You can find the article here

A very interesting read for anyone in education or anyone with children. As someone who develops curriculum and consults in the field it's disheartening to see how the effectiveness of programs is ignored in attempt to gain a homogeneous method. I commend the Madison school district for not selling out.

Teach your kid to read, don't rely on the schools to do it for you. Then, give them good books to read and then let them go to the library and get books THEY want to read.

Less trouble that way.

I don't view the problem here being about the most effective way to teach our children to read. The issue is the Federal Government mandating certain methodologies that they effectively "make up". It's the way that this current administration seems to deal with everything not just the war in Iraq.

I have first had experience with having to test children with substandard testing materials whose efficacy had not been tested but they were chosen because they had been used in, of all places TEXAS. I've also seen huge amounts of dollars go to other educational entities in Texas for Literacy training materials.