From the 9/28/06 PEN Weekly Newsblast:
FEDERAL READING PROGRAM IGNORED LAW & ETHICAL STANDARDS
A scorching internal review of the Bush administration's
billion-dollar-a-year reading program says the Education Department
ignored the law and ethical standards to steer money how it wanted. The
government audit is unsparing in its view that the Reading First program
has been beset by conflicts of interest and willful mismanagement. It
suggests the department broke the law by trying to dictate which
curriculum schools must use. It also depicts a program in which review
panels were stacked with people who shared the director's views, and in
which only favored publishers of reading curricula could get money. In
one e-mail, the director told a staff member to come down hard on a
company he didn't support, according to the report released last week by
the department's inspector general. About 1,500 school districts have
received $4.8 billion in Reading First grants. The audit found the
department: Botched the way it picked a panel to review grant
applications, raising questions over whether grants were approved as the
law requires; Screened grant reviewers for conflicts of interest, but
then failed to identify six who had a clear conflict based on their
industry connections; Did not let states see the comments of experts who
reviewed their applications; Required states to meet conditions that
weren't part of the law; and tried to downplay elements of the law it
didn't like when working with states.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/09/22/reading.first.ap/index.html
READING FIRST PLAGUED BY CORPORATE WELFARE, CRONYISM & DEMONIZATION
Aside from reducing teachers to script-reading robots and reading to an
onerous task, the Federal government's controversial $4.8 billion
Reading First program has been accused of numerous improprieties by the
Inspector General of the Department of Education. According to Gary
Stager, this is a news story that should not be ignored. He calls
attention to four major issues that should alarm educators and taxpayers
alike: (1) Reading First favored one curriculum product over all others;
(2) Government reading "experts" had numerous conflicts of interest; (3)
Political ideology trumped science and good public policy; and (4)
People who disagreed with the Reading First agenda were accused of bias,
ridiculed and intimidated.
http://www.districtadministration.com/pulse/commentpost.aspx?news=no&postid=17185
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Beth Yoke
Executive Director
Young Adult Library Services Association,
fastest growing division of the American Library Association
50 E. Huron St.
Chicago, IL 60611
1 (800) 545-2433 x4391
byoke@ala.org
www.ala.org/yalsa
Register for Teen Read Week!
www.ala.org/teenread
Celebrate Oct. 15-21, 2006
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