In Part 10, found here http://www.dailykos.com/... and here http://www.diatribune.com/... , reporters Andrew Brownstein and Travis Hicks turned our attention to Doug Carnine, the former reading-researcher and long-ago student of Ed Kame’enui, who would later become U.S. Commissioner of Special Education. Spotting a lucrative opportunity in the years-long debate between "phonics" and "whole language" reading curricula, Carnine developed "Reading First," which became a billion-dollar industry of its own under former White House senior education advisor Sandy Kress’s re-write of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), now known as No Child Left Behind. Carnine certainly benefited from his "Reading First" initiative by following George W. Bush from Texas to the White House and having his program sewn into the fabric of NCLB. If he has benefited materially from NCLB otherwise, he won’t have been the only one.
The list of Bush Profiteers is long and getting longer, and it already includes presidential brother Neil Bush, presidential family friend Harold McGraw III and former Education Secretary Bill Bennett, U.S. Commissioner of Special Education Edward Kame’enui, former Voyager President Randy Best, former Voyager Senior Vice President Jim Nelson, and Voyager Vice President Karen Nelson. And we cannot forget Kress himself, the architect of NCLB, who turned from public servant to corporate lobbyist and now collects significant coin on his own, guiding his corporate masters to the many spigots flowing with federal funds from NCLB.
(To review the series from the beginning, click here http://www.diatribune.com/... or here http://www.dailykos.com/... ).
IN OFFERING US an introduction to Carnine, Brownstein and Hicks offered a luncheon vignette according to the memory of Susan Neuman, "a well-respected professor known for her groundbreaking research on reading difficulties among inner city students and ED’s new assistant secretary of elementary and secondary education." Neuman described a lunch meeting at which Sandy Kress, representing NCS Pearson and its subsidiary Scott Foresman, met with Ed Kame’enui, Carnine’s former professor, to discuss the prospects of Scott Foresman winning a juicy federal contract under NCLB. But this wasn’t the only luncheon that Neuman remembered in her interview with the reporters; another included Randy Best, president and founder of Voyager Inc. of Dallas, Texas. Through Voyager, Best profited healthily from NCLB, too.
Brownstein and Hicks introduce us to another new name in their report here http://www.elladvocates.org/... : Deborah Simmons. Alongside Kame’enui, Simmons was a "professor and longtime colleague of Carnine at the University of Oregon," they write, and is now a "professor at Texas A&M University." And her work with Kame’enui became very advantageous to her, as the reporters explain.
Critics of Reading First’s implementation say the roots of the problem lay with the program’s structure. Within a year of meeting with Scott Foresman and Voyager to discuss ways to make their products adhere to SBRR, the department designated the designers of those companies’ products as leaders of the SBRR advocacy effort for states and districts involved in Reading First. Kame’enui and Simmons were named co-directors of the Western Regional National Reading First Technical Assistance Center at the University of Oregon. Vaughn became the director of the Central Regional National Reading First Technical Assistance Center at the University of Texas.
In addition to their work on the upcoming basal, Kame’enui and Simmons had worked on an earlier intervention program for Scott Foresman. The pair, in addition to Vaughn and Roland Good, another University of Oregon professor, helped design one of Voyager’s most successful products, Voyager Expanded Learning.
So the same people who developed policies on education curricula in the public sector were able to benefit materially from those policies in the private sector? And at almost the same time?
For good reason, Brownstein and Hicks wanted to interview Kame’enui about this and other aspects of "service" to the nation’s schoolchildren. Unfortunately, officials at the U.S. Department of Education (still a public agency), "declined to let reporters interview Kame’enui," (who is still a public official) about "possible conflicts of interest surrounding his role in Reading First." So the reporters turned to the publishing company Scott Foresman, and the Texas-based Voyager Inc. to find answers from their perspective. Again, brick walls. "Spokespeople for Scott Foresman and Voyager declined several requests to answer questions for this article," they write.
So Brownstein and Hicks were forced to rely on financial disclosure statements that Kame’enui had to file when he joined the Bush administration. Those documents indicate "that his association with Scott Foresman was quite lucrative. He earned between $100,000 and $250,000 in royalties last year, according to the documents, although it was unclear whether the funds stemmed from the upcoming basal or the earlier intervention work. Simmons and [University of Texas reading researcher Sharon] Vaughn both indicated that they receive no royalties from Voyager, but were paid fees as research advisers."
And, they found, "In addition to his work for Scott Foresman and Voyager, Kame’enui chaired Reading First’s assessment review team and, with Simmons, co-authored a widely used ‘Consumer’s Guide’ to help states and school districts select programs under Reading First." That’s nice: From his perch in a public position helping to set and implement administration policy under NCLB, Kame’enui not only profited from secondary employment with one publishing company and another curriculum development company, but then got to draft a Bush administration guide advising school districts to use the products offered by that publishing company and that curriculum development company.
Brownstein and Hicks mention Elaine Garan, "a literature-based theorist and professor at California State University-Fresno," who wrote a book in 2004 called "In Defense of Our Children: When Politics, Profit, and Education Collide." "In her book, Garan describes a presentation she gave in which she used color transparencies to explain the ‘vested financial interests of the ‘scientific researchers’ and their connections to government policy’."
"When I came to Edward Kame’enui," she wrote, "I ran out of colors. He has financial links at so many levels."
Then Brownstein and Hicks share this amusing note: "In interviews, both Vaughn and Simmons indicated that, as consultants, they were rarely asked questions related to their products; if they were, they said, they refused to answer them."
They quote Vaughn, the University of Texas reading researcher, who communicated by email: "If [a Reading First] director would ask me about products, I would steer them to independent reviews such as those located on the websites sponsored by Oregon Reading First and Florida Reading First."
Ethical behavior, right? Maybe, except that Brownstein and Hicks discovered "the Oregon Reading First list was partially devised by Kame’enui and Simmons."
Oops. Maybe not so ethical, after all?
SO MUCH COMES BACK TO the University of Oregon, doesn’t it? As professors, Kame’enui and Simmons conducted and taught reading research there. In fact, one of Kame’enui’s students there was Doug Carnine, the young reading researcher who later worked alongside Sandy Kress as George W. Bush’s trusted advisor on education in Texas, who followed Bush from Texas to Washington, and who developed the billion-dollar "Reading First" initiative that his friend Kress wove into NCLB. Once NCLB was passed with "Reading First" diverting funds from it, Kame’enui and Simmons won plum roles as co-directors of the University of Oregon’s new Western Regional National Reading First Technical Assistance Center. And there, they drafted the Oregon Reading First list, the list of recommended products for school districts to use when implementing the program in their schools. It would seem that the University of Oregon stands second only to the University of Texas as incubator of programs and profits under Kress’s NCLB. Brownstein and Hicks say it has a "privileged role," for which it has come under fire.
The American Association of Publishers (AAP), a trade association based in New York, contacted the University of Oregon earlier this year about potential conflicts of interest. The programs reviewed in Oregon had a clear marketing advantage, while many others have been excluded from consideration, said Stephen Driesler, head of the AAP’s school division. "As an industry we’re not trying to create an un-level playing field," he said in an interview.
"Evaluators of unknown credentials used a rating system for which no descriptors have been made available, and in some cases, used criteria for which no research substantiation can be found," the AAP said in a letter addressed to Martin Kaufman, dean of the university’s college of education, referring to the Oregon list Kame’enui and Simmons helped devise. "In addition, there is some appearance of a conflict of interest, as the most highly-rated program on the list was authored at the University of Oregon by researchers now associated with the federal technical-assistance center [there]." AAP received no response from Kaufman.
The issue of conflicts of interest can be far subtler than a consultant hawking a product at a public meeting. What about a Web site? A widely-used essay called "Big Ideas in Beginning Reading" and available at the Web site for Oregon Reading First — the site Vaughn points state directors to — contains graphics and text touting Scott Foresman’s Early Reading Intervention program, the very one designed by Kame’enui and Simmons.
To some, this is proof that when it comes to SBRR, the tail is wagging the dog. "It’s advertising, plain and simple" said Robert Slavin, co-director of Success for All (SFA), one of the three groups that asked the IG to investigate Reading First. "This is a website for a federally-funded contractor that is supposed to be helping states and school districts decide which are the best reading programs for children. It’s just so far beyond what should be acceptable in a federal program."
Wonder whatever happened to standards and accountability under NCLB?
How about data-driven decisions under NCLB? Wasn’t someone supposed to be fine-tooth-combing all the inputs and outcomes for demonstration of progress? Didn’t someone campaign in 2000 as a "reformer with results"? Weren’t those results quantifiable? Calculable? Subject to apples-to-apples compare-and-contrast? Scrutible?
Then how did Texas-based Voyager Inc. grow to a cash value equaling a third of a billion dollars, thanks to funds from Kress’s NCLB, without anyone conducting any real research on its promises and its outcomes? Brownstein and Hicks conclude that it’s because of the "big names" behind Voyager Inc.
"Earlier this year, Richard Allington, president of the International Reading Association, wrote in the Journal of Reading Recovery that he didn’t understand why ‘so many state Reading First designs support the use of completely unproven interventions’ — specifically citing Voyager, among others — while dismissing programs like Reading Recovery, which has also asked the IG to investigate Reading First," the reporters write. They further quote Allington, "If evidence — scientific research evidence — was the true standard for decisions, then Reading Recovery and other tutoring interventions would be available for every child who could benefit from them."
No degree in rocket science is required to resolve Allington’s confusion if we change the fundamental assumptions of his question. We presently assume that the TRUE goal of NCLB is the same as its STATED goal: That its billion-dollar "Reading First" initiative is designed to implement proven improvements to curricula, such that student achievement is improved as reflected by standardized test scores. If this assumption is valid, then Allington’s confusion is justified, since the improvements proffered by Voyager Inc. and others, which have been recommended by the U.S. Department of Education and which have thereafter won widespread adoption by school districts, have not been proven effective by objective analysis.
But if we assume that the TRUE goal of NCLB is NOT the same as its STATED goal, but rather that the true goal of NCLB is to benefit those companies and individuals in the private sector which have various relationships with the Bush administration, and whose businesses generally concern themselves with education and reading curricula but whose primary motive is an enhanced profit margin, then Allington’s confusion is resolved. Those businesses have a vested interest in developing products that LOOK like they meet a need, but those companies have a vested interest also in avoiding the scrutiny that would reveal their products to be insufficient.
But to pull off such a ruse, these companies and individuals would need more than mere cooperation with the Bush administration; they would need active collaboration from the Bush administration. In their report, Brownstein and Hicks found evidence of such collaboration between the Bush administration and Texas-based Voyager Inc.
"Voyager was publicly touted by former secretary Paige when he was superintendent of Houston, and President Bush, when he was governor of Texas," the reporters write. "Best, Voyager’s founder and former president, was named a Bush Pioneer for significant contributions to the president’s 2000 campaign."
And what happened when New York City adopted Voyager Expanded Learning in 2003? They tell us:
Betsy Gotbaum, the city’s public advocate, complained in writing about the use of "an untested program still in its developing stages."
"Voyager has produced little results," she said in a letter to Chancellor Joel Klein of the New York City schools. "Research on Voyager programs is rare. When it is done at all, it is almost never conducted by evaluators with no connections to, or financial interest in, the company. The research and claims made by Voyager have been cited to be flimsy and unscientific by several university scholars who specialize in reading curriculum."
Gotbaum’s was a voice in the wilderness; it may as well have been a tree falling in the far-off woods.
Perhaps Gotbaum would be a wealthy woman if she’d gotten on board with Voyager. Two years before Gotbaum decried New York City’s choice to adopt Voyager, Georgia’s Superintendent Linda Schrenko bypassed state board approval and directed $1.1 million to one county for the purpose of adopting Voyager there, even those she violated state rules to do so. "A month after the county spent the money, Voyager executives and their spouses gave Schrenko’s gubernatorial campaign $56,750, according to campaign records, even though Schrenko was in Georgia and the executives lived in Texas," Brownstein and Hicks write.
The reporters cite this as one "extreme" example of the marketing schemes undertaken by those profiteering from Sandy Kress’s NCLB, but it’s not the only example. Consider:
Shanahan, the NRP member, recalled being courted by Voyager in 2002, when he served as a reading advisor to the Chicago public schools. A company executive called to invite him, his staff, and their spouses on a "weeklong golf junket" billed as an opportunity to discuss the company’s research. "She was pushing what a good deal it was, and how good the food was," Shanahan recalled. "My response was ‘What could we possibly need that much time for?’"
"To give you the research behind Voyager," she responded.
"What is it?" Shanahan asked.
"The National Reading Panel," she said.
"I think I got that covered," he said gamely. "I helped write it." According to Shanahan, the executive told him that people from Chicago had come the previous year and seemed to have enjoyed themselves. Shanahan resolved to have "a brush-up on ethics" with the district’s lawyers.
TODAY’S EDITION ENDS ON an odd note for Susan Neuman, the "well-respected professor known for her groundbreaking research on reading difficulties among inner city students and ED’s new assistant secretary of elementary and secondary education." Brownstein and Hicks introduced Neuman as a "visible presence" in the early days of the "Reading First" program, working with the Education Department’s TWO staff members in charge of the billion-dollar enterprise, director Chris Doherty and Sandi Jacobs. The reporters also tell us that Neuman is now "back at the University of Michigan." Why? The short answer is that she resigned.
But there’s more to the story, and the story is "murky," even to Brownstein and Hicks. It seems that Neuman resigned as assistant secretary in 2003 just after she "raised a red-flag about possible conflicts among consultants to the program," they write.
Hmm.
When she resigned as assistant secretary, it was widely reported that she left for personal reasons. Some articles mentioned that, as an academic, Neuman never fit in to Washington’s political culture and butted heads with leaders of the department.
But what wasn’t mentioned was that shortly before Neuman’s resignation, Brian Jones, ED’s general counsel, confronted her about approving a series of Early Reading First grants for a commercial curriculum she helped develop before coming to the department.
Neuman declined to discuss the episode. But in an interview with the Monitor, she indicated that she severed her ties with the program before coming to the department. Such a move was not required of her as a political appointee; others, for example, put their royalties in a blind trust before assuming their duties.
According to two current department officials and three others familiar with the episode, instead of examining the grants in the order they were received, which is the normal procedure, officials asked Neuman to first review them for quality — to separate wheat from chaff. At the time, Neuman told others that she had been cleared by department ethics officers to review the grants. But it is unclear whether ED’s lawyers knew that in doing so, Neuman would be reviewing her own material. When Jones questioned Neuman, he accused her of violating the ethics agreement she signed upon joining the department.
One person familiar with the situation, who asked not to be named, suggested the incident was politically motivated. "It’s like Susan was told to drive her car 100 miles-per-hour and don’t have an accident, and by the way, the guy who’s judging the race doesn’t like you very much."
A current department official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, added: "This very well could have been a ‘gotcha’ to get rid of Susan."
ED spokeswoman Susan Aspey declined to comment on the episode.
But all is not lost; today’s edition ends happily for Randy Best, the former president and founder of Voyager Inc., and Reid Lyon, the former development neuropsychologist at the National Institutes of Child Health and Development who became Bush’s "unofficial reading czar."
Brownstein and Hicks report that in 2004, a year before their report was published, "Best sold Voyager to ProQuest Information and Learning, a Canadian education publisher, in 2004 for $340 million, in addition to $20 million in ProQuest stock. He is now working with Lyon on the American College of Education, a for-profit teacher training program."
One wonders if they sent thank-you cards to Sandy Kress, architect of the Bush administration’s NCLB and generator of wealth throughout the Bush family Rolodex.
This isn’t the end of our story, by far. Writing for the Hoover Institution in the fall of 2005, Paul Peterson advised readers here http://www.hoover.org/... that "Only 2 percent of the $2.5 billion available for the supplemental services program has so far been tapped." That was nearly two years ago, and a lot has happened in those two years.
So, stay tuned for Part 12.
To review our progress, click these links, cross posted at Daily Kos and Diatribune:
Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 1
http://www.diatribune.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 2
http://www.diatribune.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 3
http://www.diatribune.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 4
http://www.diatribune.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 5
http://www.diatribune.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 6
http://www.diatribune.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 7
http://www.diatribune.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 8
http://www.diatribune.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 9
http://www.diatribune.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 10
http://www.diatribune.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...