...officials at the Education Department may have known about the conflicts and ignored them.
Putting More Profit Before Education
The United States Department of Education has been rightfully drawn (but not yet quartered) in Congress for failing to prevent the kickbacks, payoffs and self-dealing recently uncovered in the student loan business. Now it turns out that the department also mismanaged the federal Reading First initiative, the cornerstone of the No Child Left Behind Act, which requires states to improve reading instruction in exchange for federal education dollars.
The failures, laid out in scalding reports by both Congress and Education’s inspector general, go back to the very beginning, when the Education Department created the panels that evaluate state reading programs. Those panels were immediately hobbled by a lack of transparency and documentation — and especially by the department’s failure to fully enforce conflict-of-interest policies. Profit mongers who were eager to exploit ties to the program for gain were given plenty of room to do so. In a particularly egregious case, a senior Reading First official signed contracts with a textbook publisher while working for the program. He attended conferences and actually lobbied the government on one publisher’s behalf.
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SHould we expect anything less
Conservatives never wanted the goverment to fund education, their desired goal still is the death of the Department of Education and to commit a two- tierd education system one for the elites and one for everybody else. So I am not surprised the adminstration has bungled it like Sammuel Peirce screwing up HUD in the 80's. I call it S.O.S., Bush did say he was Reagan's idelogical son didn't he.
Didn't I leave an OT this past week about Spelling
being the next Gonzales? I think she is, and I think it's going to be very interesting once folks start asking serious questions.
I know Education has always
I know Education has always been a particular target of the Conservative movement.
Rice = Powell2
Spelling = Paige2
Gonzalez = Ashcroft2
Sound about right?
Public Education
Public education became a target of the conservatives after the Supreme Court ruled that racially segregated schools were unconstitutional and then later in a subsequent ruling declared that private schools that practiced racial discrimination in their enrollment procedures were not entitled to tax exempt status.
Blacks who support school vouchers could garner more credibility if they had divorced their movement and positions from the conservatives and the Republican Party. They failed to create any alliances with inner-city blacks and chose instead to join forces with those who historically supported racially segregated schools.