The politics of literacy teaching: How “research” shaped educational policy

of a successful educational advocacy campaign that reframed early literacy educational policies in two states. In addition we contrast the specific instructional recommendations offered in this white paper with the findings of the program of research that was pur-portedly "synthesized " in developing the recommendations. The successful use of this white paper as a policy lever is considered from both the "agenda-setting " and "political use of expertise" frameworks. Educational Researcher, Vol. 28, No. 8, pp. 4-13 There is a demonstrated pattern of increased legislative activity designed to influence the nature of beginning reading instruction and the language of such legislation is becoming increasingly specific and pedagogically restric-tive (Paterson, 1998). In addition, advocacy for such legisla-tion now routinely asserts that these proposals are "research-based " (for discussions of this phenomenon see Allington, 1997; Allington & Woodside-Jiron, 1998a; McQuillan, 1998