In Part 13, found here http://www.diatribune.com/... and here http://www.dailykos.com/... , we reviewed part of the Rod Paige-Margaret Spellings effort to fertilize the "supplemental educational services" racket found within former White House senior education advisor Sandy Kress’s No Child Left Behind, the statute that Kress authored on behalf of George W. Bush and which now provides his bread-and-butter as a corporate lobbyist. Also, we read laughable evasions by those "supplemental educational service" providers of the "scientifically rigorous evidence" requirement of the law in Arkansas, and we witnessed a Texan blogger’s realization that public education is merely the newest issue on which politicians can establish careers. Finally, we remembered Bush’s pro-NCLB campaign rhetoric during a stop in North Carolina in October, 2006, where he enjoyed barbecued pork and raised $900,000 for the Republican National Committee.
Not a bad day’s work for Bush, nor a bad life for Kress, who now works for the global lobbying powerhouse Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld. As one of Akin Gump’s well-connected lobbyists, Kress connects the dots for the powerhouse U.S. Chamber of Commerce and for NCS Pearson, a testing-and-assessment company that has profited by untold millions from the testing mandated by NCLB – the statute drafted by the selfsame Kress.
(To review the series from the beginning, click here http://www.diatribune.com/... or here http://www.dailykos.com/... ).
But while Bush was praising his education agenda late in 2006 in campaign swings across the nation, his Secretary of Education was struggling mightily – and straining the bounds of logic – to defend it in Washington, D.C. It seems that a searing report from the Inspector General was released in September, and it had some interesting things to say about "Reading First," the presumed intellectual cornerstone of Kress’s NCLB. And in early October, Spellings was called to account by at least one member of the mainstream media. Taking this in order, we should address the Inspector General’s report first and save the good Secretary’s contortions for later.
The Inspector General’s report is dense matter but the lessons learned in it are worth the wade. So dense is it that to condense it further for reflection here threatens to exclude great swaths of substantive data. It’s a daunting task to cover the entire document, even splitting it into one, two or even three days’ worth of diaries, so I’ll focus on only a few of the many highlights.
The document itself remains available here http://www.ed.gov/... .
If I had to boil down the Inspector General’s report into a single concept, it would be this: Rules are rules, and they exist for a reason. If the federal government has taken the time to devise rules, or if it has gone so far as to establish its rules in federal statute, or even if it has instructed a government agency to develop its own rules to administer one program or another, then these are to be considered RULES, not mere suggestions or hints, or imaginary boundaries that can be ignored when the odd errant administrator finds them inconvenient. To establish rules and then ignore them is to show contempt for the federal government itself, and while that warms the cockles of anarchist hearts, it impedes truth, justice and the America way.
In investigating "Reading First," the presumed intellectual cornerstone of Sandy Kress’s NCLB, the Inspector General found plenty of that contempt. The table of contents of the IG’s report suggests the carnage ahead:
TABLE OF CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
FINDING 1A –The Department Did Not Select the Expert Review Panel in Compliance With the Requirements of NCLB
FINDING 1B –While Not Required to Screen for Conflicts of Interest, the Screening Process the Department Created Was Not Effective
FINDING 2A –The Department Did Not Follow Its Own Guidance For the Peer Review Process
FINDING 2B –The Department Awarded Grants to States Without Documentation That the Subpanels Approved All Criteria
FINDING 3 –The Department Included Requirements in the Criteria Used by the Expert Review Panels That Were Not Specifically Addressed in NCLB
FINDING 4 – In Implementing the Reading First Program, Department Officials Obscured the Statutory Requirements of the ESEA; Acted in Contravention of the GAO Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government; and Took Actions That Call Into Question Whether They Violated the Prohibitions Included in the DEOA
The IG opens its report by setting forth the fundamentals of what Reading First was intended to do, the guidance that federal law provides to Reading First’s directors, and the funding available from Congress for Reading First. It’s dry, but take a minute to note how precise and clean are these guidelines, especially the emphasis on "scientifically based reading research":
The ESEA, as amended by NCLB on January 8, 2002, established the Reading First program. The purpose of NCLB is to "close the achievement gap with accountability, flexibility, and choice, so that no child is left behind."
Title 1, Part B, Section 1201 of the ESEA provides five purposes for the Reading First program:
- To provide assistance to State educational agencies (SEAs) and LEAs in establishing reading programs for students in kindergarten through grade 3 that are based on scientifically based reading research (SBRR), to ensure that every student can read at grade level or above not later than the end of grade 3.
- To provide assistance to SEAs and LEAs in preparing teachers, including special education teachers, through professional development and other support, so the teachers can identify specific reading barriers facing their students and so the teachers have the tools to effectively help their students learn to read.
- To provide assistance to SEAs and LEAs in selecting or administering screening, diagnostic, and classroom-based instructional reading assessments.
- To provide assistance to SEAs and LEAs in selecting or developing effective instructional materials (including classroom-based materials to assist teachers in implementing the essential components of reading instruction), programs, learning systems, and strategies to implement methods that have been proven to prevent or remediate reading failure within a State.
- To strengthen coordination among schools, early literacy programs, and family literacy programs to improve reading achievement for all children.
Title 1, Part B, Section 1208(6) of the ESEA defines SBRR as research that:
(A) applies rigorous, systematic, and objective procedures to obtain valid knowledge relevant to reading development, reading instruction, and reading difficulties; and
(B) includes research that —
(i) employs systematic, empirical methods that draw on observation or experiment;
(ii) involves rigorous data analyses that are adequate to test the stated hypotheses and justify the general conclusions drawn;
(iii) relies on measurements or observational methods that provide valid data across evaluators and observers and across multiple measurements and observations; and
(iv) has been accepted by a peer-reviewed journal or approved by a panel of independent experts through a comparably rigorous, objective, and scientific review.
The ESEA does not advocate any particular reading program, assessment, or other product. In fact, Section 9527(b) of the ESEA prohibits the Department from endorsing, approving, or sanctioning any curriculum.
Title 1, Part B, Section 1002(b)(1) of the ESEA authorized an appropriation for Reading First of $900,000,000 for fiscal year 2002 and "sums as may be necessary for each of the 5 succeeding fiscal years."
The appropriations for fiscal years 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006 were $993,500,000, $1,023,923,000, $1,041,600,000, and $1,029,234,000, respectively.
Reading First funds are allotted to SEAs by formula according to the proportion of children aged 5 to 17 who reside within the State and are from families with incomes below the poverty line.
SEAs submit applications to the Department to receive Reading First funding. SEA applications are reviewed by an expert review panel and are required to meet all statutory requirements before being awarded funds.
The Department’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education administers the Reading First program. Two Department officials, the Reading First Director and an Education Program Specialist (the Reading First Director’s assistant), were responsible for administering the Reading First application process and, through the date of this report, continued to administer all facets of the Reading First program.
And did you catch the funding levels? In the first year of a brand-new program, $900 MILLION, and increasing to average more than a BILLION dollars ANNUALLY over the next five years.
So not only does Reading First represent the presumed intellectual cornerstone of Kress’s No Child Left Behind, it also represents the foundation of NCLB’s funding. Keep in mind that this billion-dollar annual budget DOES NOT include funding for either the testing-and-assessment racket OR the "supplemental educational services" racket prescribed by NCLB. Funding for those rackets is skimmed off the top of Title I funding sent to school districts, but Reading First funds are DIRECTLY APPROPRIATED by Congress – a billion bucks at a time. All its administrators have to do is administer the funds according to federal law. Easy, right?
Apparently, spending a billion dollars a year according to federal guidelines is tougher than it looks. At least, the IG found that the Department of Education administrators overseeing Reading First had difficulty getting it done.
Here’s part of the IG’s "Finding 1A":
Section 1203(c)(2)(A) states that the Secretary, in consultation with the National Institute for Literacy (NIFL), shall convene a panel to evaluate applications and that, at a minimum, the panel shall include: three individuals selected by the Secretary, three individuals selected by NIFL, three individuals selected by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), and three individuals selected by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). We have determined that each of the four organizations nominated at least three individuals to serve on the expert review panel; however, the Department failed to ensure that each State application was reviewed by a properly constituted panel.
Section 1203(c)(2)(C) requires a panel to recommend grant applications to the Secretary for funding or for disapproval. After selecting the panelists, the Department created subpanels made up of five panelists each to review the State applications and recommend either approval or disapproval to the Secretary. None of the subpanels possessed adequate representation from each of the organizations identified under Section 1203(c)(2)(A) of the Act.
The Department created a total of 16 subpanels to review the State applications. A majority of the panelists were nominated by the Department for 15 of the 16 subpanels; and 7 of the 16 subpanels consisted entirely of Department-selected panelists. None of the subpanels included a representative from each of the nominating organizations and there is no indication that the subpanels ever met as one large panel to review the State applications and/or recommend approval or disapproval to the Secretary.
Prior to forming these subpanels, a Department official expressed concern that the use of subpanels would not be in compliance with the law. As a result, OGC and high-level Department officials, including the Assistant Secretary for OESE at the time, approved a plan for the Department to create a 12-member "Advisory and Oversight Panel" that would consist of three individuals selected by the Department, three individuals selected by NIFL, three individuals selected by NAS, and three individuals selected by NICHD, as required by the Act. The Advisory and Oversight Panel’s duties would include examining the progress of the subpanels, reviewing the recommendations of the subpanels, and making the final funding recommendation to the Secretary, thus ensuring a common, high level of quality and consistency across the subpanels. Although the Assistant Secretary for OESE and OGC officials agreed upon this approach, the Advisory and Oversight Panel was never created. To date, no one in the Department has offered an explanation of why this was not done.
Section 1203(c)(1) states: "The Secretary shall approve an application of a State educational agency under this section only if such application meets the requirements of this section." Because the Department did not meet the requirements at Section 1203(c)(2)(A), it raises the question of whether any of the applications were approved in compliance with the law.
So federal law outlines what the Department of Education’s administrators overseeing Reading First are supposed to do, and they didn’t do it. Federal law even allowed them to devise and then stick to their own guidelines to create an "Advisory and Oversight Panel," and they never did that either.
What they DID do, however, was to approve the spending of a billion dollars annually, regardless of federal requirements or oversight. Wow. And they did it in 2002, and 2003, and 2004, and 2005, and 2006. If not for the Inspector General’s investigation and report, who’s to say they wouldn’t still be doing it today?
In addition to approving federal expenditures for reading curriculum programs across the nation, Reading First administrators also had the power to deny funding to applicants, and they were supposed to use a "peer review" process to make those decisions. According to the IG, they had difficulty obeying federal law here, too. Consider this part of the IG’s "Finding 2A":
Our objective was to determine if the expert review panel adequately documented its reasons for stating that an application was unready for funding. Section 1203(c) of the ESEA, under the heading "Peer Review," states that the panel will recommend grant applications to the Secretary for funding or disapproval.
The Department created the Reviewer Guidance for the Reading First Program (Reviewer Guidance), which describes the process by which panelists will review applications and provide their comments. The Reviewer Guidance, which the Department provided to panelists, states that it is the reviewer’s responsibility to provide a rating for each review criterion and constructive strength and weakness comments on the Technical Review Form. The guidance states that the panel chair will complete an additional summary sheet, called the Panel Chair Summary, which will reflect a consensus rating and supporting comments for each criterion. The guidance also states that the Panel Chair Summary will provide an overall consensus recommendation for approval or disapproval of the application.
The Guidance for the Reading First Program (Reading First Guidance), provided to States in April 2002, states that the expert review panel will "recommend clarifications or changes deemed necessary to improve the likelihood of the plan’s success." The Reading First Guidance also states that SEAs "will have an opportunity to address the issues and concerns raised by the expert panel reviewers."
The panelists adequately documented their reasons for stating that an application was unready for funding. The panelists recorded their individual comments on the Technical Review Forms, and then met to discuss these comments. The panel chair then entered a consensus rating on a Panel Chair Summary, which was submitted to the Department’s Reading First office. The Panel Chair Summary appeared to contain constructive comments to support the panel’s ratings.
While the Panel Chair Summaries appeared to provide constructive comments, the impact of the expert review panelists’ comments on State revisions is uncertain because of actions taken by the Department’s Reading First office. After the panel chair submitted the Panel Chair Summaries to the Reading First office, the Reading First Director and his assistant created what they called an "Expert Review Team Report." This report was provided to the States. No other documents reflecting the expert review panel’s comments were provided to the States. The Department did not explain this practice in the Reviewer Guidance or in the Reading First Guidance.
We have not found any documentation that the Department informed panelists that the Reading First Director and his assistant would write the report sent to SEAs. In fact, in e-mails to panelists the Reading First Director wrote that panelists "should look very closely at the exact panel comments made on the panel chair summary form as these comments drove the SEA’s resubmission." Likewise, we have not found any documentation that the Department informed States that they would receive a Department-written report rather than the expert review panel’s direct comments.
The Reviewer Guidance states: "the conference call between the panelists and the SEA that will take place after the review of the SEA’s application has been established so that the State may receive direct feedback from the expert review panel." In actuality, only the Reading First Director and his assistant conducted these calls. By conducting these conferences and writing the document that was sent to the SEA, the Reading First Director and his assistant cut off any direct contact between States and the expert review panelists and effectively controlled the feedback States received on their applications.
Prior to the first round of conference calls with States, the Reading First Director e-mailed the then Assistant Secretary for OESE [This official left the Department in January of 2003 and for purposes of consistency and clarity will be referred to in this section simply as "the Assistant Secretary for OESE."] seeking guidance on the inclusion of panel chairs on the conference calls. The Reading First Director stated that "it’s generally been mentioned to the States that they would hear directly from the Panel" but that the Department would "lose a bit of control" and the Panel Chair might say things that would "*complicate* matter [sic]" if included on the conference calls.
In an earlier e-mail to the Assistant Secretary for OESE, the Reading First Director stated that "in remarks to groups...or face-to-face meetings about what the Review Panel will/won’t accept the opportunities for BOLDNESS and, perhaps, extralegal requirements are many." [Emphasis in original.] We have not found any documentation that the Department informed panel chairs that they would not participate in the conference calls as outlined in the Reviewer Guidance. The Reading First Director’s assistant stated that the expert review panelists were not included in the conference calls because it was too difficult to schedule.
According to the Reading First Director, he and his assistant created the Expert Review Team Reports to give States a distilled, organized version of the panel’s comments that would show them which areas they needed to address. However, we found the Department’s Expert Review Team Reports were not always accurate representations of the expert review panelists’ comments. The Reading First Director and his assistant changed panelists’ comments, left off others, and added comments of their own. In a number of cases, the Department generalized or omitted specific questions or suggestions. In other situations the Department’s Expert Review Team Report exaggerated or misstated the panelists’ concerns.
So peer review means that experts in a particular field review an application, decide if it meets standards, then recommends action to the Reading First administrator, who forwards the recommendation to the Secretary of Education. Simple. But the IG found that once the peer reviewers made their recommendation to the Reading First administrator, he CHANGED their findings himself, on his own, to reflect his own desires for recommended funding or denial.
And he didn’t just do this once. The IG found – and included the details in its report – specific examples from 12 state application files that it reviewed.
In its "Finding 2B," the IG found that although the peer reviewers recommended that some applications didn’t have sufficient documentation to win funding, Reading First administrators ignored that recommendation and funded the applications anyway: "[S]ome applicants were funded without documentation that they met all of the criteria for approval raising a question of whether these States should have been funded," the IG writes.
In its "Finding 3," the IG discovered that Reading First administrators MADE UP some of the criteria by which it chose to spend some of its billion-dollar annual budget on state reading curricula. And Reading First administrators KNEW they were doing this from the beginning, and even SAID SO in internal communications with the Department of Education. Here’s a segment from the IG’s "Finding 3":
Based on our review of 12 State applications, it appears the expert review panelists reviewed the applications in accordance with the criteria provided to them and applied the criteria consistently. The criteria, however, included conditions that were not specifically required in the statute. For example, the ‘Meets Standard’ column of criterion IV(A), Key Reading First Classroom Characteristics, required State applications to meet three conditions that were not included in the statute:
Condition 1b required, "Coherent instructional design that includes explicit instructional strategies, coordinated instructional sequences, ample practice opportunities, and aligned student materials[.]"
Condition 1d required, "Protected, dedicated block of time for reading instruction[.]"
Condition 1f required, "Small group instruction as appropriate to meet student needs, with placement and movement based on ongoing assessment[.]"
In a document titled, "Pre-reading notes for [the Assistant Secretary for OESE]" (Pre-reading notes document), the Reading First Director commented on a draft of the Reading First Criteria. The Reading First Director wrote that the Key Reading First Classroom Characteristics section of the Reading First Criteria was significant because "[i]t’s another example of our aggressive approach because, obviously, very little of this section can be pegged to legislative language. It just makes good sense, of course, to help the States see what we know/want RF [Reading First] classrooms to look like. OGC may not like this entire section, and I wanted to birddog it for you."
He continued: "We realize the Meets Standards column is much more fleshed-out than the Exemplary column....What we’ve done – again, extra-legally, really – is push all the characteristics that we originally had in Exemplary and moved them into Meets, because we want all of those (a, b, ...g) characteristics to define ALL RF classrooms, not just the star RF classrooms." The ‘Exemplary’ column in the final Key Reading First Classroom Characteristics section only includes one condition in addition to the requirement that the section ‘Meets Standard.’
In an interview, the Reading First Director acknowledged that the Department included conditions in the ‘Meets Standard’ column of the Reading First Criteria that were not in the law. Because the Department included language in the ‘Meets Standard’ column of its Reading First Criteria that was not based on the statute, State applications were reviewed based upon standards that were not required by the statute.
So while it’s apparently doggone hard to spend a billion dollars annually according to what federal law specifically requires, it’s pretty easy to make up criteria on your own and suggest that your made-up criteria carries the weight of federal law.
There’s more to come: The IG’s final finding is incendiary thanks to the internal emails of its own director about the subject matter, and when the Department of Education was given an opportunity to respond, its response to the IG’s findings was just as repugnant as the behavior of its Reading First administrators in the first place.
For those notes, stay tuned for Part 14.
And 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/...
Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 11
http://www.diatribune.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 12
http://www.diatribune.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 13
http://www.diatribune.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
