Submitted by Laurie, Sep 10, 2008 18:18

No one is talking about the most effective program ever -- Reading First -- that the Democrats decimated the moment that Pelosi took the helm of the party. Funding going to Reading First was transferred to Title 1. Why? Because Reading First only funded research based reading instruction eg., systematic and explciit early phonics (along with vocabulary, comprehension, fluency, etc. ) In contrast, Title 1 money can go for sight word based programs (aka whole language) such as Reading Recovery where the small bit of phonics thown in as if an afterthought is haphazard. Where do Obama and McCain stand on this issue? Why hasn't the press been outraged? A scam of an assessment was contrived for Reading First to justify its demise. Saddest thing I've seen happen in education was the Dems closing down this program. The Reading Wars continue and darned if most of those ed professors aren't going to try to do everything to see that phonics does not re-emerge. Reading First had helped start the beginnings of a small movement back to phonics after 20 years of sight-word based whole language.

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