Grant says that PBS, CPB and the Department of Education put significant funding toward programming that would teach kids how to read — but that's not what Reading Rainbow was trying to do.
"Reading Rainbow taught kids why to read," Grant says. "You know, the love of reading — [the show] encouraged kids to pick up a book and to read."
Seems to me that if more kids had a love of reading, they'd pick up the rest themselves, and the government wouldn't have to focus so much on cramming basic phonics down their throats.
I attribute RR as one of the reasons I had such a high reading level as a child. It made me want to read, so I did. And the more I read, the better I became at it.