National Reading Panel (NRP) - Congressional Testimony

Dr. C. Kent McGuire
Testimony before the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee's Subcommittee on Labor, Health & Human Services, and Education

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:

I am pleased to be here today, along with Dr. Duane Alexander, the Director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), to introduce to you the members of the National Reading Panel. This panel was established by NICHD, in consultation with the Department of Education, in response to a request of the Appropriations Committees that accompanied our fiscal year 1998 appropriation. You asked that a panel be convened to assess what we know from research about how to teach children to read. You also wanted to know what is ready for application in the classroom, how that might be disseminated to facilitate effective reading instruction, and what additional research might be needed.

Although I was not in the Department at the time the panel was established, I know that Department officials collaborated with NICHD in identifying individuals to serve on the panel. Department representatives participated in the initial convening of the panel, and staff attended many of the public meetings. Once established, the panel operated quite independently, with support provided by NICHD.

Members of the panel will share with you today the highlights of their findings. I want to join with Dr. Alexander in commending them for their work. I also want to thank Duane for his leadership. During my tenure as Assistant Secretary, I have been particularly concerned with how to compile and share the knowledge gained through research so that it is used to improve education. This report compiles the knowledge; we must now communicate it to the many audiences who should use it.

I believe this is an important report. It contains a great deal of significant, useful information. We know many things about how children learn to read and about some of the instructional strategies that help to foster certain early reading skills. This information is being used, but can be used much more widely, in appropriate ways, to improve early reading instruction for many children. Just as importantly, however, the report reveals that there are very critical gaps in our knowledge about teaching youngsters to read. If we are to help all children become skilled readers, we must expand what we know. We must see that the additional, well-designed research that is so clearly needed is supported.

In this regard, the report is extremely timely for us in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, and we are delighted to have it. Several months ago, we initiated a major planning effort to help us outline strategic, 10-year plans for research on improving reading and mathematics education and student learning in these two core areas. This report of the National Reading Panel, together with other reports such as Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children, will serve as a foundation for our planning effort in reading. The Department's Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services will also be using the report to aid in its planning for additional research, because the report contains specific recommendations on issues related to students with disabilities that require further investigation and study.

Mr. Chairman, we look forward to continuing to work with NICHD on the dissemination of this report and on planning additional research so that we can learn even more about how to improve the reading achievement of our Nation's young people. In addition, we will continue to work together in a variety of other research endeavors, including our recent initiative on English language learning.

Further, I intend to engage my colleagues in the Department of Education in efforts to follow up on this report. There are many ways that the Department can encourage both policymakers and educators to use the information in the report to promote and to provide better instruction in reading. We intend to pursue them.