In an interview with Nancy Salvato in which we discussed literacy and the Reading First program I mistakenly indicated that the US Department of Education changed the SBRR criteria for Reading First funding from the more specific criteria that we initially submitted for inclusion in the legislation.  I apologize for the confusion. As I was not involved in the negotiation process, I should have checked with congressional staffers who were intimately involved in the negotiating phases. I made an assumption that the Education Department was involved in the process, and I was incorrect. In point of fact, the Education Department accepted the language passed in the legislation.

In drafting the initial language for congressional review, Robert W. Sweet Jr. and I recommended that federal funding should be contingent on program-specific evidence of effectiveness derived from studies employing appropriate research designs and methods. This criterion was revised through congressional member and staff review and the negotiation process, which resulted in the less-specific language in the current law.  In the revised language, funding was contingent upon programs demonstrating that their content and instructional formats were based on SBRR rather than program-specific effectiveness.  The language was revised prior to enactment of the legislation and governed the implementation of the law.

As an aside, I believe this lack of specificity has had unintended consequences. For example, some vendors of reading programs simply changed the language in their promotional materials to embody the critical elements of scientifically based reading research without providing a comprehensive program whereby instruction was provided directly and systematically. It is also the case that substantial lobbying of congressional members and staff by publishers and vendors of reading programs occurred. Thus, in implementing Reading First, a major responsibility of, and challenge to, the Reading First staff was to determine whether a program’s claims made against even the weaker criteria were accurate. In some cases, they were not.

In hindsight, one can only speculate what would have occurred if the original, program-specific effectiveness criterion had been accepted. To be sure, there were few reading programs that would have met the criteria. On the other hand, we predicted that by setting the higher standard, vendors would have a clear effectiveness goal to achieve in order to be competitive. One could also predict that the publishing industry and the reading community writ large would resist the need to test programs for effectiveness and identify the conditions under which effectiveness was achieved (implementation factors, learning characteristics, and teacher characteristics, for example).

In summary, the Education Department was not involved in developing the Reading First language relevant to research and funding criteria.

G.Reid Lyon
Dallas, Texas