Is the Senate’s READ Act a Reading First redux?
Also, Ross Wiener’s delusional take on NCLB, Maya Martin Cadogan tells us to relax about Janeese Lewis George, and Indiana’s waiver is worse than I thought.
Hi, friends. This week it’s NCSC vs. NCSA. I’m on Team NCSC. Speaking of which, I hope to see some of you at the National Charter Schools Conference in New Orleans this week. Come to my session on grade inflation on Friday morning, featuring Peter Anderson of Washington Latin and Michael Farkosh of Vertex Academy.
Today we ponder whether we really want Uncle Sam mucking around with the science of reading; report on the latest dust-up over gifted education, featuring Katie Arnold-Ratliff, Matt Yglesias, Alina Adams, John Ketcham, Jonathan Plucker, and Leah Raymond; ask whether Ross Wiener is auditioning to become the new Diane Ravitch; and catch up on other great takes from Elliot Regenstein, Theresa Hawley, Katie Reed, Dan Buck, and Jessica Baghian. And don’t miss today’s “Raise Your Hand” section, featuring an update on Indiana’s waiver, analysis from Maya Martin Cadogan on the D.C. mayoral election, and a response to Jennifer Berkshire from “self-deputized corrector of the record for Mississippi” Rachel Canter.
“The wake-up call is here. Wake up, wake the hell up,” Keri Rodrigues told Politico’s Mackenzie Wilkes recently. “How many times do you have to be called to action?” Keri continued. “How many panel discussions do we have? How many congressional briefings, congressional hearings, all of this stuff? We all know what the problem is. Let’s get together and solve it.”
That’s quite a stirring introduction to a federal bill that, to my eyes, doesn’t do much, isn’t really needed, and could possibly do harm. But maybe that’s just my Reading First PTSD speaking.
The bill in question is the Senate’s READ Act, which boasts impressive bipartisan support. Keri’s National Parents Union is the driving force behind it, but it’s also supported by All4Ed, Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) Action, Collaborative for Student Success, EdTrust, Educators for Excellence, National Council on Teacher Quality, Parents Amplifying Voices in Education (PAVE), and TeachPlus, among others. According to Mackenzie at Politico, the READ Act:
Would modify the Comprehensive Literacy State Development (CLSD) grant program to set aside funding from the program for states with persistently low NAEP scores. States with scores in the lowest level on fourth grade reading for two consecutive [cycles] would be eligible to receive the set-aside funds. Those states would have to analyze what literacy needs they have and create instruction plans based on that.
The bill would also require these states to ensure that teacher prep programs are aligned with the science of reading, and would require all states to provide early literacy screening, among many other provisions.
According to the NPU, those other provisions would allow states to invest in:
High-quality instructional materials aligned to the science of reading, so that evidence-based instruction becomes the norm rather than the exception.
Parent notification and intervention plans, so families know when a child is reading below grade level and what the school will do about it.
Interventions like tutoring and summer learning programs, so struggling readers get the supports they need to catch up.
Literacy coaching networks and professional development, so educators have the supports they need to keep improving.
One possibility is that this bill is a nothing-burger. If all it does is tweak an existing grant program (the CLSD), maybe it’s fine. I find it a little weird that we’d reward low-performing states with a better chance at winning the money (Race to the Bottom, anyone?), but OK, whatever.
But is it really needed? Over 40 states have enacted science-of-reading reforms already; what’s the case for Uncle Sam trying to jump out and lead this parade? Perhaps this bill would encourage a few states to embrace more comprehensive reforms than they otherwise would, but we already know that what really matters (on this issue, like most) is whether the policies are faithfully implemented and executed at the local level.
And there’s little the feds can do to ensure that, unless they are willing to be heavy-handed about whether, for example, states and districts really are using evidence-based instructional materials. That’s what my friends in the George W. Bush administration did back in the No Child Left Behind/Reading First days, and it’s why the program eventually went off the rails.
But clearly there are a bunch of ed-reform groups that see promise in the legislation. Please tell me what I’m missing! Reply to this newsletter, email me at SCHOOLED@fordhaminstitute.org, or leave a comment.
Speaking of No Child Left Behind, Ross Wiener takes to the New York Times to argue that our nostalgia for that law is delusional. Seemingly taking a cue from Diane Ravitch, he describes his conversion experience thusly:
From 2002 to 2009, I was the policy director for the Education Trust, one of the most influential education reform organizations in the country. I testified before Congress, built coalitions for standards-based reform, and published analysis to advance No Child Left Behind, genuinely believing it was the path to public schools that better served low-income students and students of color. The early results seemed to vindicate us: Test scores rose, especially in elementary math among Hispanic and Black students, though much less in middle school, and never much in reading.
But there was a question I couldn’t shake: Were the outcomes we were holding schools accountable for the ones that actually determined whether a young person flourished? I still remember when I first encountered research showing that high school G.P.A. predicted college graduation better than standardized test scores. I went to my boss’s office to discuss it, expecting her to help me push back, but she confirmed it was true, and always had been. If so, I recall thinking, why are we fighting so hard for test scores to be the arbiter of quality education?
I don’t have space to rebut Ross’s column point by point. I hope someone does—Chad Aldeman maybe?—and will cover it here at SCHOOLED when they do. But let me offer three quick thoughts:
Ross is simply wrong about the lack of progress in the consequential-accountability era, especially in reading. As I wrote back in 2019, Hispanic and Black fourth graders respectively gained 20 and 21 points on NAEP reading from 1994 to 2015. Eighth graders in these subgroups gained about 10 points over this time. The gains were strongest for the lowest performers, which surely was part of the reason that graduation rates also rose dramatically as these students made their way through high school. College outcomes improved, as well. Accountability doesn’t get all the credit, and no doubt Ross and others could argue it wasn’t worth it. But those improvements were dramatic!
The gains petered out around the time that Congress replaced NCLB with the Every Student Succeeds Act. Correlation is not causation, but it’s a little strange that Ross didn’t mention that.
Ross sees tradeoffs where I see false dichotomies. He wants schools to help students find purpose, develop strong character, and build real skills. Do we really believe it’s impossible to do that in schools that are also trying to help students make year-to-year progress in reading, writing, and math? Does Ross think the schools in the Southern Surge states, where accountability is still alive and well, are obsessed with testing to the exclusion of these other priorities he cares about? Is that also the case in high-performing charter schools?
Ross thinks we reformers are too enamored with testing. I fear that Ross may have given up on academic achievement.
Jessica Baghian hasn’t given up on academic achievement—or accountability. In a recent LinkedIn post, she offers her thoughts on how to build an effective A–F system. Among my favorite suggestions is this one:
Build from A-to-F, Not F-to-A.
Federal law requires states to identify the 5 percent of lowest-performing schools, so policymakers naturally spend enormous amounts of time discussing how to identify failure.
This is backwards. When a state designs its formula focusing on identifying the worst schools, the thresholds, weights, and calculations all get calibrated to distinguish the most struggling schools, rather than defining what excellence looks like for everyone else. You end up with a system that is highly focused on the bottom 5 percent but has very little to say to the other 95 percent of schools.
As a result, a school performing in the middle of the pack—not failing, but not exceptional either—looks at its rating, sees it’s safely above the danger zone, and moves on. It learns very little about what to do differently.
There’s a better way: start by defining excellence. Establish what should be true for students in a school earning your state’s highest rating, whether that’s an A, five stars, or some other designation.
Y’all know that gifted education is a big priority for me, so I can’t let a big public debate on the issue pass by without commentary. Katie Arnold-Ratliff kicked off the latest round with her viral New York Magazine article on the “mirage” of the gifted child. It’s actually a balanced and nuanced take on a complicated subject, but I wonder if many folks got past the title and the sub-hed:
Critics say the process we use to identify bright kids is flawed and insular. But what if giftedness itself is a lie?
Katie offers a smart tour through the history of the gifted-education movement, highlighting the sharp disagreement among experts about whether giftedness is even a thing, how to measure and cultivate it (if indeed it does exist), and why participation in gifted programs is so often inequitable, including in her hometown of New York City.
All of this is why so many of us prefer to focus on “advanced” students rather than “gifted” ones, and why Fordham launched the National Working Group on Advanced Education, rather than yet another panel about giftedness. We can definitely measure high achievement, starting in the early grades, and we can work to make sure that students who are showing a lot of academic talent get the challenges and supports they need to fulfill their potential. We can also create policies—like universal screening with local norms—that ensure that we catch high-achieving, low-income (HALO) students, too, so we can better serve them and not just their upper-middle-class peers. A new Education Next article by David Card, Eric Chyn, and Laura Giuliano demonstrates, yet again, how transformative such initiatives can be, especially for disadvantaged boys.
Unfortunately, as Katie writes, such well-designed programs are the exception rather than the rule. She writes:
The potential benefits of separate learning are also highly variable: Is the teacher engaged and committed? Is the district adequately resourced? Is enough time devoted to enrichment activities versus the standard curriculum? The answer is often “no.” A 2024 report by the Fordham Institute put it plainly: “America’s school district policies for advanced learners are mediocre at best.” I ask Lana, who sent her daughter to a G&T program at their neighborhood elementary school on the Upper West Side and her son to the general-ed program at the same school, what differences she noticed in their educational experiences. “Not much difference at all,” she answered. “Not in the curriculum, the homework. I don’t really feel like in the end she learned any more than he did.”
Ding ding ding!
Matt Yglesias picks up on this theme in his post, “The real problem with ‘gifted’ education.” So what is it?
The level of fighting over who gets into this program and whether it’s unfair is wildly out of proportion to the scrutiny of its actual educational efficacy.
Matt wants us to pay more attention to how to make programs and practices work better, including for advanced kids. He certainly doesn’t want us to give up on it:
Outside of formal K–12 schools, nobody thinks the right way to teach is to lump a bunch of people together based on their age and then have one teacher try to deliver a lesson to everyone regardless of what they already know. That’s dumb.
Indeed it is.
The other problem is induced scarcity—in New York and elsewhere. Alina Adams argues the answer is to raise the bar in all schools and for all kids:
As long as parents focus only on getting the best education available for their child, and ignore the fact that the majority of children could benefit from an “accelerated” curriculum, they will be hurting all students.
John Ketcham, on the other hand, thinks school choice is a better answer:
If the alternative to G&T is school choice, public schools would have stronger incentives to use new programming to improve educational quality and compete for students. Consider Idaho, which in 2024 comprehensively rewrote its charter school law to give operators greater autonomy, reduce barriers to charter expansion, and make it easier for traditional public schools to convert to charters. In 2025, the state passed a $50 million tax credit to defray private school education.
Some public schools have thrived in this environment, including through G&T-like programs. Fierce competition for students has pushed district leaders across Idaho to expand magnet schools—district-run schools organized around themes such as STEM and open to students from a wider geographic area. In West Ada and Coeur d’Alene, officials have embraced magnets and bolstered their programming to keep families from drifting to charters or private schools.
Jonathan Plucker and Leah Raymond believe this market could potentially be huge:
We need better data on the number of advanced students exercising choice options, but we suspect it is already significant. For example, estimates of gifted students being homeschooled range from 50,000 to 140,000, and we suspect the total number of advanced students pursuing educational choice in some form exceeds 1 million students. Yet advocates of educational pluralism and choice rarely talk about advanced learning.
Less scarcity, greater efficacy, and more pluralism: These are good rules to follow!
Just as advanced students are often an afterthought in the context of school choice, so too are our youngest learners. So argue Elliot Regenstein, Theresa Hawley, and Katie Reed, in “The case for including early childhood education in education choice programs.”
Few choice advocates have paid attention to the pre-k years—and the results are visible in their recent successes. At the federal level, the Education Freedom Tax Credit created in the One Big Beautiful Bill applies to children “eligible to enroll in a public elementary or secondary school.” While many elementary schools offer pre-k classrooms—and increasingly private and charter schools do, too—pre-k programs do not appear to be included in the statute….
At the state level, most private education choice programs do not include early childhood. Education savings accounts are rooted in service for children with disabilities—but as these programs have expanded to serve broader populations in K–12, they have not seen a similar expansion into early childhood, though there are a few exceptions: Arizona and Florida allow ESA funds to be used for early childhood special education, and some Texas families can use vouchers for pre-k. Wyoming deserves credit for including early childhood as part of its ESA program, which was a priority for Governor Mark Gordon. The Equality State’s model is worth examining and expanding.
ESAs for pre-k: Sounds like smart policy and politics, people!
Daniel Buck, however, isn’t sure the EFTC itself is all that smart. Echoing other conservatives over the years, he worries that “The Education Freedom Tax Credit could blow up in our faces.”
The greatest risk in my mind is that in time this program will become a stick that the federal government can wield to thwack private schools into submission. Were private schools to adjust their budgets or expand such that they come to depend on funds through this program, it then becomes a point of leverage for antagonistic administrations.
Not all unintended consequences are unforeseen.
Jason Riley, “When Schools Try to Cover Up Their Failures”
Kaya Henderson, “To Save Our Schools, Trust Young People”
Rick Hess and Derek Black, “How State Courts Are Quietly Shaping U.S. Education”
Dr. Megan Schopp, “The Dirt Road to a Better Education Policy”
Sharif El-Mekki, “We Can’t Give Up on Teacher Diversity”
Matt Gandal, “Graduation Season Is Here. Is The High School Diploma Stuck In The Past?”
Montgomery County Public Schools (MD) will no longer cover community college tuition bills for students who aren’t prepared for postsecondary work. Talia Richman reports that “the district will only cover these costs for students who are deemed ‘college and career ready,’ based on a specific state definition that factors in GPA, course completion, and standardized test scores.” Some expressed disappointment at this change, but I think it’s an improvement. Nobody should pay for courses that students are unlikely to pass—and that should go for the federal government’s Pell Grants and student loans, too.
Dana Goldstein describes the many ways AI helps students cheat and the challenge facing educators trying to maintain some semblance of academic integrity:
In some cases, the very same companies selling detection tools are also making apps that allow students to cheat, including by writing papers for them or rephrasing text written by others. The apps promise to help them avoid accusations of misconduct by scanning their work before they submit it, allowing them to rewrite passages identified as AI.
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Patrick Anderson shares disappointing news from Rhode Island, where “Governor Dan McKee signed a three-year moratorium on new public charter schools into law on Thursday, June 18, completing a full reversal on an issue in which he was once a staunch charter backer. The legislation blocks new charters from opening through 2029 and lowers the statewide cap on charters from 35 to 28.” This despite Rhody’s charters’ strong record of success and overwhelming popularity—and the fact that McKee appears likely to lose his primary anyway.
“Soon, half of all American schoolkids will be able to apply for state money to finance a private education, and many states will offer the scholarships even to families with high incomes,” write Bianca Vázquez Toness and Sharon Lurye. Yet many students from low-income families and those with disabilities are left behind by private school choice programs in their current iteration.
In Friday’s SCHOOLED, I wrote that it was good news that the feds only approved Indiana’s cockamamie accountability system for high schools. After the newsletter went out, I heard from reputable sources that this wasn’t a victory for reformers, but instead that the U.S. Department of Education told Indiana officials that using their system for grades 3-8 was already allowable under the law, sans waiver. So ignore what I said about ED’s “measured response”! This decision was much worse than I thought.
Meanwhile, Maya Martin Cadogan wrote in to encourage us to stay calm about D.C.’s mayoral primary election:
Presumptive Democratic Mayoral candidate and Ward 4 Councilmember Janeese Lewis George actually came out very strong on charter funding inequity when the Mayor chose to put more money for DCPS through other agencies. And I do think that came from a deep-seated moral belief she has that funding should be fair. Having someone who is centered in fairness and doesn’t default to old sector battles is a good thing for kids—especially in a place with an equal number of families choosing both.
Around mayoral control, she’s stated on record that she won’t do anything in the immediate except for giving OSSE more autonomy which many folks kind of don’t think is the worst thing (they could use some gas to do more).
The larger target is Impact for DCPS teacher evaluations, which is a WTU priority, and they endorsed her. That is why it’s important that parents are at the table because we have heard from them that they want us to retain our highly effective educators and evaluation has helped us to do that in record numbers.
I think, much like in NYC, everything will be OK. At PAVE, we have met with her every year she’s been in office during DC Parent Voice and Choice Week, and she’s come through on a number of our parents’ policy priorities. I know she also met with charter leaders during her campaign. And most importantly, as a guide for what she believes: She was at the DC Kids and Schools launch and told us that she supports all four pillars (reading and math progress, diverse and high quality choice, career-connected experiences in high school, and delivering and elevating universal pre-k), and is here to lead on communicating about them in any way. She literally told us: “Put me in, coach!”
At the end of the day, Janeese believes in the power of communities, and thankfully, we have a strong set of community voices ready to share a vision of education that will allow all kids to thrive. All of advocacy is about careful planning, blocking and tackling, building a strong team, and reaching a goal. Our work with this administration will be no different. And because of the authentic relationships we have built, I feel optimistic.
Finally, Rachel Canter responds to Jennifer Berkshire’s admonition that Democrats “stop trying to make Mississippi happen.”
Since I have self-deputized to be a corrector of the record for Mississippi, I decided to post this comment about the Mississippi section here. Mississippi’s lack of unions with collective bargaining power is not why we don’t spend more money on ed. It’s because we’re poor. Mississippi’s advocacy infrastructure for pressing the legislature for more money for public schools in both good economic times and bad is both very active and very powerful. The legislature consistently places high importance on spending more dollars on public schools because every legislator knows that their local school district relies on those funds and will organize against them if they are perceived as not caring. The question is never whether public ed will get more money year over year; it’s how much in a given budget year.
And Mississippi’s lower per-pupil expenditures are not why people like our story. They like our story because we’re a lone bright spot DESPITE being poor and not having extra money. I never tell people that we didn’t need money. I tell them we didn’t have it, so we did the best we could with what we had. We did spend some additional money, most notably the $15M annual line item for the literacy initiative. That was as much as we could get with all of the other pressures on the budget and the consistent general outcry for more money overall for the funding formula. I have always wished Mississippi had a larger general fund so that all the competing issues I advocate for—pre-K, teacher pay, general K–12 expenditures, new initiatives, etc.—could be well funded. It’s simply silly to suggest that Mississippi had loads of money lying around that we don’t give to education because we don’t recognize collective bargaining.
I’m going back to my summer schedule this week, so see you next Tuesday, folks!
Mike
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"but we already know that what really matters (on this issue, like most) is whether the policies are faithfully implemented and executed at the local level." One more thing matters: whether those policies are good in the first place. For example, we know what's wrong with three-cueing, but the answer isn't to ban it but to teach it correctly: using phonology and orthography for word identification followed by syntax and semantics for word confirmation--if needed. I write about the distinction in Missing the Mark: Why Three-Cueing is Off Target (https://harriettjanetos.substack.com/p/missing-the-mark-why-three-cueing?r=5spuf).