Allegations of Wrongdoing Plague Bush Reading Program
WASHINGTON - When the Kansas City public schools lost federal money for their new reading program, Robert Slavin was plenty distressed.
Slavin, who’d designed the program used in Kansas City, had seen the pattern all too often: Local officials try to get government grants to help pay for his scripted Success for All reading program, only to realize that it’s fallen out of bureaucratic favor in Washington.
“There have been many of these decisions - this is only the latest,” said Slavin, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
Fueled by a growing list of such complaints, the House Education and Labor Committee is looking into whether the Bush administration steered contracts to its favorite vendors, shutting out Slavin and other competitors.
And the Education Department’s inspector general has asked the Justice Department to examine allegations of mismanagement and conflicts of interest that are swirling around the $6 billion federal grant program known as Reading First, a centerpiece of the five-year-old No Child Left Behind law.
Inspector General John Higgins said his office began investigating Reading First in May 2005 after receiving complaints of favoritism. He told the Education and Labor Committee that the law calls for a balanced panel of experts to review grant applications but the department had created a panel that had professional ties to a specific reading program.
Democratic Rep. George Miller of California, the committee’s chairman, said three people involved in the reviewing process benefited financially - either directly or indirectly - when the panel distributed grants.
At a committee hearing April 20, three review panel members acknowledged benefiting from the sale of an assessment product called the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Learning Skills. One of the panel members was a co-author of the product, and the company in which he owned a 50 percent share had received more than $1.3 million in royalty and other payments from the sale of DIBELS. Two other review panel members were co-authors of a reading intervention product that was packaged with DIBELS, and they each had received about $150,000 in royalty payments from sales of their product.
All three denied any conflict of interest, saying they didn’t review grant proposals that involved their own products. They said their products were selling because of their popularity, not because of any pressure from Washington.
At the hearing, Miller charged that investigators had found examples “where states were essentially bullied” to use favored reading programs in order to get federal aid.
Starr Lewis, an associate commissioner with the Kentucky Department of Education, testified that Christopher Doherty - who managed the program for five years before leaving the position last year - had pressured the state to drop one of its reading assessments and that it had received federal funding soon after doing so.
The Bush administration is defending the Reading First program, part of President Bush’s effort to get all schoolchildren reading by third grade. The administration points to rising test scores since the program was launched in 2002.
Doherty said the Education Department never maintained a list of favored reading programs. “No one was ever told they must use a certain program or programs instead of others.”
One of the program’s biggest defenders is the president himself. Speaking at a school in Harlem on Tuesday, Bush said: “I appreciate the fact that nationwide, 9-year-olds have made more progress in five years than in the previous 28 years combined on these tests in reading. … The pipeline is beginning to be full of little readers that are competent readers.”
In a report earlier this month, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said the percentage of first-graders who were meeting or exceeding reading proficiency had increased by 14 percentage points - from 43 percent to 57 percent - from 2004 to 2006, while the percentage of third-graders meeting or exceeding proficiency rose by 7 percentage points - from 36 percent to 43 percent, during the same period.
Spellings is sure to be in the hot seat on May 10 when she testifies to the House Education and Labor Committee on the department’s oversight of the program. Congress approved it as a way to help public schools improve reading instruction by giving them federal money to pay for teacher training and reading materials.
Miller said congressional investigators had been investigating the program for months, reviewing thousands of documents and interviewing dozens of people.
Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, the head of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, charged that the Bush administration had a record “of political manipulation and cronyism that have tainted” the reading program. He said “schools across the country were pressured into using specific reading curricula that were backed by the programs’ administrators’ political agendas.”
Miller and Kennedy were strong supporters of Bush’s original No Child Left Behind law but have been critical of how it’s administered.
As the investigations continue, Democratic leaders are promising to tighten controls over the program.
Kennedy has introduced a bill that would require federal employees and contractors involved in Reading First to file yearly financial disclosures showing any ties to publishers or organizations that benefit from the program. His bill also would increase monitoring in an attempt to make sure that no federal employee was trying to influence or control decisions on local curricula.
For state-by-state information on the Reading First program, see:
http://www.ed.gov/programs/readingfirst/state-data/grantee-profiles.pdf
© 2007 McClatchy Newspapers
“Is the children learning?”
No, but a few big porkers got their greasy hands on some more dough.
That’s what really matters. And that’s what happens when slime becomes officialdom.
The Bush dynasty is finished.
And Bush is an expert on reading. Please.
“And the Education Department’s inspector general has asked the Justice Department to examine allegations of mismanagement and conflicts of interest that are swirling around the $6 billion federal grant program known as Reading First, a centerpiece of the five-year-old No Child Left Behind law.”
Between this and the “student loan” scandal, the Education Department has its hands full. Is there any department within this administration that tracks the allocation of money and spending behavior of the opportunists?
Did you ever imagine that you would see so many scandals surfacing under the leadership of one administration? It is unimaginable that this level of non-accountability could be taking place under one roof. Every time we look at real news, we’re being scammed!
If Americans seriously want ” No Child Left Behind ” let them make a visit to any school in Cuba and then watch what children are eating for lunch and then ask them what they had for breakfast and then follow them to the closest hospital if they get sick at school and then find the publishers of school books used and who profited from journey from publisher to school and then look for the snack-vending machines supplied by Big Junk Food and then note the administrator/teacher ratio and then count weapons concealed on the children and then follow them home to see who is there to look after them.Lastly find out where the money comes from to run the school That’s a good start ; you can add to it.
I could do this survey in 1/2 day.
Repeat the same survey for any school in Venezuela , Germany , Italy , France , Holland , Sweden , Finland , Denmark , Norway… bye the bye , all socialist( with a small s ) countries.
Take the results from the surveys and copy them at American schools and you will have a virtual “No Child Left Behind” not just a hollow slogan
Sounds like Bush’s Dumb program just got Dumber.
Gail: It would be easier to look for any program that DOES work. These extortionists sing the free market mantra, but they just want their hands into EVERY asset that’s not nailed down. I had a chilling thought (it’s not irrational to BE paranoid in these days of wiretaps, no fly lists, evaporated Habeas Corpus, etc) as a writer. The US Copyright Office probably has cycles where it gets more work to file than usual, but since Bush is into getting HIS people into EVERY branch of the government, what if unlike the Nazis in their mandate to burn books, they just start making material disappear, like the Rove emails? I worked for an organization in England in my youth, and it was to safeguard some fundamental rights of prisoners. A book published by the group, “Who Guards the Guards” was considered an underground item, but I think the title speaks volumes for THIS administration. How many read Stephen Pizzo’s book, “Inside Job: The Looting of America’s Savings and Loans.” The Bush family had involvement in that, and what reporter brought that scathing fact up pre-2000 election? Sad day when the petty criminal or kid smoking grass serves time, but the neocons get serviced by DC hookers. This is WHY I believe in karma. It may look like a world of random chaos, because the pieces take time to come full circle.
before their criminal behavior is examined…they’re retardricans…they’re stealing..it’s what they do
it is very funny to see “Bush” and “Reading” in the same sentence…I’m thinking, Bush, Wrong-doing, Reading Program…..it has finally been proven that Tardo The Texan can’t read ?……took me a few minutes to stop laughing before I could read the article
I had to laugh yet again when reading about Bush and his “No child left behind”, better to call it, “No poor child given a chance.” I laughed but I really wanted to cry. It is so absurd for a president who practically boasts about never having read a book (until recently) to actually try and convince the public that he cares one iota about children in general and reading in particular.
How many Iraqi children are reading dirt due to Bush’s inability to read and comprehend the Constitution?
I’m sure they’re learning how to say “depleted uranium.”
A chapter in Greg Palast’s latest book is called “No Child’s Behind Left.”
Surprise, surprise, surprise. Another Gorvernment panel Put in place by this administration with vested interest in their own self gain. “they didn’t review grant proposals that invovled their own products.” Hah, Hah , Hah. These jokers wouldn’t recognize “conflict of interest” if it came up and bit them in the ass. It’s high time the public (esp. the press) rose up and rubbed their noses in it. Its affecting our kids reading programs now for Chrissakes!
Doesn’t Neil Bush fit into this picture somewhere?
If the history books get it right the Bush administrations will be defined by cronyism. Gone mad.
I recall that when NCLB was first implemented, concens were raised about the Bush family’s ties to Mcraw Hill, which was poised to profit greatly through the NCLB testing requirements.
If we care so much about our children, why do we allow them to be sacrificed at the alter of freemarketprofits.
Elementary level learning should begin with learning how to listen and communicate!
Back in the 60s I remember they gave us a project, it would involve everybody; and we were to figure it out as a group. The teacher would coach us only on how to say what we mean, and how to listen and ask the right questions.
If you can’t pronounce the words or understand their use your are going to have a hard time reading or spelling.
We need an atmosphere where elementary school is about helping one another to learn. Each student has their own strengths and natural abilities, they know better how to describe to their fellow students what they have just learned. Teachers are freed up to work with others.
Everybody should graduate as a self-learner, a life long learner. The rest of school will be a breeze for the teachers.
See Spot run, after his pet the rabbit!
Maat, Best Wishes and Hope
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tk1vEuhBuEU
Is there anything Bush has not turned into corruption?