Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings loves Reading First. She says educators do, too. Here’s what she told Greg Toppo of USA Today: “If I had a nickel for every person who said, ‘Thank God for Reading First,’ I’d be a millionaire.”
Let’s do the math on that. At 20 nickels to a dollar, that would mean 20 million people would be singing the program’s praises for Spellings to become a millionaire.
The program is 6 1/2 years old. That’s 2,373 days.
To get a million dollars, every day, 8,428 people would have told Spellings about Reading First’s greatness. That works out to almost 6 people every minute of every day since January 2002.
Although lots of people love Reading First, the secretary wouldn’t get rich in the “nickel for every person” formula. I bet she’d do a lot better on her favorite game show.
