Reading First not helping comprehension, study finds. In a front-page story, the Washington Post (5/2, A1, Glod) reports, “Students enrolled in” Reading First, ‘a $6 billion federal reading program that is at the heart of the No Child Left Behind law, are not reading any better than those who don’t participate,” according to the Reading First Impact Study: Interim Report, which was released yesterday by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), which is the “Department of Education’s research arm.” Russ Whitehurst, director of the IES, said, “It’s possible that, in implementing Reading First, there is a greater emphasis on decoding skills and not enough emphasis, or maybe not correctly structured emphasis, on reading comprehension.” The New York Times (5/2, A12, Dillon) notes that in particular, the DOE’s study “analyze[d] the performance of students in 12 states who were in grades one to three during the 2004-5 and 2005-6 school years.” A final report is planned for 2009 “that will analyze additional follow-up data.” USA Today (5/2, 4A, Toppo) explains that the Reading First program emphasizes “phonics, scripted instruction by teachers and regular, detailed analyses of children’s skills.” Regarding the study, analyst Mike Petrilli of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute said it “was poorly designed” and “not the last word on Reading First’s effectiveness.”