ABSTRACT
As already noted, Reading One-One expanded during 1991-95 from one to thirty-two Dallas elementary schools. Tutored students made large gains, and principals and teachers reported being enormously pleased. And yet, at the close of the 1995 school year, the Dallas Public Schools took actions that had the effect of reducing the program to only eight Dallas schools for the 1995-96 school year. We who invented and manage Reading One-One find this to be both troubling and puzzling. We do not understand it, but we are attempting to. This chapter summarizes these efforts. It offers a tentative explanation, along with a variety of experiences that seem to support it. There may well be alternative explanations for and implications of the events described. Thus, the framework we offer for understanding the behavior of Title I bureaucrats should be regarded as tentative and open to modification. However, the incidents happened as reported.
