In the infamous "reading wars," education experts, teachers, and parents have been fighting for decades over whether phonics (sounding out the letters and words) or "whole language" (a more holistic, comprehension-based approach) is the best way to teach young children how to read. When President George W. Bush began pushing No Child Left Behind in 2001, he didn't compromise between the two theories, but came down squarely on the side of phonics. The legislation funded the phonics-based Reading First program to the tune of $6 billion.
Now the Department of Education's own research arm has found that tens of thousands of students nationwide enrolled in the Reading First program perform no better academically than those in more comprehensive reading classes. The study is subject to some of the same flaws as much education research: Some "whole language" teachers in the program, for example, were actually choosing to use more traditional phonics techniques than teachers in Reading First schools. But that just confirms that the Bush administration's hawking of Reading First -- and NCLB's reliance on the program -- is divorced from the reality of how teachers teach and children learn, using a mix of strategies and ideologies. Reforms of NCLB, though unlikely to move through Congress until 2009, should allow teachers and schools to tailor reading instruction to their students' needs.
--Dana Goldstein
