A Reading Program's Powerful Patron

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) steered $2 million in federal funding for a reading program for D.C. schools. (By Melina Mara -- The Washington Post)

A month later, on Dec. 7, the Senate passed the $7.1 billion D.C. appropriations bill, including the $2 million Voyager earmark. Less than two weeks later, Voyager got another boost from Landrieu in the spending bill for the Labor and Education departments: $700,000 for the program to be tried in Louisiana. The following year, the District got another $2 million earmark, $575,000 went to Ohio and $250,000 went to Pittsburgh.

'Found Money'

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Voyager "wasn't something the school system solicited," said Gill, the retired D.C. schools academic administrator.

When picking a reading program, the District typically convenes principals, teachers and academic experts to decide which product fits best, said Elizabeth Primas, director of literacy for the system.

The selection of the core reading program is done every five years. For struggling students, the District also adopts an intensive "intervention" curriculum that often mirrors the core program.

Since the Voyager grant was only enough for a pilot program, it interfered with school administrators' desire to have a uniform intervention curriculum so that transient students didn't have to learn a new system each time they switched schools.

Although school officials might have wanted more control over the federal earmark, that is not how the congressional process works, said Gregory McCarthy, who at the time was deputy chief of staff for Mayor Williams.

"You definitely want to protect home rule and not undermine local authority," McCarthy said. However, when other jurisdictions received such grants, "other superintendents would say, 'It is found money, and you ought to find a way to work with it.' We always looked at it as money for children, and it was something that wouldn't otherwise be done."

Gill said she took the Voyager program and made the best of it. She was pleased that Voyager wanted to do rigorous testing to track student progress. She targeted schools in the poorest neighborhoods and hired additional employees. In the end, she said, Voyager was fine for some students, mainly because it included intensive training for teachers.

"I was really a nonbeliever," Gill said, until "I saw children who I knew were not reading . . . come in and listen and read."

Linda Butler, who at the time of the earmark was a reading coordinator and is now in charge of the District's federal reading grants, said that she didn't know where the Voyager money came from but that she was elated to get it. It helped pay for "campus coaches" who worked with teachers.

"I wondered how it landed here," Butler said. "If it was given to help our children, wonderful! Where can we get more grants from Congress?"

Mixed Reviews

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Voyager officials said that a review of test results "strongly suggests" that their program had a "significant impact" on schools using it through 2005.