The current Education Gadfly has a guest editorial by Shep Barbash entitled “Reading First’s Christmas massacre” in which Mr. Barbash decries the funding cuts to the Reading First program.
Reading First, funded at $1 billion per year, is among the most promising federal efforts to help the poor. Title I, funded at $12 billion per year, is not nearly so effective. That President Bush has just signed into law a 2008 budget that gives the latter an 8.6 percent increase in funding and the former a 64 percent decrease confirms the wisdom of Lincoln, who observed, “In republican democracies, public sentiment is everything. With it nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed.” Notwithstanding Reading First’s success increasing early literacy rates among the poor, public sentiment for the program remains weaker than that of its enemies, who have proved more influential in Congress and more determined than Reading First’s stewards in the administration.
Here’s a link to the full editorial.
Full disclosure: I am a member of the Reading First Federal Advisory Committee. That I have pointed to Mr. Barbash’s editorial here does not imply that the committee endorses or condemns his views. Just passing it along, folks.
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