President Bush’s $1 billion a year initiative to teach reading to low-income children has not helped improve their reading comprehension, according to a Department of Education report released on Thursday and reported in today’s NY Times.
The program, known as Reading First drew on some of Mr. Bush’s educational experiences as Texas governor (?!), and at his insistence Congress included it in the federal No Child Left Behind legislation that passed by bipartisan majorities in 2001. It has been a subject of dispute almost ever since, however, with the Bush administration and some state officials characterizing the program as beneficial for young students, and Congressional Democrats and federal investigators criticizing conflict of interest among its top advisers.
Another billion wasted by the feds
One billion dollars spent and the result is that it didn’t help. You can blame Bush but it is not like he went out and would be teaching reading himself. This is just another example of how federal programs are a waste of money and that whoever the president is the feds are great at screwing things up. Education should be run at the state government level.