Babes in the Woods: The Wanderings of the National Reading Panel

Abstract

From the choice of participants to serve on the National Reading Panel to the hasty release of an uncorrected, undeliberated, and unapproved subcommittee report, the procedure used by the NRP was flawed, Ms. Yatvin - a member of the panel - charges. Now government agencies at all levels are using the science of the NRP report to support their calls for changes in school instruction and teacher education. WHEN THEY heard that I had been appointed to the National Reading Panel (NRP), my friends predicted, They'll eat you alive. But it was never like that. When panelists began our journey to discover what says about the best methods for teaching children to read, were all searchers truth, each knowledgeable and respected in his or her professional domain and each dedicated to working together toward our joint goal. Along the trail, pressured by isolation, time limits, lack of support, and the political aims of others, lost our way - and our integrity.1 To begin with, Congress, which had commissioned our journey, was naive to believe that a panel of people, all employed full time elsewhere and working without a support staff, could in six months' time sift through a mountain of research studies and draw from them conclusions about the best ways of teaching reading. And the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), designated as our guide and provisioner on the journey, was irresponsible both in advising Congress that the task could be done in that way and in selecting the wrong combination of people to do it. In late 1997 Congress passed legislation authorizing the Director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), in consultation with the Secretary of Education, to select the members of the panel from more than 300 nominations by individuals and organizations involved in reading education. The bill specified that the panel was to be made up of 15 individuals, who are not officers or employees of the Federal Government and include leading scientists in reading research, representatives of colleges of education, reading teachers, education administrators, and parents. NICHD stretched that definition to its limits by appointing 12 university professors. Eight of them were reading researchers, two were administrators without backgrounds in reading or teacher education, one was a teacher educator, and one was a medical doctor. Other categories were represented by one parent, one elementary school principal, and one middle school language arts teacher.2 There was no reading teacher in the sense I believe Congress intended. When, shortly the initial panel meeting, one of the university researchers resigned, I suggested that it made sense to replace him with a primary-level teacher of reading. A month later, at our second meeting, the panel chair announced that, after considerable discussion, concluded that at this stage in the game might just as well not replace him.3 The panel was not told who the we were. And since the work of the panel had scarcely begun, the explanation offered was scarcely credible. Why wouldn't NICHD officials want someone on the panel who actually taught young children how to read? The appointment of the medical doctor was also troubling. Although, technically, she was a reading researcher who worked in the controversial area of brain activity in reading, she had no knowledge or experience in reading instruction. What really made her an inappropriate choice, however, was her close professional association with NICHD. In a videotape later produced under the direction of NICHD, this doctor appears five times, hailing the breakthrough accomplishments of the panel, while other members who were far more involved in the panel's research appear once or not at all. At the first meeting of the panel in April 1998, another troubling fact about NICHD's appointments became apparent. …