"Phonics and testing, we're meant to believe, are an intensive therapy set to turn around laggard schools," writes Stephen Metcalf in The Nation, "But administrators, teachers, parents and children know better." The real story behind President Bush's education plan, says Metcalf, is that "The big players now at the education table, some with a considerable financial stake in the new regime, believe that money is best spent on testing and textbooks, rather than on introducing equity into the system over the long term." Readers may be entertained by the pages he devotes to exposing an alleged plot behind the spread of scientifically based reading instruction, and by the fingers he points (at textbook publisher McGraw-Hill, among others). But they shouldn't be surprised; after all, "to teach phonics you need a textbook," as well as worksheets and tests, all items sold by McGraw Hill, Metcalf points out. "The amount of cross-pollination and mutual admiration between the Administration and that [McGraw-Hill] empire is striking," Metcalf writes, with the McGraw Foundation awarding Bush Education Secretary Rod Paige its highest educator's award and Paige later serving as keynote speaker at a company conference. As for reading, Metcalf is alarmed by the Bush administration's emphasis on phonics and its use of the findings of the National Reading Panel, which he alleges was wrongly presented to the public as an end to the Reading Wars. Not so, accordingly to this screed. Rather, the powerful Washington public relations firm hired by the government to promote the report has close ties to McGraw-Hill's flagship literacy product, Open Court. If you savor leftist paranoia and aren't much concerned about facts, have a peek at "Reading Between the Lines," by Stephen Metcalf, The Nation, January 28, 2002.
