“Oregon has spent more than $250 million in the past 25 years on reading” with ,meager results, reports Alex Baumhardt in the Oregon Capital Chronicle. Few fourth- and eighth-graders are proficient readers, according to on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). A growing number are “below basic.”

Gov. Tina Kotek is backing a $140 million grant program to fund a switch to instruction supported by the “science of reading,” she writes. That includes teaching teachers to provide explicit instruction in phonics as the first (not the only) step in reading.

But it may be another flop. The state education department can’t tell districts how to spend money or hold schools accountable for failure, Baumhardt notes. That makes Mississippi-style education reforms impossible.

[At least Kotek is making a step in the right direction. Phonics produced near-universal literacy in elementary education for decades before ‘innovators’ decided that phonics was passé. But the real problem is in all of the other accretions that have eclipsed basic education in reading and mathematics and produced metrics that have little to do with competence-based outcomes. If we want better reading and math scores, then schools need to focus on reading and math rather than social engineering and progressive indoctrination — and teachers have to have the latitude to impose discipline in classrooms, too. — Ed]