Where are all of the companies that took advantage of Reading First and its $1B in new funding for scientifically based reading programs asks Patrick Riccards, aka Eduflack. “There is little doubt that a lot of people got rich off of RF. When a law pledges to put $1 billion a year for five years into our schools, there is a lot of money to go around,” he notes. “So where are all of these companies now?”
When all is said and done, the NCLB era may very well be known as the boom time for educational profiteering. And at the end of the day, those five-to-10-year-old companies whose revenue skyrocketed during the RF days will have a lot of explaining to do. At some point, we need to see ROI. And if they aren’t willing to defend the program they’ve been suckling from these many years, do we really expect to see results?
In the comments section, Reid Lyon seconds Patrick, noting “most if not all vendors are no where to be seen supporting the program that made them rich and are laughing all the way to the bank. Two words come to mind: greed and cowardice.”
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