Reading Wars and the Education Science Reform Act of 2002

There never was a reading war. A war assumes there are two armies meeting on a field of battle. This didn’t happen. But there was a reading coup. There was a hostile takeover of the field of literacy instruction by profiteers who saw public education as their own private ATM machine. This group of profiteers is part of the educational industrial complex which includes Cambium-Lexia Learning, Pearson Education, Cengage Learning, Hough Mifflin Harcourt, McGraw-Hill Education, Voyager Sopris Learning, TAL Education Group, Bright Horizons, and KinderCare Learning. Their armies of well-paid toadies (consultants) promise schools simple solutions to complex problems.

“Just buy our shiny new products,” they say. “Pay for our services,” they say. “Get trained by our experts,” they say, “and all your literacy problems will go away. All your students will be reading above grade level.”

“Well, I don’t know,” the school says. “That’s a lot of money.”

“Look,” they say, “look at all the colorful charts and graphs. Look at all the pretty, pretty numbers.”

“Well,” the school says, “you do have numbers. That must mean it’s real.”

“Wouldn’t you like to have colorful charts and graphs like this? Wouldn’t you like to have pretty, pretty numbers?”

“Yes,” the school says. “Yes, I would.”

And that, my friends, is how education lost its soul.