ABSTRACT

Early in his second administration, United States Democratic President Bill Clinton introduced the Reading Excellence Act. Unlike what some have argued, this legislation was not the first that linked education explicitly to the promotion of economic growth and competitiveness (see Edmondson and Shannon, 1998). This policy initiative confirmed that “the locus of control” of US education was no longer with the states (see Astuto and Clark, 1988). With bipartisan support, the legislation proposed that reading pedagogy be based on systematic, scientifically based instruction. Most American lawgivers, Republicans and Democrats, agreed that this legislation would restore order to reading education and research (Dunn and Woodard, 2003). The Reading Excellence Act, enacted on October 21, 1998, apportioned US$260-280 million to states with low performance in literacy education on standardized assessments (Roller and Long, 2001). Many states followed the federal policy lead. At this time, the National Research Council (NRC) published a “consensus document,” the Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children report (Snow et al., 1998), which was criticized for not specifying how reading ought to be taught (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development [NICHD], 2000: 1).