After all, it was 26 years ago this spring that the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development issued its National Reading Panel report, which made the case for the science of reading and emphasized the need for explicit instruction in phonemic awareness and systematic phonics instruction.
Those recommendations were the foundation of the Bush administration’s Reading First initiative, which sought to ensure that K–3 reading materials and instruction were science-based. Launched with high hopes, the $6 billion effort was soon undone by operational headaches. It flopped so badly and was memory-holed so efficiently that many who’ve embraced today’s “science of reading” charge aren’t even aware that they’re retracing the footsteps of their Bush-era predecessors.
What went wrong with Reading First? Pretty much everything. The machinery to evaluate instructional materials was rickety. Reading First deputized reading labs at three universities to vet materials, a structure ill-equipped to fend off vendor-supplied junk science. When officials at the U.S. Department of Education sought to deal with the result, they stumbled into allegations of misconduct and favoritism. Oh, and vendors proved adept at repackaging the same old materials and trainings as suddenly consistent with the new requirements.
The result was an ambitious push to overhaul reading instruction that ultimately delivered underwhelming results. With much of the nation gearing up to take the science of reading for another spin, it’s worth asking how states can increase the odds that the result will be more Mississippi than meh.
There are obvious lessons from Reading First, things like improving product evaluation and shoring up guidelines for federal officials. But such lessons, while useful, are also limited—especially for an effort that’s mostly playing out in the states. And they don’t really illuminate why good ideas, even those backed by high-caliber research, so often fall flat in schooling.
After all, the disappointment of Reading First wasn’t just a matter of program design or technical acumen. It reflected a more fundamental challenge.
Policy can make people do things, but it can’t make them do them well. Said another way, policy is a blunt tool that works best when compelling action is enough. That’s why policy works reasonably well if the task is issuing Social Security checks or setting noise ordinances. It’s much shakier when the action is more nuanced, like changes in instruction, curriculum, or classroom culture. The failure to appreciate this has tripped up a slew of seemingly sensible reforms, from teacher evaluation to school turnarounds.
In education, bets on policy are safest when dealing with “musts” and “must nots,” as with things like compulsory attendance, annual assessments, class size limits, and graduation requirements. These tend to be clear-cut and quantifiable. If you want to require that school choice programs get funded, or that high schools offer career apprenticeships, there’s no substitute for policy.
Policy is far less reliable when it aims for complex endeavors concerned more with how things are done than whether they are. Compulsory attendance doesn’t mean students will learn anything. Funding a choice program doesn’t mean it will be accessible or competently managed. High schools can “offer” apprenticeship programs without providing meaningful placements or supervision.
Again: Policy can’t make people do things wisely or well. And, in education, it’s usually the quality of the thing that matters most—as with teacher evaluation, school improvement, or reading instruction. Equipped with only the blunt instrument of policy, though, public officials face enormous pressure to make the world a better place.
It can be useful to offer a concrete example of how this plays out.
Picture a state legislator who visits a school with a terrific new teacher induction program. She wants to ensure that other schools offer something similar. What can she do? Well, she can require that all schools adopt the new teacher induction program. Of course, the schools she knows need it most may not take it seriously. So, she includes a provision that requires that all schools hold a new teacher orientation session and assign a mentor to each new teacher.
But now our legislator fears educators may treat the mandatory meeting as a joke and mentoring as busywork. So, she requires that orientation cover eleven specified topics, mentors meet weekly with their charges, and supervisors fill out a two-page report on each mentoring session. Now some supporters are starting to get frustrated about red tape and undue rigidity, but our legislator remains restless. She fears her measures still aren’t enough to ensure more than box-checking compliance. So, she adds more provisions . . .
You see the problem.
This is why education can seem like it’s drowning in rules—rules that are quite consciously crafted to stop stupidity and malfeasance. As they say in Silicon Valley, “That’s not a bug, that’s a feature.”
