Reading First Program In Trouble!

Source: Associated Press

A billion-dollar-a-year federal reading program, known as "Reading First" has run into scathing criticism over the past year and now has a new one: The government contractor that set up the program for the Education Department is also part of the team hired to evaluate it.

Recently, it was reported that the government failed to keep the program free of conflicts of interest. The inspector general found that federal officials intervened to influence state and local decisions about reading programs, a potential violation of the law and may have inappropriately pushed a particular brand of reading assessment when dealing with states.

The investigations have raised questions about whether Reading First should be reformed, or even abandoned, when NCLB comes up for renewal in Congress this year.