Many of you know the state's current literacy plan was submitted as an "RFP" for federal funding under NCLB and came to be known as the Reading First Initiative (RFI). Generally flat National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the only real "national" test, scores over the course of a decade indicate that RFI was less than a stellar success. In fact, Congressional hearings a year or so ago revealed that the national directors of RFI had a direct financial interest in pushing for certain textbook adoptions by the states. After the hearings, CA Representative George Miller described RFI a kind of "criminal conspiracy." Like certain Wall Street bankers no one (to my knowledge) has been criminally prosecuted.
In Unity,
Gary Ravani
CFT EC/K-12