"Ph.D.s in education have put a great deal of effort into figuring out how to teach that skill to the kids who Just Don't Get It."

Actually, Ph.D.s in education have done a generally appalling job of researching how children learn to read. There are a few happy exceptions, but I would look more to Ph.D.s in linguistics or psychology (harder disciplines, and more evidence-based, than education in general) for advice on how to teach children to read.

Here are some sound resources on reading instruction:

http://www.amazon.com/Lets-Linguistic-Approach-Leonard-Bloom...

http://www.amazon.com/Language-Development-Learning-Read-Sci...

http://www.amazon.com/Overcoming-Dyslexia-Complete-Science-B...

So, yes, the problem with introducing programming into the K-12 curriculum is

a) figuring out how to teach it well to learners of that age of varying backgrounds and interest levels, and

b) figuring out what else gets crowded out of the curriculum.

I don't want to get into a debate here about what the best techniques for teaching reading are (not to mention how to get teachers in the classrom to actually use the techniques); my point is just that everyone in the system agrees that the schools have a duty to teach literacy to every kid who is biologically capable of it.

150 or even 100 years ago, I don't think this was the case; if a child didn't learn to read in primary school then it was considered the child's failure, not the school's, and the kid just dropped out and got some job that didn't require literacy.

My ancestors 150 years ago and even more recently learned to read before they started school, as is noted in their diaries or recalled by my oldest living relative. And Horace Mann noted BEFORE he started campaigning for compulsory school attendance in Massachusetts that by his estimate most inhabitants of Massachusetts were literate in English. (He wrote articles in the journal he founded, the Common School Journal, which I have looked up, saying that.) The origin of the compulsory-attendance school system as we know it today in the United States was not to ensure literacy but rather to accomplish other social goals promoted by Mann.

One of my friends (my major client) is doing his Ph. D. in speech pathology and designed a program to combat children with learning disabilities. We commercialised the program some time ago and it's selling well, as well as becoming a major tool amongst the local and interstate education sectors.

Mind you, reading is totally different from teaching computer science.