March 29, 2024

Two Scandals by Ken Goodman (2006)

Two scandals involving our government and the young people of this country broke in the last few weeks. One involved the internet antics of an important Republican Congressman with current and former Congressional pages. His indiscretions shocked the nation, have brought suspicion on the House Republican hierarchy who appear to have covered up for him, and may well effect the mid-year elections. The second scandal involved millions of children in schools throughout the country. Yet, after a few newspaper reports and an occasional mild editorial, there have been no noticeable repercussions

I’m talking about the amazing report of the US Department of Education Office of Inspector General involving the Reading First portion of the No Child Left Behind. The OIG found that the DOE personnel:

  1. deliberately obscured the requirements of NCLB
  2. imposed conditions on the states which are not in the act, 
  3. were totally indifferent to blatant conflicts of interest of persons appointed to panels reviewing state proposals, 
  4. ignored the law in illegally constituting review panels
  5. and interfered in the selection of curricula, texts and tests by states and school districts illegally, according the provisions of NCLB itself and the Department of Education Authorizing Act (1979).

That sounds a lot more damaging to a lot more kids than what the reprehensible representative did. When George Miller, the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Education and the Work Force expressed his outrage and called for immediate hearings in the House, the Republican leadership said no. 

NCLB, including Reading First, is a major program of the Bush administration which had bipartisan support not only from Miller but from Senator Kennedy as well. School administrators know that Reading First has been a disaster for schools in every part of every state.

State and local schools administrators have been caught in the middle between the bureaucrats in the DOE and parents, students and teachers, forced to enforce absurd programs like Direct Instruction Reading and DIBELS and to defend them as “scientifically based”. Now the ugly truth is revealed: those who authored and profited from these programs were illegally employed to review state proposals and insist on including these absurdities as a condition of approving them.

Chris Doherty, the Reading First Director is the chosen fall-guy. It’s already been announced he is leaving DOE . His only original qualification for the job is that he directed an unssuccessful Direct Instruction program in Baltimore. His assistant Sandi Jacobs has ben transferred to another job. The OIG report contains emails between Doherty and Ed Kame’enui (mentioned as having conflicts of interest}, and others boasting about how they were pushing some programs on states while harpooning others. While not as salacious as Foley’s emails they are much clearly illegal. Doherty even boasts he forced school districts in a number of states to drop blacklisted programs after their state proposals had already been approved.. Rigby and Reading Recovery are mentioned by name in the emails.

The OIG report has asked for the review of all state Reading First contracts with DOE. There is little doubt that there is a basis in what has already been revealed to declare them all illegal according to the NCLB law itself and the law establishing the DOE.

So why isn’t this scandal causing the repercussions that the Foley missteps have caused? Why did TV news virtually ignore it? With NCLB up for renewal for another 7 year sequence in the next Congress, why isn’t this becoming a major issue in the mid-term elections?

Maybe it’s because some very powerful interests have put a lid on it. Maybe the Reading First scandal has the potential for being a lot more embarrassing for some very important people than Foley’s Follies.