A $1 billion-a-year reading program that has been a pillar of the Bush administration's education plan doesn't have much impact on the reading skills of the young students it's supposed to help, a long-awaited federal study shows.
The results, issued Thursday, could serve as a knockout punch for the 6-year-old Reading First program — Congress has already slashed funding 60%. Reading First last year was the subject of a congressional investigation into whether top advisers improperly benefited from contracts for textbooks and testing materials they designed, and whether the advisers kept some textbook publishers from qualifying for funding.....
.....the new study by the U.S. Education Department's Institute of Education Sciences (IES) shows that children in schools receiving Reading First funding had virtually no better reading skills than those in schools that didn't get the funding....
Although Secretary of Education Spellings and President Bush won't admit it, the entire No Child Left Behind Act has been a complete waste of money and energy. I hope that the next President throws out the entire Bush administration's education plan and starts from scratch.The results, issued Thursday, could serve as a knockout punch for the 6-year-old Reading First program — Congress has already slashed funding 60%. Reading First last year was the subject of a congressional investigation into whether top advisers improperly benefited from contracts for textbooks and testing materials they designed, and whether the advisers kept some textbook publishers from qualifying for funding.....
.....the new study by the U.S. Education Department's Institute of Education Sciences (IES) shows that children in schools receiving Reading First funding had virtually no better reading skills than those in schools that didn't get the funding....
>>> Jonathan Alter appeared on the Ed Schultz radio show where he discussed his article, in Newsweek, Political Pandering. Alter said that both Hillary Clinton and John McCain are just pandering for votes with their suggestion of a gas tax holiday. Here are a few of the highlights from the article (I suggest you read the entire article to see the real ramifications of their proposed gas tax holiday):
...It's a direct transfer of money from motorists to oil companies, which are getting ready this week to again report record obscene profits....
...It offers taxpayers only peanuts.....
...It will cost 300,000 construction jobs, according to the Department of Transportation......
Can we afford to lose another 300,000 construction jobs?
