Another interesting article in Education Week. Check it out.
Reading First Chronology
January 2002: President Bush signs the No Child Left Behind Act into law, and federal officials kick off the Reading First program in a series of workshops and video presentations.
March 2002: Publishers’ representatives and reading organizations ask the U.S. Department of Education to clarify Reading 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’s inspector general charging that federal officials were promoting the use of some commercial texts and assessments in Reading First programs, while discouraging others.
September 2005: The Education Department’s inspector general opens a broad inquiry into complaints about the Reading 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 Reading First budget by 61 percent, to $364 million for fiscal 2008.
May 2008: A federal evaluation commissioned by the Education Department’s Institute of Education Sciences, finds that the $1 billion-a-year funding for Reading First had no measurable effect on students’ reading comprehension.
June 2008: House and Senate appropriations panels vote to eliminate all funding for Reading First.
SOURCE: Education Week
No comments:
Post a Comment