From: amlinde@comcast.net
Date: Fri Apr 20, 2007 1:10:44 PM US/Pacific
To: LiteracyForAll@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [LiteracyForAll] Today's Congressional Investigative
Hearings: Corruption in Reading First Program Shows Need for
Additional Safeguards in the Law; During Hearing, Inspector General
Confirms that Referral Has Been Made to Justice in Wake of Scandal
Reply-To: LiteracyForAll@yahoogroups.com
From House Education and Labor website:
http://www.house.gov/apps/list/speech/edlabor_dem/rel042007rf.html
***
Corruption in Reading First Program Shows Need for Additional
Safeguards in the Law
During Hearing, Inspector General Confirms that Referral Has Been Made
to Justice in Wake of Scandal
Friday, April 20, 2007
WASHINGTON, DC -- An investigative hearing by the House Education and
Labor Committee today showed that mismanagement and conflicts of
interests were pervasive in the federal Reading First program, and
demonstrated the need for Congress to enact safeguards against such
conflicts.
Under the Reading First program, the federal government provides
grants to states to help them improve reading instruction. In
September 2006, the Education Department's Inspector General issued
the first of six reports on the implementation of the Reading First
program. The first report showed that, in a number of cases, Education
Department officials and contractors with deep financial and personal
connections to specific reading products inappropriately promoted
those products over others.
"Rather than provide an even playing field on which high-quality
programs could compete based just on the merits for business with the
states, these officials and contractors created an uneven playing
field that favored certain products," said U.S. Rep. George Miller
(D-CA), chairman of the committee. "Indeed, we know of examples where
states were essentially bullied to use these products in order to
receive Reading First money."
Today's hearing is part of months-long inquiry by Education and Labor
Committee investigators into the Reading First program, during which
they have reviewed thousands of documents and interviewed dozens of
individuals. Today the committee heard testimony from three former
members of a committee set up by the Education Department to review
products that educators use to assess children's progress in learning
to read.
All three of those former committee members - Roland Good, Ed
Kame'enui, and Deborah Simmons - benefited financially either directly
or indirectly from the sale of a specific assessment product called
the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Learning Skills (DIBELS). Goode
was a co-author of DIBELS; so far, a company in which he owns a 50
percent share has received more than $1.3 million in royalty and other
payments from the sale of DIBELS.
Kame'enui and Simmons were co-authors of a reading intervention
product used in Reading First, which was packaged and sold together
with DIBELS. They both confirmed at today's hearing that they each
have received approximately $150,000 in royalty payments in the last
year for the sale of that intervention product.
Miller said today that, during the reauthorization of the No Child
Left Behind law, the committee will develop safeguards to prevent such
problems in the future.
At today's hearing, the U.S. Department of Education's Inspector
General, John Higgins, also confirmed that his office has made a
referral to the U.S. Justice Department in the wake of the scandal.
"Too many times in the Bush administration we have seen examples of
officials abusing the public trust and misusing tax dollars. And we
have seen way too many examples of cronyism and conflicts of interest
that have undermined government's effectiveness," said Miller. "Now it
appears that we can add Reading First - on which we have spent roughly
$6 billion since 2002 - to that long and growing list of instances of
the administration operating outside the law, unaccountable to
Congress and the American people."
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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