kitchen table math, the sequel: Reading First

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Reading First

today's press release
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2 comments:

TurbineGuy said...

Reading First says In Your Face!

My comments on the Washington Post article.

I bet this upsets more than a few people.

"Critics said the results were not so impressive, considering how much money has been spent on the program. They said the test scores are meaningless because they are not compared with the performance of other students, who nationwide are doing better in reading."

It would be nice to see these numbers, but I am willing to bet that a lot these other schools were influenced by Reading First.

Its also pretty ironic that the same people who would argue for more money to be poured into education on things like teachers pay, now decide to complain about the money. And just how expensive is the program?

According to the Reading First website, the program helps 1.7 million children. The annual budget for Reading First in 2006 was $1,029,234,000. By my calculation this works out to around $605 per kid per year. Obviously, this is way to much money to spend on low income children to teach them how to read.

The most disturbing thing though, is as far as I can tell, Reading First is nothing more than a bribe to use effective programs. What does it say that states just didn't adopt scientifically based programs by themselves?

April 19, 2007 at 6:37 PM
Catherine Johnson said...

Its also pretty ironic that the same people who would argue for more money to be poured into education on things like teachers pay, now decide to complain about the money.

no kidding

and you're right about the bribe --

of course the horror is that you can't even bribe Milwaukee

April 20, 2007 at 4:30 PM

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