School Beat: the Scandals of NCLBLisa Schiffbyline‚ Mar. 01‚ 2007Other than its very existence, one of the biggest scandals regarding No Child Left Behind (NCLB), our federal education legislation, has been the Reading First program. Reading First is another one of NCLB’s typically myopic efforts to improve educational outcomes. In this instance, the approach has been to promote mechanical solutions to the development of literacy skills for K through 3rd graders through programs based on “evidence-based research” and “scientific data.” Having a sound basis for using a certain method makes sense, but the absolute reliance on the ability to describe outcomes quantitatively is suspect, since meaningful assessments of literacy skills require more than that. As with some other programs NCLB has introduced, such as supplementary tutoring, a primary purpose of the Reading First component seems to have been to create a fast-track to funnel state dollars used to purchase literacy education materials into the coffers of just a few producers of those same materials. Language such as “scientific” and “evidenced-based” simply served to provide the authoritative cover under which to hide this intention. |