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Reading First scandal in Massachusetts – WITH POLL

By

Rep. Miller seeks education inquiry

STAFF REPORTS

Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, called for a criminal investigation after an audit found that a $1 billion federal program to improve reading among grade-school children was run by staff who steered contracts to favored publishers.

The Education Department’s inspector general last week recommended an overhaul of the “Reading First” program, part of the “No Child Left Behind” law, including removing directors and reviewing the propriety of their contract awards.

“The inspector-general’s report raises serious questions about whether Education Department officials violated criminal law, and those questions must be pursued by the Justice Department,” said Miller, the top-ranking Democrat on the House Education Committee.

Miller, in his statement, called the audit part of a pattern in which the Education Department under President George W. Bush “has repeatedly run afoul of ethical standards.”

Miller’s office also cited an independent analysis published last year by the Washington, D.C.-based American Institutes for Research that found the program favored by Reading First directors, a product of the McGraw-Hill Companies Inc., was one of only two programs to receive AIR’s highest rating.

Reading First distributes about $1 billion a year to states to spend on reading programs that the government agrees have scientifically proven effectiveness.

The head of the program, Chris Doherty, resigned in advance of the release of the audit, and others involved also have left, Education Department spokeswoman Katherine McLane said.

The audit describes Doherty as a former executive director of the Baltimore Curriculum Project, which has implemented the McGraw-Hill product, known as “Direct Instruction,” or DI, in the Baltimore schools system since 1996.

Auditors said they reviewed the resumes of 25 people who served on the panels charged with evaluating eligible reading programs. Six of them had “significant professional connections” to DI, and Doherty “personally nominated” three of them, the audit said.

The audit cited examples such as Massachusetts, where Doherty questioned the quality of reading programs in four school districts, while state authorities approved them. One district refused to change and lost its federal funding; the other three agreed to change and kept their funding, the audit said. None use the DI program, said Cheryl Liebling, director of Reading First in Massachusetts.

Liebling said she agreed with Doherty that the programs chosen by the four Massachusetts school districts were of lesser value to struggling readers.

“There was nothing in our situation that would suggest any impropriety,” Liebling said. “I have the highest regard for Chris Doherty.”

Michael Petrilli, who helped the administration implement the No Child Left Behind law and now serves as vice president at the Thomas Fordham Foundation, a Washington-based research group, said he believes Education Secretary Margaret Spellings “is hanging Chris Doherty out to dry.”

Both Petrilli and Liebling said they believe Spellings wanted Doherty to run the program strictly. Federal officials were justifiably rejecting reading programs that emphasize literary skills ahead of those stressing basic skills, which are more important to struggling readers, Liebling said.

McLane on Monday reiterated that Spellings supported Doherty’s work and said he left voluntarily.

Miller cited investigations last year showing the department used taxpayer dollars to pay media commentators for friendly coverage, and an audit this year showing the department directed education grants to political allies rather than alternatives endorsed by career peer reviewers.

A Justice Department spokeswoman, Jaclyn Lesch, said she had no immediate reaction to Miller’s request.

More details from the last diary on the topic

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  1. From RadioIowa:

    Harkin says federal reading program needs more scrutiny
    by Darwin Danielson

    Iowa Senator Tom Harkin says he wants to do a deeper investigation of an Inspector General’s report involving federally funded reading program. Harkin, a democrat, says the report says the U.S. Education Department tried to influence the curriculum used for the “Reading First” program.

    Harkin says soon after the “Reading First” program was created, a number of publishers, researchers, state and local officials, said the Ed Department was pressuring local districts to purchase a particular program. Harkin says the “Reading First” program received about one billion dollars a year for each of the last five years.

    Harkin says this is “Very, very disturbing” as he says the I-G report shows people were not following the law. Harkin says the “Reading First” director is getting the blame, but Harkin says the investigation should look higher into the department. Harkin says he hasn’t heard yet from any Iowa districts that may’ve been pressured to use particular programs under Reading First. Harkin says though, the report cites Massachusetts as a state where there were problems.

    Harkin says three districts that dropped their own programs — continued to get Reading First money. He says the one district that stuck with their own approved program, did not the federal money. Harkin says that sends the message that if you want the funding, you’d better do what the education department says. Harkin says he plans to look further into the issue in his role on the education and appropriations committee.

    • Reading First Program’s Grant Application Process is avavliable on line.

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      To think that Massachusetts DOE has not stepped forward with an explanation for the behavior of officials in influencing our children’s reading program boggles the mind.

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      INSPECTION RESULTS

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      FINDING 1A – The Department Did Not Select the Expert Review
      Panel in Compliance With the Requirements of
      NCLB

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      FINDING 1B – While Not Required to Screen for Conflicts of
      Interest, the Screening Process the Department
      Created Was Not Effective

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      FINDING 2A – The Department Did Not Follow Its Own Guidance
      For the Peer Review Process

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      FINDING 2B – The Department Awarded Grants to States
      Without Documentation That the Subpanels
      Approved All Criteria

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      FINDING 3 – The Department Included Requirements in the
      Criteria Used by the Expert Review Panels That
      Were Not Specifically Addressed in NCLB

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      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 INSPECTION RESULTS

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      FINDING 1A – The Department Did Not Select the Expert Review
      Panel in Compliance With the Requirements of
      NCLB

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      FINDING 1B – While Not Required to Screen for Conflicts of
      Interest, the Screening Process the Department
      Created Was Not Effective

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      FINDING 2A – The Department Did Not Follow Its Own Guidance
      For the Peer Review Process

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      FINDING 2B – The Department Awarded Grants to States
      Without Documentation That the Subpanels
      Approved All Criteria

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      FINDING 3 – The Department Included Requirements in the
      Criteria Used by the Expert Review Panels That
      Were Not Specifically Addressed in NCLB

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      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

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      Based on this summary our children in Massachusetts have had three years of critical reading skills based on “association” with publishers rather than Reading Program success.

  2. Here.

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    I haven’t gotten through all the documents myself.  Certainly, following the law is a requirement that can’t be ignored.  But, I am primarily interested in the program’s effectiveness. 

  3. Where’s the follow-up?  Tom Payzant said what happened in 2003, the Inspector General’s report confirmed what happened in 2006, but there isn’t a Massachusetts newspaper that has connected the dots!  Just a buried story about the federal audit, without any mention that Massachusetts is at the heart of this scandal.

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    Why Does Small Town District Where Every 3rd Grader Passed Test Get NCLB Reading Money While Struggling Urban Districts Are Rejected?
    BOSTON — It’s been a while since Brockton superintendent Joe Bage has seen grown-ups cry.

    That’s what happened to his grant-writing team when they tried to explain that Brockton, like other urban districts, was rejected for a “Reading First” grant, while some small towns, including three in which every third grader passed the MCAS reading test, were successful.

    “I had to sit in on people crying — four adult professionals — on why we didn’t get the grant,” Bage said. “We need every penny we can get, from anyplace and everywhere. At this point, I am very unhappy.”

    Boston, Fitchburg, Holyoke, Lowell, Lynn, New Bedford and Cambridge were also rejected.

    Meanwhile, several small towns, including Brewster, Chatham, Shutesbury, and Tisbury, along with five charter schools, were
    successful.

    Reading First, part of President Bush’s No Child Left Behind law, is designed to implement science-based reading programs in kindergarten
    through third-grade classrooms so that all students are proficient readers by the end of the third grade.

    Massachusetts this year has received $15 million — and is in line for $100 million over six years.

    The state Department of Education awarded 38 grants after examining 64 proposals. Districts were evaluated on their poverty rates, MCAS
    performance, and number of underperfoming schools. The state Board of Education gave final approval of recipients.

    Critics of the program say the federal guidelines are too strict. Boston Superintendent Thomas Payzant told his school board that if he pledged to abandon his literacy programs in favor of phonics, Boston likely would have received a grant.

    “It didn’t get distributed on the basis of need,” said Paul Schlichtman, president-elect of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees. “It got distributed on the basis of who was going to do exactly what the feds and state wanted them to do. It’s a further erosion of local control.”

    The state program director, Barbara Gardner, said Washington “does have a clear direction they want to take reading down.” But what it comes down to is: the best proposals get the money, she said.

    “We did it thoughtfully and carefully. It’s a competitive grant. You’ve got to write a good grant (proposal),” Gardner said. “I think we got a good mix of school systems throughout the commonwealth.”

    U.S. Education Undersecretary Eugene Hickok said in the past “whatever you wanted to do, you did” with federal grants. Reading First, he said, stresses a proven program and accountability.

    “A lot of money was spent on reading, without a lot of results,” Hickok said of past programs. “Congress and the president, all of us, want to make sure federal tax dollars yield results. The goal here is to do what works.”

    The towns of Shutesbury, in western Massachusetts, Tisbury, on Martha’s Vineyard, and Ayer, in north-central Massachusetts, saw 100 percent of their third-graders pass the reading portion of the 2002 MCAS test, according to DOE statistics.

    In other words, their kids can read, but they still got the grants.

    “I was shocked that we didn’t get it,” Lowell reading coordinator Pamela Buchek said. “I’m still reeling. We were extremely careful trying to follow every guideline. Our district, in particular, certainly is in need of help.”

    Nearly as many Lowell third-graders (141) failed the 2002 MCAS reading test as the total number (156) of third-graders who took the test in Ayer, Shutesbury and Tisbury combined, according to DOE stats.

    Although some cities were shut out, others were successful. Worcester, Springfield, Chelsea, Fall River and Lawrence received a combined $3.4 million.

    Grants ranged from $110,450 (Tisbury) to $840,000 (Springfield). It’s no jackpot, but anything helps as the state faces a $3 billion budget deficit and massive cuts. Districts are practically locked-in to receive funds for six years. As long as they show progress, the grants will continue.

    “Most of the districts that we funded got priority points for poverty,” Gardner said.

    Grant recipient Boston Renaissance Charter School ($220,000), for example, has a higher poverty rate than the Boston Public Schools, she said, even though there’s only a few hundred kids in grades K-3, compared to 15,000 in Boston’s public schools.

    On the 2002 MCAS reading test, 822 Boston third-graders failed, compared with 21 third-graders at Renaissance. The five charter schools that won grants will receive a combined $933,000 this year.

    The federal guidelines stipulate geographic balance between urban and rural districts, she said.

    “Unfortunately, there are poor readers in every district,” Gardner said.

    The guidelines also mandate that states “seek to fund only those proposals that show real promise for successful implementation, particularly at the classroom level, and for raising student achievement,” a U.S. DOE memo stated.

    In the second year, districts with more than one elementary school must expand the program to a second school and likewise, a charter school must partner with another charter school.

    The DOE will use $3 million of the total to hold seminars to train teachers in “proven methodologies,” including phonics, phonemic awareness — the ability to hear, identify and manipulate the individual sounds in spoken words — and vocabulary development.

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    Associated Press
    Some city schools lose out on reading money
    The Standard-Times
    April 3, 2003

    • I am the parent of two children in a city school system, for the one currently in the 6th grade who struggles with reading not based on educational level but rather the lack of will to read. He was faced with learning techniques that changed yearly, thus providing him with little structure. 

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      We went from Whole language, which uses the basic reading skill in repetition where at becomes bat to phonetic base, learning to read by sounding, then to the Harcourt series, which included, level based readers.

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      We have had Reading recovery for those students who struggle, which re-teaches, Reading First Grants, and in elementary schools, Title 1 which has been established for 8 years, consuming our Chapter 70 funding.

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      With all that money spent our recent MCAS testing illustrate our third grade readers are doing worse.

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      In a Comprehensive Assessment System article by Massachusetts DOE September 20, 2006 the article reads in part

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      But while Driscoll hailed the performance of the class of 2008, he voiced concern about the flat performance of students in the lower grades, especially in mathematics, and the decline in performance in Grade 3 Reading.

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      “I am especially concerned by the decline in Grade 3,” Driscoll said. “If we don’t resolve this issue now, this lack of improvement could lead to declining results in the future. We need to carefully analyze these results and determine exactly what can be done to ensure this decline in performance does not continue next year.”

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      I am neither a rocket scientist nor a brain surgeon but I do feel qualified enough to know that teachers, who can read, should not need millions of dollars in professional development to teach them to teach reading. 

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      The basic skill in reading needed to become a good student has not changed in 50 years.

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      Until we face the fact that in Massachusetts we spend more in policy making, which is influence in profit rather than educational sucess. Our children will continue to lack the necessary skills required to learn to read.

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      Instead of spending billions on the Department of Education we should eliminate the entire office and give the monies to the school system to teach basics reading principals period! 

  4. This Globe editorial focuses on the Federal problem, but makes no mention of the depth of the problem at the Massachusetts Department of Education.  Why?

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    GLOBE EDITORIAL
    Dick and Jane go bad
    September 30, 2006

    READING FIRST was supposed to be a fairy tale of a US Department of Education program that ushered children into the wonderful world of reading. Instead, it become a dark fable about corrupt government officials and conflicts of interest.

    Once upon a time in 2001, Congress made a legal wish that no child be left behind. Since then, Congress has given nearly $5 billion to states to help children, from kindergarten to third grade, improve their reading.

    States submitted applications and 16 panels of experts decided which ones to fund.

    Unfortunately, the program was run by a dark wizard, grimly known as the “director.”

    The director skirted federal rules. He expected states to meet standards that weren’t required by law. He hid useful information. When states applied for money and didn’t get it, the director often did not tell them why, even though the expert panels had often made suggestions that could have helped states with future applications.

    Sadly, the panels of experts were tainted, staffed in part by obsequious winged monkeys. Some were chosen by the director because they supported a particular commercial reading product that promotes Direct Instruction. States were pressed to use this product.

    When complaints were made that the panels were unfairly stacked, the director said that he was “shocked” in the smirking Claude-Rains- in-Casablanca sense of the word, to find gambling — or in this case politically stacked panels — in this establishment. Indeed, the director himself had in the past promoted the Direct Instruction product.

    To discourage states that wanted to use different products, the director e-mailed a Department of Education staff member asking for nasty reviews of these products. The e-mail said:

    “They are trying to crash our party and we need to beat the [expletive] out of them in front of all the other would-be party crashers who are standing on the front lawn waiting to see how we welcome these dirtbags.”

    So much for civil speech and free markets.

    Fortunately, people complained. The education department’s inspector general investigated and exposed the truth. Other investigations are underway. And a metaphorical house has fallen on the director, Christopher Doherty. His education department career is over.

    The mess predates US Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, who says she’s going to clean house. But the story won’t end until it is clear that the Education Department can weed out warped bureaucrats in the future and ensure that federal dollars are properly spent on the literacy needs of children.

  5. This sounds to me like a debate over educational methods which has been going on for decades.  A smart teacher doesn’t pick any single method, but synthesizes them.  I don’t see what makes it a ‘scandal’.

    • This is not about method.  This is about steering Federal money to favored vendors.  The Inspector General’s report made that quite clear, and it’s that aspect that has prompted calls for a criminal investigation.  A smart teacher works from many different methods, but this is about publishers and consultants that gamed the system.

  6. You might think the standardized tests that NCLB requires, and the school reforms it mandates are Bush’s plan to improve learning among children.

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    But they aren’t.

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    They are ways to reward the corporations that donate to Republican campaigns, like McGraw-Hill and Pearson.

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    Just as the Coalition Provisional Authority was staffed with just-graduated College Republicans (as opposed to experts in Iraq or diplomacy or nation-building or public works), who would donate time and money to the Republicans, these required standardized tests & curricula were easy money for Bush’s cronies in the education sector.

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    And now Bush’s Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings wants colleges to adopt standardized tests and curriculum.

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    Republicans see our government as just one huge trough they can feed in.

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