DoE Inspector General Criticizes " Reading First "---Again

    Boy! What a slow night this has been. There isn't a whole lot going on in the world as of yet, but the day has pretty much just begun in one of our favorite parts of the world so I'm sure the news will get nastier by the time we wake up Saturday morning.

   In the mean time, here's a little more on just how this present administration has/is helping out their deep pocketed friends.

 

                                    

Original Article

Dept. of Education Inspector General criticizes "Reading First" -- again

CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington)

    Thursday 22 February 2007

The Department of Education Inspector General (IG) released another in a series of reports highly critical of the Reading First program, part of the Bush administration’s signature “No Child Left Behind Act.” The program was originally intended to provide funds to states for reading initiatives under the theory that there were more effective ways to teach children to read. The Department set up Reading First panels, which made recommendations to the Secretary regarding how the money should be disbursed to states seeking the funds. To date, the Department has disbursed billions of dollars under the program.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) is in litigation against the Department over its unlawful implementation of the Reading First program.   Our lawsuit and the accompanying materials can be found here.  Last September, the Inspector General issued a report about Reading First described as "searing" by the New York Times.

The IG found that the training programs set up by the Department to educate states about the Reading First program violated the prohibition against controlling individual school curricula by promoting specific reading materials and instructions to the financial of benefit companies – such as McGraw Hill and Voyager – headed by top Bush administration donors. The IG also found that the Department failed to adequately assess “issues of bias and objectivity” in approving technical assistance providers.

In response to the report, CREW's Executive Director Melanie Sloan said:

It is becoming increasingly clear that the Bush administration has been sacrificing the education of children to financially benefit a select group of loyalists and donors.  CREW has filed suit to force the Department of Education to come clean about the extent to which cronyism and corruption have permeated the Reading First panels, potentially depriving our nation’s highest risk children of the best possible reading materials.

 

Technorati tags: Bush Administration, Dept. of Education, Reading First