Many educators and researchers thought that reports of the positive effects of 69传媒 First would prove the program worth continuing, administrative problems aside. So the decision last month by House and Senate panels to eliminate its funding in the fiscal 2009 budget鈥攁 move likely to doom the program unless intervening action restores it鈥攃ame as a blow to proponents.
Now, federal, state, and local officials are scrambling to figure out how to sustain the program, or at least some of the instructional changes it fueled.
The prospect of the demise of 69传媒 First does not necessarily point to the end of a federal role in improving reading instruction. Early 69传媒 First, a preschool literacy program, for example, is budgeted for $112.5 million in both the Senate Appropriations Committee and the House Appropriations subcommittee鈥檚 versions of the fiscal 2009 budget. Both Democratic and Republican members of Congress have supported its goals of 69传媒 First.
And Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, has not ruled out other federal efforts for tackling the nation鈥檚 reading problems.
鈥淚t is perfectly appropriate for the federal government to have a role in reading instruction,鈥� Semonti Mustaphi, a spokeswoman for Sen. Harkin, who chairs the Senate subcommittee dealing with education spending, said in an e-mail. 鈥淲e just have to make sure that federal reading programs are set up in such a way that they will produce good results. With 69传媒 First, that doesn鈥檛 seem to have happened.鈥�
At the state level, meanwhile, Louisiana lawmakers, for example, approved a $12.5 million program last month to restore 69传媒 First funding in more than 100 of the state鈥檚 elementary schools and expand it to some 40 others. Colorado and other states are using surpluses from previous years鈥� grant allocations to continue the program for at least another year.
69传媒 First was created under the No Child Left Behind Act. State grants were financed at about $1 billion a year until last December, when federal lawmakers, citing allegations of mismanagement, slashed it to $393 million for fiscal 2008.
Last-minute advocacy efforts did not persuade lawmakers to reconsider the cuts. (鈥淎dvocates Say NCLB鈥檚 鈥楥omparability鈥� Provision is in Need of Fine-Tuning,鈥� June 27, 2008.)
In his push to zero out funding, Rep. David R. Obey, D-Wis., the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, cited management problems within the program and disappointing results of a preliminary federal evaluation.
69传媒 First 鈥渉as been plagued with mismanagement, conflicts of interest, and cronyism, as documented by the inspector general,鈥� Rep. Obey said, referring to a series of reports released by the Department of Education鈥檚 inspector general in 2006 and 2007 that suggested some federal officials and contractors involved in implementing the program had conflicts of interest and appeared to favor some commercial products over others.
鈥淢oreover, a scientifically rigorous study released by the Department of Education found that the program has no discernible impact on student reading performance,鈥� Rep. Obey, who is also the chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee that handles education funding, said in a reference to the evaluation released May 1 by the Institute of Education Sciences, an arm of the department. (鈥溾��69传媒 First鈥� Research Offers No Definitive Answers,鈥� June 4, 2008.)
The interim impact study concluded that the $1 billion in annual funding for the program had had no effect on students鈥� reading comprehension. The study did not evaluate the effect on overall reading achievement in participating schools. The final report, due this fall, is expected to have additional data comparing 69传媒 First schools with nonparticipating ones in the same districts.
Gains Noted
Proponents of the program have tried to highlight results of several federal and independent reports and surveys that show 69传媒 First is improving instruction and raising achievement in many of the nearly 6,000 participating schools. And many point to anecdotal reports of rapidly rising test scores.
January 2002: President Bush signs the No Child Left Behind Act into law, and federal officials kick off the 69传媒 First program in a series of workshops and video presentations.
March 2002: Publishers鈥� representatives and reading organizations ask the U.S. Department of Education to clarify 69传媒 First rules, saying that many state officials believe there is a list of approved programs and products they must purchase for participating schools. The department says no such list exists.
April 2005: Publishers file complaints with the Education Department鈥檚 inspector general charging that federal officials were promoting the use of some commercial texts and assessments in 69传媒 First programs, while discouraging others.
September 2005: The Education Department鈥檚 inspector general opens a broad inquiry into complaints about the 69传媒 First program. A month later, Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate education committee ask the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, to conduct its own review of the program.
September 2006: The first of six inspector general reports concludes that some federal officials and consultants may have had conflicts of interest and appeared to promote certain products that they were associated with.
May 2007: Congress grills federal officials and consultants in hearings highlighting the findings of the inspector general reports.
December 2007: Congress cuts the 69传媒 First budget by 61 percent, to $364 million for fiscal 2008.
May 2008: A federal evaluation commissioned by the Education Department鈥檚 Institute of Education Sciences, finds that the $1 billion-a-year funding for 69传媒 First had no measurable effect on students鈥� reading comprehension.
June 2008: House and Senate appropriations panels vote to eliminate all funding for 69传媒 First.
SOURCE: Education Week
Rep. James Walsh of New York, the top Republican on the education spending subcommittee in the House, said that Rep. Obey鈥檚 description of the findings of the study 鈥渄oesn鈥檛 track with my experience鈥� of the program. 69传媒 around his Syracuse congressional district reported that the program had raised student achievement 鈥渧ery, very quickly,鈥� he said.
Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings urged lawmakers to reconsider their decision. State-reported performance data for the program indicate 鈥渋mpressive gains in reading comprehension,鈥� she wrote in a June 25 letter to leaders of both chambers鈥� committees on appropriations and education.
The gains were across grades 1, 2, and 3 and for most subgroups of students. The analysis is not a rigorous study, however, and it averages data that are generally not comparable because all states do not use the same tests and may set different benchmarks for proficiency. The data are from annual performance reports submitted by each state and have not been verified as accurate.
鈥楶olitically Toxic鈥�
Members of the federal 69传媒 First Advisory Committee, which met in Washington last month to review the IES study, were alarmed that lawmakers appeared to be basing the decision on what they described as misinformation about the IES findings. The panel of researchers drafted a statement to request that Congress 鈥渞efrain from eliminating funding for 69传媒 First鈥� until the researchers could analyze all the available data and try to clear up confusion about the program鈥檚 effectiveness.
鈥淲e have concerns about the limitations of the study that preclude drawing firm conclusions,鈥� Susan Brady, a member of the advisory committee, said at the June 23 meeting. The statement was forwarded to the Senate Appropriations Committee a day before it voted, without discussion, to follow the House subcommittee鈥檚 recommendation to kill funding. (鈥淪enate Panel Also Votes to Kill Funds for 鈥�69传媒 First,鈥欌�� June 24, 2008.)
Both panels, though, voted to continue funding Early 69传媒 First, which provides grants to about 100 public and private prekindergarten programs, at $112.5 million.
Timothy Shanahan, a reading researcher at the University of Illinois at Chicago who has worked as a consultant to the 69传媒 First program in several states, called the program 鈥減olitically toxic.鈥�
鈥�69传媒 First is dead,鈥� he writes on his blog, . 鈥淚t could have withstood the corruption described in the inspector general鈥檚 report or the interim impact study鈥攂ut not both!鈥�
Mr. Shanahan, a member of the influential National 69传媒 Panel, whose 2000 report helped shape federal reading policy, said inserting new requirements in the federal Title I program for schools to use proven instructional methods to teach reading could help preserve the positive aspects of 69传媒 First. The House and Senate panels both included small increases for Title I, which serves disadvantaged students, in the fiscal 2009 budget: a little more than 4 percent, for a total of more than $14 billion. Some of that extra money could go toward reading instruction, Ms. Mustaphis said.
