ABSTRACT
The curious connections linking politics, policy making, and the teaching of reading offer insight into the reading amnesia. Political groups rely on sleight of hand to promote their own agendas in the name of educational reform. In exceptional sleight-of-hand maneuvers, the work of National Institute of Child Health and Human Development's own chief, Reid Lyon, was funded repeatedly and often featured as seminal. When shocking contradictions belie the fact that a government agency endorsing scientific truth employs valid research methods themselves, one might wonder if exploring further curious contradictions even matters. Passage of the Reading Excellence Act in 1997 initiated the appointment of a national panel of reading experts to be chosen from various federal agencies. The main charge given to the National Reading Panel, to produce a report assessing "the status of research-based knowledge, including the effectiveness of various approaches to teaching children to read", resulted in the publication of Teaching Children to Read in 1999.
