In Part 15, found here http://www.diatribune.com/... and here http://www.dailykos.com/... , we watched as an Inspector General’s report peeled back layer after layer of corruption, cronyism and federal law-skirting – even law-breaking? – by the administrators of Reading First, the presumed intellectual cornerstone of No Child Left Behind. As we observed in that chapter, this pattern of bending, breaking and replacing federal law will personal preferences should ring familiar to former White House education advisor Sandy Kress, who broke and replaced Lyndon Johnson’s Elementary and Secondary Education Act with NCLB for George W. Bush, just before leaving public service to collect substantial earnings from the global lobbying powerhouse Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld.
(To review the series from the beginning, click here http://www.diatribune.com/... or here http://www.dailykos.com/... ).
The Inspector General’s report, issued in September 2006, published only a handful of pithy, damaging findings, but it also included a list of pithy, substantive recommendations AND it included some responses from the Department of Education itself, presumably Secretary Margaret Spellings herself. For those intrepid souls who would read the document for themselves, it remains available here http://www.ed.gov/... .
In Parts 14 and 15, we scanned in some detail the Inspector General’s findings; in this edition, we’ll look at the IG’s recommendations, the DOE’s responses, and the mainstream media’s paltry coverage of the issue.
Remembering the depth of scandalous detail in the IG’s findings, the report’s recommendations are strikingly antiseptic and straightforward:
RECOMMENDATIONS
We recommend that the Assistant Secretary for OESE
- Develop internal management policies and procedures for OESE program offices that address when legal advice will be solicited from OGC and how discussions between OGC and the program staff will be resolved to ensure that programs are managed in compliance with applicable laws and regulations.
- In consultation with OGC, evaluate OESE’s processes for assessing potential conflict ofinterest questions, when a panel review process is used, and make those improvements necessary to strengthen the processes.
- Review all Reading First applications to determine whether all criteria for funding have been met.
- Review the management and staff structure of the Reading First program office and make changes, as appropriate, to ensure that the program is managed and implemented consistent with the statutory requirements of NCLB.
- Request that OGC develop guidance for OESE on the prohibitions imposed by §3403(b) of the Department of Education Organization Act.
- When similar new initiatives are approved by Congress, rely upon an internal advisory committee, which includes representatives from other OESE programs, OGC, and the Department’s Risk Management Team, to provide feedback on program implementation issues and ensure coordination in the delivery of similar or complimentary Department programs.
- Rely upon the internal advisory committee to:
a. Determine whether the implementation of Reading First harmed the Federal interest and what course of action is required to resolve any issues identified; and
b. Ensure that future programs, including other programs for which the Department is considering using Reading First as a model, have internal controls in place to prevent similar problems from occurring.
- Convene a discussion with a broad range of state and local education representatives to discuss issues with Reading First as part of the reauthorization process.
Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, who worked hand-in-glove with Kress to draft No Child Left Behind and shepherd it through Congress in 2001, apparently agreed with all of the Inspector General’s recommendation; she stated so in a letter to the IG dated August 29, 2006. In fact, she said she would follow up THAT letter with a second one, which she said would carry a "more detailed response." The second missive came September 19, 2006; in it, she repeated the Department’s "concurrence with all the recommendations" BUT said that "while the Department found the draft recommendations and much of the discussion in the report to be helpful, it did not agree with all of the key points made in the draft findings."
Picture this: A man convicted of a crime confesses in court to the deed only after being found guilty by a jury, and the defendant agrees wholeheartedly, in writing – not once but twice – with the sentence meted by the court. But in his remarks to the judge, that defendant begs to differ with some of the bits of evidence and testimony brought forth to convict him. Doesn’t this sound absurd to you?
Absurd or not, that’s exactly what Spellings did: in her second letter to the IG, she clucked at some of the report’s "key points." Not all of her clucks are worthy of attention, such as this one (which I include here only for comparison later):
FINDING 1A – The Department Did Not Select the Expert Review Panel in Compliance With the Requirements of NCLB Department
Spellings’s Response, reported by the IG
The Department agreed with our finding that it did not fully adhere to the statutory requirement for establishing the expert review panel. The Department acknowledged that it had considered and OGC had recommended the establishment of a twelve-member "Advisory and Oversight Panel" made up of individuals nominated by NAS, NICHD, and NIFL. The Department stated that it is not aware of any information to show that not establishing this panel resulted in any inappropriate effects or disadvantage to any State, but stated that it will discuss this issue with State representatives and review applications to determine if there were any inappropriate effects.
Others of Spellings’s responses sound like a kid who’s been caught with crumbs on his lips, standing next to a broken cookie jar, asking why dinner wasn’t served on time last night. To wit:
FINDING 1B – While Not Required to Screen for Conflicts of Interest, the Screening Process the Department Created Was Not Effective Department
Spellings’s Response, reported by the IG
The Department stated that it had some concerns with this finding. The Department stated that it was not required to screen for conflicts of interest, but decided to take the extra step and establish a screening process in cooperation with the Ethics Division of OGC. The Department stated that the integrity of the panel process was important, and it took appropriate action to ensure that no conflict occurred.
The Department stated that it reasonably adapted the competitive grant conflict of interest procedures to the Reading First program. The Department stated there was no available information to show that the inclusion of six panelists who had connections to a teaching methodology resulted in any problematic behavior or that any of these panelists reviewed a state application that included such a program. The Department stated that it used the standard of "avoiding financial connections" to programs or products and that OIG suggests that the appropriate standard should have been "significant professional connections to a teaching methodology that requires the use of a specific reading program," which it labeled as not easy to define and implement.
The Department stated that the OIG finding suggests that the Department could have been better off by just meeting the minimal requirement of the law, which is that no conflict of interest screening process is required, and none needed to be implemented.
Given the sheer weight of substantive evidence found by the Inspector General to support the investigation’s findings, however, some of Spellings’s responses are pure howlers:
FINDING 2A – The Department Replaced What the Law Intended to be a Peer Review Process With its Own Process Department
Spellings’s Response, reported by the IG
The Department stated that it did not replace the process required by the statute, and that the statute does not establish the role of reviewers’ comments. The Department stated that although the program office originally intended in its Reviewer Guidance to have reviewers provide comments directly to the applicants, it found that this did not always ensure that applicants knew what needed to be addressed. The Department stated that its staff did a further review of the summaries of the comments and overall, the staff found that the summaries did not deviate significantly from the reviewers’ comments.
The Department stated that it modified the process after it was initiated without amending the original planning documents and that in the future it will take steps to ensure that all plans for review of applications are followed or amended when necessary.
In essence, after the defendant has been found guilty, and he has confessed the crime, and he has stated in writing twice that he agrees with the finding and the sentence, that defendant now says although he was caught, found guilty and confessed, that what he did wasn’t really criminal and he won’t confess to doing it again, AND in fact he won’t engage in that behavior again at all. It defies logic.
But that doesn’t hold a candle to Spellings’s response to Finding 4, the one that catalogued page after page of email conversation between Reading First Director Chris Doherty and others – email conversation of such quality and detail, and covering such a period of time, that to dispute the IG’s findings calls into question the good sense of the disputer. And with that, here’s Secretary Spellings:
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 Department
Spellings’s Response, reported by the IG
The Department stated that this section of the report cites a number of informal internal communications. In the introduction to its specific comments, the Department expressed concern that it may be too easy (and inaccurate in some instances) to read interpretations into, or draw conclusions about, a person’s professional intent or actions solely from raw, unfiltered, informal snapshots of information. The Department commented that while it is clearly the State’s responsibility to select and approve programs for use by participating LEAs, the Department must ensure that only programs that meet statutory requirements are implemented. The Department further stated that when it becomes aware of programs that may not meet these provisions, it is incumbent upon the Department to raise that issue and question that action. The Department stated that it is not aware of information showing inappropriate actions to require particular programs or approaches.
Office of Inspector General’s Response
No changes have been made to this finding.
The statements quoted in our report were not informal communications. The Reading First Director’s communications were written using a Department e-mail account in his role as the Reading First Director. In preparing its response, the Department reviewed all of the e-mail communications quoted in this report. The Department’s response does not suggest any instances where quotations were used out of context or inaccurately. We agree that the Department must ensure that only programs that meet statutory requirements are implemented. If the Department was aware of programs that did not meet the statutory requirements, it should have shared that information formally and transparently. In this instance, that is not what occurred. While the Department stated that it is not aware of information showing inappropriate actions to require particular programs or approaches, the actions reflected in this report raise serious concerns about the conduct of Department officials with respect to the limitations imposed by §3403(b) of the Department of Education Organization Act.
Other Department Comments
In the introduction to its specific comments, the Department fully acknowledged its responsibility to implement programs with fairness and integrity and to follow the law and its own guidance. We strongly concur. When, as here, that does not occur, it can only serve to undermine the public’s confidence in the Department and its implementation of major programs, such as Reading First. As the Department notes, it is incumbent upon all Department employees "to take painstaking care to maintain the public trust."
Lest anyone imagine that the IG’s office is a fly-by-night gumshoe operation – or lest anyone in high public office, for example, challenge the findings as politically or otherwise motivated – the report helpfully includes the IG’s objectives, scope and methodology. Anyone looking for some "scientifically based" research might do well to follow the IG’s model:
OBJECTIVES, SCOPE, AND METHODOLOGY
The objectives of our inspection were to:
- Determine if the Department selected the expert review panel in accordance with the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, Section 1203(c) and if the Department adequately screened the panel members for possible conflict of interest issues;
- Determine if the expert review panel adequately documented its reasons for stating that an application was unready for funding; and
- Determine if the expert review panel reviewed the applications in accordance with established criteria and applied the criteria consistently.
Through the course of our fieldwork, we identified a fourth item of concern related to actions that were contrary to statutory requirements of the ESEA, the GAO Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government, and the DEOA. We began our fieldwork on September 28, 2005, and we conducted an exit conference on July 18, 2006. We interviewed Department staff in the Reading First program office and in OGC. We reviewed Department guidance and other documentation. In addition, we reviewed Department correspondence related to the Reading First program.
We also reviewed the applications from the following 11 States and one territory: Connecticut, Georgia, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Puerto Rico. We also reviewed the individual panelists’ Technical Review forms, the Panel Chair Summary forms, the Department’s Expert Review Team Reports, and the official grant file for each of the 12 applicants.
Our review focused on nine of the 25 criteria each application was required to meet:
• State Outline and Rationale for Using SBRR;
• Instructional Assessments;
• Instructional Strategies and Programs;
• Instructional Materials;
• Instructional Leadership;
• District and School Based Professional Development;
• Evaluation Strategies (Improving Reading Instruction);
• State Professional Development Plan; and
• Evaluation Strategies (State Reporting and Evaluation).
We interviewed officials from 10 of the States in our sample. We also obtained documentation relating to the nomination of panelists. We interviewed appropriate officials from NIFL, NICHD, and NAS about the panel nominations. We also obtained completed conflict of interest questionnaires and panelist resumes. Our inspection was performed in accordance with the 2005 President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency Quality Standards for Inspections appropriate to the scope of the inspection described above.
Unfortunately, mainstream media attention to the IG’s report was paltry at best. Reporter Sam Dillon of the New York Times turned in a serviceable account, but even the Times skimmed over the depths of the event and, sad to say, still hasn’t devoted a fraction of the time and attention that it gave in recent years to a failed land development deal in rural Arkansas, ahem. One comparing the small-change involved in that sorry business and the real billions (with a ‘B’) that have been siphoned into the Bush-Kress network of NCLB profiteers might wonder about the priorities (or allegiances?) of any mainstream media outlet today.
"Oh man, I’m mortified," said Bush’s former "reading czar" Reid Lyon to reporter Dillon when told of the IG’s finding. "To see the facts that were presented today was very disappointing, because it’s an outstanding program."
"Department of Education officials violated conflict of interest rules when awarding grants to states under President Bush’s billion-dollar reading initiative, and steered contracts to favored textbook publishers, the department’s inspector general said yesterday," wrote Dillon here http://www.nytimes.com/... . "In a searing report that concludes the first in a series of investigations into complaints of political favoritism in the reading initiative, known as Reading First, the report said officials improperly selected the members of review panels that awarded large grants to states, often failing to detect conflicts of interest. The money was used to buy reading textbooks and curriculum for public schools nationwide."
Billions, folks. Roughly five billion over the past five years, given Reading First’s initial appropriation averaging a billion dollars a year since 2002. Billions. And in his third paragraph, Dillon gets the point.
"States have received more than $4.8 billion in Reading First grants during the Bush administration, and a recent survey by an independent group, the Center on Education Policy, reported that many state officials consider the initiative to be highly effective in raising reading achievement. But the report describes a tangled process in which some states had to apply for grants as many as six times before receiving approval, with department officials scheming to stack panels with experts tied to favored publishers."
While Spellings took a definitely cooler tone with the Inspector General, her tone changed with Dillon. She wasted no time throwing former Secretary Rod Paige and now-former Reading First Director Chris Doherty under the bus, casting herself as the unfortunate heir of Paige’s and Doherty’s mess.
Officials relayed reporters’ requests for comment to Mr. Doherty, and he declined to be interviewed, an official said.
The abuses described in the report occurred during 2002 and 2003, when Rod Paige was education secretary. John Grimaldi, spokesman for the Chartwell Education Group where Mr. Paige is chairman, said he had not read the report but would seek Mr. Paige’s reaction to it.
"Some of the actions taken by department officials and described in the inspector general’s report reflect individual mistakes," Secretary Margaret Spellings said in a statement. "Although these events occurred before I became secretary of education, I am concerned about these actions and committed to addressing and resolving them."
Dillon also dug up Lyon, long since gone from Washington and ensconced in Dallas, Texas. Lyon had good reason to be "mortified," as he described his reaction to Dillon, since his fingerprints were all over the scene of the Reading First debacle.
The report mentions Reid Lyon, the former chief of a branch of the National Institutes of Health, who was a research adviser to President Bush and an architect of Reading First. He exerted immense influence at the department when Mr. Paige was there.
In 2002, Dr. Lyon told the Reading First director and other department officials that a woman whom the department had already selected to be on a review panel had been "actively working to undermine" a reading initiative he favored, the report said.
"Chances are that other reviewers can trump any bias on her part," Dr. Lyon told the officials.
"We can’t uninvite her," a senior adviser to Mr. Paige wrote in response, the report said. "Just make sure she is on a panel with one of our barracuda types."
The incident demonstrated "the intention of the former senior adviser to the secretary to control another panelist," the report said.
In an interview yesterday, Dr. Lyon said that in the 2002 incident he sought to neutralize bias.
"If we detected bias, we had to make sure that the review panel was put together so that that bias would be neutralized," he said.
Dr. Lyon left the national institutes in August 2005 and is now an executive vice president for Higher Ed Holdings, a company based in Dallas that is working to found a college of education.
"Oh man, I’m mortified," Dr. Lyon said of the report. "To see the facts that were presented today was very disappointing, because it’s an outstanding program."
Adding a nice grace note to his report, Dillon credited Robert E. Slavin, a Johns Hopkins University researcher, with pushing for investigation of Reading First and its corruptions.
"The investigation was opened last year after the inspector general received accusations of mismanagement and other abuses at the department from publishers of several reading programs, including Robert E. Slavin, a director of a research center at the Johns Hopkins University who is chairman of Success for All, a nonprofit foundation that produces reading materials," Dillon writes.
" ‘The department has said at least 10,000 times that they had no favored reading programs, and this report provides clear evidence that they were very aggressively pressing districts to use certain programs and not use others’," Slavin told Dillon.
Thus concludes our look at the Inspector General’s report and the media attention given it, but one thing sticks like a thorn in the back of the mind: Secretary Margaret Spellings’s ease at slipping away from culpability. One recalls the sudden departure of a former Secretary of Transportation from a photo op gone wrong – catch the story halfway through the article at this link http://www.encyclopedia.com/... -- and wonders if there might be some equally fancy footwork here. What exactly was Spellings’s role in the history of Reading First and its Doherty debacle?
We’ll spend some time on that question in Part 17, so stay tuned.
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/...
Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 14
http://www.diatribune.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 15
http://www.diatribune.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
