DIBELS became the de facto national assessment of Reading First in most states, enriching Roland Good and the University of Oregon, one of the Technical Assistance Centers. Under Department funding, Good and Oregon colleagues reviewed a variety of reading measures and gave positive ratings to DIBELS.

5. Stern claims that schools avoided Success for All (SFA) just because it was too expensive. Yet the Abt Associates’ Interim Report on Reading First found that Title I schools who did not receive Reading First were more likely to use SFA than were Reading First schools, who received an average of $138,000 per year. It’s difficult to see how money could be the limitation when the schools with more money were less likely to use SFA. We have a file drawer full of anguished reports from Success for All schools and potential SFA schools all over the U.S. pressured by state or local Reading First officials to avoid SFA because it was inconsistent with Reading First. Many schools refused Reading First funding to adopt or keep Success for All. If the Department did not directly tell state officials to exclude SFA, they did not correct the national perception that SFA did not fit in Reading First.

6. Stern repeatedly states that Reid Lyon and the Department wanted to focus on research-proven, not just research-based programs, which would have meant Direct Instruction and Success for All, but were thwarted in this by Congress. Yet if this were true, the Department had many opportunities to highlight research-proven programs or at least make certain that they were not discriminated against. It never did so, and in fact highlighted programs without any evidence of effectiveness at the Reading First Academies, in technical assistance activies, in the reviews of state applications, and in many other venues. Oklahoma’s RF application was turned down twice because they proposed to use research-proven programs, as one among many examples.

7. I did not ask Obey to cut Reading First. Any statement to this effect is completely inaccurate. In talking with various congressional staffers, I advocated continuing Reading First but reforming it to return it to its original purpose.

Robert Slavin

Johns Hopkins University and University of York