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Reading Recovery is a waste Premier Doer's announcement today to expand the Reading Recovery program is a total waste of our educational dollars. While the program has been around for over 20 years in the States it was initially trial tested by Winnipeg One School Division in the mid 80's and discarded as not being effective. During the mid 90's it was brought to the St. James School Division with much fanfare by the PC Government and trumpted as the reading solution by the administration. Now 5 years later one doesn't hear much from the Division as they realize it it a very expensive program that doesn't help those children that really have a reading program. A number of the other divisions in Winnipeg are opting out of Reading Recovery program because of its high cost and dubious results. While Reading Recovery works for some children, i.e. those children at a modest risk of reading failure it is an abject failure to those children that have low phonemic awareness skills who are more appropriately taught by a reading program that teaches this skill along with systematic phonics. As I have explained to the former education minister Drew Caldwell a couple of years ago we can test for these children in Kindergarten and get them into a more appropriate reading program than Reading Recovery so that we can all our children reading by Grade 1, which should be an objective we all as Manitobans should have. The Department of Education could better spend their money on upgrading the skills of the K to 2 teachers in the area of teaching reading based on a science based approach as opposed to jumping on the Reading Recovery bandwagon 10 to 15 years later as the Americans are now getting off. Grant Mohr
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