Editorial: Accountability first

Saturday, March 17, 2007 | 6:52 a.m.

The Bush administration's Reading First literacy program for schools serving children from low-income families has been previously criticized by federal auditors and also came under fire in Congress this week as lawmakers discussed reauthorization of the program's funding.

Reading First, which is at the heart of Bush's No Child Left Behind Act that is up for renewal, dedicates $1 billion a year to seeking out scientifically proved, research-based programs for improving reading education. The money pays for teacher training and materials to be used in schools that serve low-income families.

But audits by the Education Department's inspector general show that Reading First has been riddled with mismanagement and conflicts of interest , pushing lucrative federal contracts to untested reading programs and materials created by former employees or friends of the Bush administration.

Reading First has relied largely on the work of private contractors who chaired the panels that awarded federal grants to states for various literacy programs. But often these contractors, while working for the federal government, also were paid royalties by the creators of untested reading curriculums and texts that were chosen and recommended to states through the program.

The inspector general also found that Reading First officials failed to properly screen curriculums for scientific validity or make certain that grant guidelines were followed.

According to a recent story by The Washington Post, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings told a Senate subcommittee that she was adopting all of the recommendations made by the department's inspector general, which included removing program leaders and hiring additional employees so that fewer outside contractors would be used.

Spellings promised to create an outside advisory council to oversee the program and promised that the Education Department's general counsel would examine the records of contractors accused of having conflicts of interest. Those determined to present actual conflicts would be removed.

We are skeptical that the Education Department's leadership is capable of convening an objective outside advisory council or has the ability to recognize what constitutes an actual conflict of interest, seeing as how such conflicts were allowed to exist for more than five years.

Schools have already chosen their reading programs, and Spellings' revisions have come too late to help. Still, Reading First's shortcomings and conflicts illustrate some of the reasons Bush's No Child Left Behind Act is a poorly crafted law that should not be renewed in its current form. It is a travesty that private gain and favoritism were allowed to take precedence over such an important task as teaching poor children to read.