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President Bush is trying to end Reading Is Fundamental for some reason. His 2009 budget eliminates their funding.
If you'd like for Congress to continue funding this program that gets books and literary resources to kids who need them, I'd recommend going here and using the form they have set up.
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Should we support it because it's a literacy program, or because it's more effective than competing literacy programs? Is it better than, say, Reading First, or do they serve different functions?
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I think we should support it because it is a literacy program and, from what I can tell, the money isn't getting transferred to another literacy program. That's enough for me. We need more, not less, early childhood literacy programs and RIF is an effective one.
As far as I know, there is no other program that is covering the same area in as large a scope as RIF. Reading First doesn't.
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quote: Should we support it because it's a literacy program, or because it's more effective than competing literacy programs?
The 'cut' isn't exactly a cut. They want to spend the funds on merit based proven programs that work instead of always funding the same programs year after year. The only difference is that instead of getting automatic money every year they will be competing with other programs
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quote:The 'cut' isn't exactly a cut. They want to spend the funds on merit based proven programs that work instead of always funding the same programs year after year. The only difference is that instead of getting automatic money every year they will be competing with other programs.
I see no evidence that this is the case. Where are you getting this from?
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I remember getting RIF books every so often at my elementary school (it was a really rural area, and there were a lot of lower-class income families in the area). I wrote a letter. Posts: 4089 | Registered: Apr 2003
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I do support RIF, but the last few years the school system here has had a very high fluff low content ratio in books sent. They have no choice on how many Hannah Montana books they get in comparison to Redwall or other real books.
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quote: I see no evidence that this is the case. Where are you getting this from?
You do have to dig a little for it. It's hard to get any press beyond Bush Bashing. USA Today
quote: The White House doesn't quarrel with the program's goals. But it says the funds should be awarded under a competitive, merit-based process rather than automatically given to one non-profit group.
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I wonder if they mean that. This administration has a long track record of equating 'competitive' and 'merit-based' in social programs with organizations that are run by friends or supporters, to generally disastrous results.
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There is definitely research showing that children who have easy access to high interest literature read more. (Which is why I'm perfectly happy for RIF to provide Hannah Montana.) If this thread is still active in a couple of hours, I should be able to provide some actual citations.
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...Should I ask why working educational programs are expected to compete with one another, and comapanies looking to rebuild in Iraq are not?...
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Here's the problem: I think these sorts of programs are counter productive because they seek to instill in children the sense that reading is something that is good for them. That might very well be the case but it certainly isn't any sort of motivation for children who read. The whole thing comes of as preachy and I'm sure children sense this.
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Then the funding needs to be transferred to a program that does the job better, not eliminated. And to be honest, reading IS good for them, and I personally never felt condescended to by the program, and I was definitely in the age range to be affected by it. I can't recall any other kids of my same age group when I was that age, who felt preached at.
I think it is highly inconsistent with this administration's supposed focus on education that educational programs are the ones that keep getting slashed.
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quote:The White House doesn't quarrel with the program's goals. But it says the funds should be awarded under a competitive, merit-based process rather than automatically given to one non-profit group.
But, from what I can tell, there is no budget item for this. The funds aren't moved. They have been eliminated.
But even granting this isn't just another Bush administration lie, it doesn't make that much sense. RIF addresses an area that no other large scale programs do and it does so very successfully. Along with countless literacy programs, they gave out 16 million free books last year and look to do the same this year, for a cost of $26 million.
What purpose is served by making them apply and justify for funding? They're obviously successful and cover an important areas where it doesn't seem that there are other organizations that are competing against them. Either they'll be denied the funding, leaving their function unperformed, or they'll have to spend a great deal more on overhead in order to pass unnecessary tests.
What the Bush administration says it wants will either remove a working literacy program or simply waste money.
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quote:Here's the problem: I think these sorts of programs are counter productive because they seek to instill in children the sense that reading is something that is good for them. That might very well be the case but it certainly isn't any sort of motivation for children who read. The whole thing comes of as preachy and I'm sure children sense this.
I don't understand the logic you are using here. Could you go into a bit more detail?
It sounds to me that you think that any attempt to get kids interested in books is bound to fail, which is clearly not the case.
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quote:What purpose is served by making them apply and justify for funding? They're obviously successful and cover an important areas where it doesn't seem that there are other organizations that are competing against them. Either they'll be denied the funding, leaving their function unperformed, or they'll have to spend a great deal more on overhead in order to pass unnecessary tests.
Without speaking on the merits of this particular program, or this administration, justifying funding is essential to closing down program waste.
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quote:Assuming you're correct and there is zero competition for bids to rebuild in Iraq...is zero competition the best model? If it isn't, why extend it to education?
Qaz, Surely you can't be suggesting that what is proper to do in widely disparate situations can be distilled down to such a general things as "no-bid contracts: yeah or nay?"
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edit: For example, according to Army and Congressional invesitigators, Haliburton and it's subsidiaries that were recipients of no-bid contracts have through poor performance and fraud have wasted orders of magnitude more money than we are talking about here.
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Not at all. I'm suggesting that we should not make our decisions about education programs in order to be fair to Iraqi construction -- as if these areas of endeavor were children and we were trying to not make one jealous of the other.
And, based on your edit: if no-bid contracts waste huge amounts of money for little reward, promoting or allowing poor performance and fraud, it is not a given (!) that we should have lots more of them in areas that we care about.
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quote:Originally posted by Sterling: ...Should I ask why working educational programs are expected to compete with one another, and comapanies looking to rebuild in Iraq are not?...
quote: For example, according to Army and Congressional invesitigators, Haliburton and it's subsidiaries that were recipients of no-bid contracts have through poor performance and fraud have wasted orders of magnitude more money than we are talking about here.
I would love for schools and many of these programs to be audited the same way. You will find much the same results
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quote:And, based on your edit: if no-bid contracts waste huge amounts of money for little reward, promoting or allowing poor performance and fraud, it is not a given (!) that we should have lots more of them in areas that we care about.
Of course it doesn't. But, as I said, it's pretty stupid to look at things at so general a level.
If RIF were given favoured treatment, used to be run by Dick Cheney, and were shown to be comitting fraud, performing very poorly, and wasting tons of taxpayer money instead of being a pretty effective non-profit that is performing an important service that there aren't really other groups to do, I wouldn't be advocating for them to be funded without some pretty strong justification on their part and some strong oversight.
The details matter. Do you disagree that organizations/companies that perform in the respective ways I described deserve differing treatment?
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quote: For example, according to Army and Congressional invesitigators, Haliburton and it's subsidiaries that were recipients of no-bid contracts have through poor performance and fraud have wasted orders of magnitude more money than we are talking about here.
I would love for schools and many of these programs to be audited the same way. You will find much the same results
How is that even sensical? How could we find that RIF is wasting orders of magnitude more money than is RIF's operating budget? If they have some sort of money multiplying machine, we'd need to sic the Secret Service on them, not have them jump through a bunch of expensive, unnecessary hoops.
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quote:How is that even sensical? How could we find that RIF is wasting orders of magnitude more money than is RIF's operating budget?
One could assume he meant that he amount of money would be the same.
Or, one could apply a little bit of common sense and even a modicum of intent to actually understand and figure that he meant the amount of waste was relatively the same given the size of each program.
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Sure. I don't consider the alleged failure of a policy (no bid contracts) in one area (Iraqi reconstruction) to prove that the policy should be adopted in other areas (literacy programs). That is, it's a red herring, and a distraction, surely, from the purpose you had in making the thread?
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quote:I don't consider the alleged failure of a policy (no bid contracts) in one area (Iraqi reconstruction) to prove that the policy should be adopted in other areas (literacy programs).
Which is fine, but from what I can tell, this doesn't have anything to do with anything anyone besides yourself has said in this thread. Could you explain why you think it does?
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I don't have internet sources for you, but I found the book I was thinking of: The Power of Reading by Stephen Krashen. He's an advocate of what he calls Free Voluntary Reading, which is essentially SSR/ DEAR which you may remember from school: it's time provided in school for students to read books or other materials that they choose for themselves.
The book is an overview of research about reading, so he cites a couple of hundred different studies and articles.
What's relevant to the discussion here is the strong correlation between a print-rich environment (e.g. easy access to high interest reading materials at school and at home) and reading achievement. Three studies (conducted by Krashen and associates in 2000 and 2002) also suggest that a single positive experience with reading can create a reader.
The above is what RIF is attempting to address. It's one part of the puzzle: book ownership for kids who don't live in a print-rich environment at home.
Someone mentioned Reading First. Yes, Reading First and RIF serve entirely different purposes. Also, characteristic of the Bush administration, the focus on putting "proven methods' of reading instruction in the classroom was far from unbiased. New York Times Article
(not scare quotes, by the way: quote from the Reading First website)
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quote:Originally posted by the_Somalian: Here's the problem: I think these sorts of programs are counter productive because they seek to instill in children the sense that reading is something that is good for them. That might very well be the case but it certainly isn't any sort of motivation for children who read. The whole thing comes of as preachy and I'm sure children sense this.
Not really. When RIF came to our school (maybe 2-4 times throughout my elementary school years), there wasn't any fanfare, or preaching. The teacher just lined us up, led us to the library, and we got free books. Not much delving into what it was other than Free Stuff = Good.
Granted, I was a kid who already really liked reading. I remember a RIF book about Santa Clause that I really liked when I was about 9...
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A fun little thing that came up when looking at Liz B's article. Apparently, George W. Bush's younger brother Neil owns a company, Ignite! Inc. that sells educational software specifically oriented towards teaching toward the No Child Left Behind requirements that has poor experiemental support for its claims of success, but gets a lot of money from the Texas state government nonetheless. If the Bush administration's budget plans go through, when this company gets awarded money, I'd support a very high level of scrutiny of their fitness for it.
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"The White House doesn't quarrel with the program's goals. But it says the funds should be awarded under a competitive, merit-based process rather than automatically given to one non-profit group." Translation from Dubyaese: Money for educational programs should be given to Dubya's political friends insteada being wasted on kids.
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quote:Originally posted by Qaz: Sure. I don't consider the alleged failure of a policy (no bid contracts) in one area (Iraqi reconstruction) to prove that the policy should be adopted in other areas (literacy programs). That is, it's a red herring, and a distraction, surely, from the purpose you had in making the thread?
My feeling is- with a significantly greater amount of funding at stake- comapnies like Halliburton were guaranteed funding, despite poor results in accomplishing their goals. A program like RIF is in danger of losing a (much smaller) amount of funding, despite what most would argue are very favorable results in accomplishing their goals.
Competition isn't necessarily supposed to be applied because it's a good thing in and of itself; it's supposed to be an assisting factor in coming up with the best means to an end (the most effective program, the most efficient company, etc.)
A successful program like RIF has arguably already proven itself, putting the need to put it into a competitive system in question; when a company like Halliburton is not put into a similar level of competition, it seems perfectly reasonable to question why there's such a double standard.
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Qaz, Apparently, to answer your question about whether RIF is better than Reading First, I think we'd need to ask "better at what?" Helping kids to read, honestly, I don't have numbers on. Being a politically corrupt and ethically challenged way of funneling money to Bush administration friends and supporters, it is definitely much better, which is probably why it is fully funded in the Bush budget while RIF is being cut.
edit: Ironically, what I initially took for the usual blind partisanship from DK turns out to have been true in the case of Reading First, although I imagine he'd go to great lengths to avoid admitting it, given that the blame lays on the Bush administration.
quote:I would love for schools and many of these programs to be audited the same way. You will find much the same results
I'd love to see industry audited the same way. From the waste I've seen, all the claims about how industry does a better job than government is baloney. For example: Today I spent $70 on five small plastic O-rings of standard size (but they were a "seal repair kit" for an industrial valve) $10 for a washer, and $350 for a valve "trim" that was basically a 1/4" tube, 1 inch long, and drilled to a specific size. That's just today.
I've also been instructed not to ship equipment to the another company location if it could be repurchased. The result was that things like $50,000 mass spectrometers got thrown in the dumpster, and overall, literally hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) of dollars worth of equipment was thrown out.
But I've never seen industry make igloos out of egg cartons.
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quote:Here's the problem: I think these sorts of programs are counter productive because they seek to instill in children the sense that reading is something that is good for them. That might very well be the case but it certainly isn't any sort of motivation for children who read. The whole thing comes of as preachy and I'm sure children sense this.
I really doubt it. Kids like to get free stuff. Why would they worry any more about the motivation behind it than they worry about all the crap that gets foisted off on them at the mall?
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