Curriculum

Last week the Institute of Education Sciences released the first report from an ongoing national evaluation of Reading First. And, as a front page Washington Post story (and plenty of other newspaper articles across the country) reported, the news wasn’t good. Researchers found no evidence of statistically significant improvements in the reading comprehension of students in Reading First schools, compared to students in similar schools that did not receive Reading First funding. Since the point of Reading First is to improve students’ literacy skills, that’s a disappointing result.

Last week's Nation at Risk anniversary spawned a boatload of commentary on the seminal report's impacts, as well as the continued shortcomings in American public education 25 years later. Thinking about Nation's impacts on early childhood and elementary education can be perplexing. As E.D. Hirsch notes in Education Week, the original report gave barely a mention to early education, focusing primarily on the need to dramatically improve academic rigor and core course-taking at the high school level. Yet it's undeniable that the standards-based education movement that emerged out of Nation has led to significant reforms in early education--and that early education reforms have actually be more aggressive, and have produced greater results, than have reforms at the high school level Nation's authors originally sought to affect.