[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 16]
[Senate]
[Pages 21478-21479]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             READING FIRST

  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, the Education Department's inspector 
general released a blistering report last week about a program called 
Reading First. The inspector general reported that Education Department 
officials, one, mismanaged the program; two, steered school contracts 
to publishers they favor and away from others; three, flagrantly 
ignored Federal laws on maintaining local and State control of school 
curricula.
  These are serious findings by the inspector general. Reading First is 
one of the largest programs in the Education Department. Congress has 
appropriated about $5 billion, or about a billion dollars for each of 
the past 5 years. So when we learn that a program of this size is being 
mismanaged, that laws are being broken, we need to take pause and 
investigate further.
  Soon after Reading First was created, a number of publishers, 
researchers, and local school officials complained that the Department 
favored certain reading programs over others. They claimed that the 
Department pressured States and local school districts--sometimes 
subtly and sometimes bluntly--to purchase its preferred programs and 
reject others.
  These kinds of activities are illegal. The law that established the 
Education Department states:

       No provision of a program administered by the Secretary or 
     by any other officer of the Department shall be construed to 
     authorize the Secretary or any such officer to exercise any 
     direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, 
     program of instruction, administration, or personnel of any 
     educational institution, school, or school system . . . over 
     the selection or consent of . . . textbooks, or other 
     instructional materials by any educational institution or 
     school system, except to the extent authorized by law.

  Now, when we established the Department of Education--and I happened 
to be here at that time; I was in the House of Representatives at that 
time--the hue and cry went up to those who were opposed to establishing 
the Department of Education that the Department of Education would 
begin telling local school districts what to teach, what books to use. 
Well, none of us wanted that. We wanted the Department of Education to 
do certain things but not to control local schools. We wanted to leave 
the control of school curricula, textbooks, what they taught, in the 
hands of local school boards. So we put this in the law expressly 
forbidding the Secretary of Education, or anyone in that Department, to 
exercise any direction, supervision, or control over textbooks, and 
things like that. That is about as clear as night is from day in the 
law.
  Later, when we passed the No Child Left Behind Act, we further 
elaborated on that, and No Child Left Behind established the Reading 
First Program. It reiterates this point:

       No funds provided to the Department under this act may be 
     used by the Department to endorse, approve, or sanction any 
     curriculum.

  The Department officials repeatedly denied that they showed any 
favoritism. However, the inspector general's report shows that, in 
fact, they went to great lengths to influence exactly which 
instructional materials school districts must use. They accomplished 
this in several ways.
  First they--I mean the Department of Education officials--stacked 
their grant review panels with members who shared their own philosophy, 
directly contradicting the No Child Left Behind Act which laid out 
specific rules designed to ensure the panels were balanced.
  Next, they designed the grant applications in such a way as to 
discourage States from using certain reading programs--reading programs 
that had been approved at the local level and had been approved at the 
State level. So the Department designed the applications in such a way 
as to discourage the States from using these reading programs, even to 
the point of selectively eliminating phrases from the No Child Left 
Behind Act they didn't like. The No Child Left Behind Act put in 
certain phrases they had to use in terms of getting grants. Guess what. 
They just left those out of the grant application--just left them out 
totally.
  Third, they leaned heavily on school districts to drop reading 
programs that didn't meet the Department's approval. For example, the 
Reading First Director opposed a whole-language reading program sold by 
a company called the Wright Group. In an e-mail, he urged a staffer to 
make it clear that the Wright Group didn't have his approval. Here is 
an excerpt from his e-mail. This is an e-mail from the Reading First 
Director Christopher Doherty. He said:

       They--

  This is the group that wanted to come in and make an application--

       They are trying to crash our party and we need to beat the 
     [expletive deleted] 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.

  What does all that mean? That means: Look, we have our programs, we 
have what we want; others want in and, guess what, we are going to keep 
them out. ``They are trying to crash our party''--``our party.'' What 
did Mr. Doherty mean by ``crash our party''? They have selected 
publishers, selected materials they want these schools to use. 
``Party''? What does that mean?
  Here is how it played out in Massachusetts for one State. The Reading 
First Director, this same guy, Christopher Doherty, called a State 
official to say he had concerns about certain reading programs that 
four school districts were using. All of these programs had gone 
through the appropriate approval process at the local and State levels. 
Nevertheless, the State official conveyed that concern to the local 
districts. The three that dropped those approved programs continued to 
get their Reading First funding. The one district that stuck with the 
old program that had been approved had its Reading First funding taken 
away.
  What is that saying? It is saying: OK, school districts, if you want 
money, you have to play our ball game, you have to accept our 
textbooks, you have

[[Page 21479]]

to accept what we want, not what you at the local, what you at the 
State level want, but what we want in Washington.
  When we step back and look at the big picture, we see a Department of 
Education where the attitude is: We know best, and to heck with 
Congress, to heck with Federal laws. They are saying basically it 
doesn't matter what the law says about local control of schools. If we 
like a particular program, we are going to make sure a school uses it, 
and if we don't like it, we are going to make sure they don't use it; 
we know best, and we will decide. That seems to be the attitude of the 
Department of Education.
  We live in a nation of law. We have offices such as the inspector 
general to investigate whether agencies such as the Education 
Department are really following the laws we pass. Guess what. The 
inspector general found they are not following the law at the Education 
Department. They are basically thumbing their nose at it.
  So far, the person who has borne most of the blame has been the 
Reading First Director, Christopher Doherty, but I think we need to 
look a little higher.
  Secretary Spellings responded to the report by blaming other 
Department employees and noting that the events occurred before she 
took over the Department. However, as President Bush's domestic policy 
adviser, she exerted enormous control from the White House over the 
Department of Education activities.
  Michael Petrilli, a former Department official who worked in the 
Department from 2001 to 2005, wrote a column this week in which he said 
that Mrs. Spellings knew exactly what was going on.
  Here is what Mr. Petrilli wrote:

       As the President's first-term domestic policy advisor, she 
     micromanaged the implementation of Reading First from her 
     West Wing office. She put one of her most trusted friends 
     inside the Department of Education to make sure that Doherty 
     and his colleagues didn't go soft and allow just any reading 
     program to receive funds. She was the leading cheerleader for 
     an aggressive approach. And now she bobs and weaves: 
     ``Although these events occurred before I became Secretary of 
     Education, I am concerned about these actions and committed 
     to addressing and resolving them.''

  A quote from Secretary Spellings.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cornyn). The Senator's time has expired.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I didn't realize I had a time limit. I ask 
for 2 more minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, if this description is accurate, it is 
hard to imagine that Secretary Spellings didn't know anything about the 
abuses described in the inspector general's report. Instead of making 
others take the fall for what happened, she needs to stand up and say 
whether she had any knowledge of or involvement in these activities 
when she worked in the White House.
  Last week's report from the IG was just the first of several on the 
Education Department's management of the Reading First Program. I am 
afraid that what we have learned so far is just the tip of the iceberg. 
Secretary Spellings needs to explain as soon as possible her role in 
this program.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.

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