McClatchy: Allegations of wrongdoing plague Bush reading program

[babylonsister]

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/nation/17151352.htm

Allegations of wrongdoing plague Bush reading program
By Rob Hotakainen
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - When the Kansas City public schools lost federal money for their new reading program, Robert Slavin was plenty distressed.

Slavin, who'd designed the program used in Kansas City, had seen the pattern all too often: Local officials try to get government grants to help pay for his scripted Success for All reading program, only to realize that it's fallen out of bureaucratic favor in Washington.

"There have been many of these decisions - this is only the latest," said Slavin, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Fueled by a growing list of such complaints, the House Education and Labor Committee is looking into whether the Bush administration steered contracts to its favorite vendors, shutting out Slavin and other competitors.

And the Education Department's inspector general has asked the Justice Department to examine allegations of mismanagement and conflicts of interest that are swirling around the $6 billion federal grant program known as Reading First, a centerpiece of the five-year-old No Child Left Behind law.

more...

[SpiralHawk]

1. Favorite republicon vendors: Neil "Silverado" Bush

The Bush Clan loves to suck up the crony bucks, as do all
republicon sleazebags.

Sleazy Neily, as he is known around the family mansions, is just another republicon sex & banking & payola pervert.



Republicons & cronies are a plague upon America.

[teach1st]

2. Slavin's upset that he lost his place at the feeding trough

I've taught and fought Slavin's program. Hard. It was a waste of money for many schools (it worked at some schools) and there was a time when Slavin was getting a lion's share of federal education monies.

The time I was interviewed by cheerleader Michele Malkin on this subject:

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/michelle/malkin022301.asp

[proud2BlibKansan]

4. Awesome! Good for you!!

I hate Success For All with every fiber of my being. We had a long conversation over a few beers just a couple nights ago after school. We agreed that kids do learn to read with SFA, but that's about it. The robotic nature of the program just disgusts us. You can't use a scripted curriculum to teach kids to read. There is so much more to it. And SFA prerry much stops with decoding; its comprehension program is weak at best. And forget about helping kids learn to enjoy reading.

One of the teachers said the best thing the other night. She mentioned that her SFA group had just read a story about a spider. She asked if we remembered what we used to do when we read a story about a spider. We would race each other to the public library and check out every book on the shelves about spiders. Then we would read all those books to our kids and even the ones who still couldn't read would draw the most elaborate spider pictures and write till they filled the page, detailing all the neat things they had just learned about spiders. And at least one little boy would bring a spider to school (probably a dead one) and all the kids would ooh and ah over the spider. And at the next parent teacher conference, at least one parent would mention that their child was now the family expert on spiders.

But in SFA, they read the story, spit out answers to lower level comprehension questions, listen to ONE lame read aloud, then the next day, on to a new story!

I still want to cry thinking about this. We are destroying our kids and their natural curiosity to learn and explore their world. And in my district, we no longer teach Science. We have no time because of SFA time constraints and anyway, Science is not tested.

Yes, I hate SFA.

[teach1st]

5. I used the Wayback Machine to find the site I used to run - Alt SFA

http://web.archive.org/web/20030211101504/http://alt-sfa.com/

That was years ago. My school dumped the program after three horrible years. I have heard that SFA has responded to some of the complaints and made changes. Is that true?

[proud2BlibKansan]

6. I don't know

They rushed us through 3 days of piss poor staff development. I sat in an elementary school library in a small person's chair for 6 hours each of those days watching videos on a 13" television with 35 other teachers. Hands down, worst staff development I have ever participated in in nearly 30 years.

The SFA trainers were visibly embarrassed by the 3 day rush to train us and they all mentioned that districts are supposed to pilot SFA in a few schools for a year before adopting it district wide. We were the first to start the whole program district wide at once.

So we are not getting the usual SFA routine. All I can tell you is I have a Roots group and it's 3 days per story, then on to the next one. They are even making us put signs on our doors that say what day of what story we are on and what Fast Track Phonics lesson we are on. I remember to change my sign when the SFA people come for a visit.

I know how to teach kids to read. I could take the 90 minute SFA lesson and condense it down to no more than an hour and still get it all taught. So I use the videos to fill the time block and I read lots more read alouds to my group. I actually like the videos. But the stories generally suck and most of the read alouds are lame.

[teach1st]

7. Sounds like the same old thing...

..you're doing what we were doing. Put on a show for the SFA police and try to fit in some real teaching when they're not arround.

Roots? The books are horrible (the pic is slightly Photoshopped)

[proud2BlibKansan]

8. Oh that's funny!

That is such a lame story. Plus I doubt any of the kids I teach have a deck OR a tent.

Remember the story about the costume party and the kid who can't decide what costume to wear because every costume he picks is already being worn by someone else? I brought in a newspaper picture of Laura Bush at the Christmas party wearing the same dress as a couple other women there. I told my kids that even the wife of the president wants to wear something different from the other guests when she goes to a party. One of my little 1st grade girls raised her hand and asked "What was his girlfriend wearing?"

I wanted to tell her I didn't think Condi was invited to this particular party. :rofl:

[Berry Cool]

9. Out of the mouths of babes...

:rofl:

Wow, Stephanie Miller keeps saying her target audience is first graders, but I never realized before how effective she'd been!

[proud2BlibKansan]

3. Well I teach in Kansas City and am way too familiar with Slavin's program

It sucks. The program we had before was cheaper and better. And you know what? Kids actually learned to READ and to enjoy it. Imagine that.

Slavin is just bitter that kazillions of tax dollars went to Reading First instead of Success for All.

And as far as I am concerned, Slavin and the Reading First people and anyone else for whom the bottom line is profit rather than what is best for our kids can just go straight to hell.