Beware the Education Industrial Complex -- Reading First

[Thanks to Gary Stager for reminding us all to blog about this... also check out this month's Rethinking Schools for its analysis of NCLB and its programs.]

In case folks missed this, the Department of Education has determined that the $6 billion spent on Reading First -- the "scientifically proven" reading program pushed by President Bush and Sec't Spellings -- has done nothing to improve reading scores. In its article on the Reading First study, the Washington Post quoted Secretary Spellings as saying, ""If ever a program was rooted in research and science and fact, this is it."

Tim Stahmer, over at Assorted Stuff, has a great post about how Reading First is yet another example of the Bush Administration favoring politics over policy, as Reading First money ended up in the hands of many Bush supporters.

For me, this is one of the great crimes of NCLB, and one I've written about before. One of the truly horrible pieces of this bill -- and the reach it has had on district policies -- is how it has created a truly education-industrial complex with whole cottage industries springing up around standardized curriculum and standardized testing.

This has a painful and powerful effect at the district level, as resources are diverted from where they can do the most good. I was on the phone with a colleague today who is trying to get funding for an innovative, home-grown program. The Philadelphia Inquirer finished a three part story about drop-out prevention today and quoted a District official as saying that to increase the number of seats in these programs from 3,150 to 5,000, the district needs to spend another $37 million. Given the incredibly difficult fiscal challenges facing the School District of Philadelphia right now, that money isn't there. But imagine how much more money would we have for innovative programs if we didn't spend as much as we did on so many pieces of the standardization of curriculum and assessment over the past five years.

Reading First is one of the biggest piece of the "Who benefitted from NCLB" puzzle, but there are many other companies who have seen stock prices rise as schools have become less humane, as the Dept. of Education study shows, no more effective.

If we, as educators and students, are being held accountable through high-stakes testing, who is holding the policy makers and the for-profit education industry accountable for what they have done to our schools in the name of this most cynical of federal programs?