Magical Night of Giving
.JPG)
2009 AMA Red carpet
Many mascots at hockey game
Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2006 > September > 23 > Entry
A nasty little political fight
(Robert Slavin, Success For All reading program inventor)
Some big news is breaking today that has education junkies fired up.
It comes down to this — did officials at the U.S. Department of Education work to steer federal dollars earmarked to help kids read to companies they preferred? An explosive report, which the education department again tried to bury with a Friday afternoon release, says yes they did.
Sam Dillon of the New York Times has the stunning details here.
This has been a simmering controversy for months. Back in June I met Bob Slavin of Johns Hopkins University, inventor of the respected Success For All reading program and one of the first critics to come out and accuse the education department of not playing fair. Slavin said kids who might benefit from a program like Success For All were being denied so the department’s friends could make a few bucks.
Slavin is a huge big shot in the reading curriculum world but some thought took a big risk by speaking out. He must feel pretty vindicated today. The report includes E-mails within the department in which officials pretty openly discuss their efforts to craft the program selection committees to be friendly to certain companies.
Education Secretary Margaret Spellings was quick to say these problems occurred under her predecessor, Rod Paige. Some of the key players involved are no longer with the department.
The question is what happens next? What should the repercussions be for the department?
(Image credit: www.nysut.org)
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Schools and Politics
Comments
By Ms. Cornelius
September 23, 2006 7:33 PM | Link to this
Could this be a byproduct of thinking there shouldn’t actually BE a Department of Education?By Mary
September 23, 2006 4:23 PM | Link to this
Then some of these current or former federal employees could be serving prison time like other federal employees such as Darlene Drunyan (spelling?) who was a high ranking DOD/Air Force procurement official. She was convicted of steering certain contracts to Boeing a few years ago in return for certain favors. It takes everyone, not just Bob Slavin, to speak out and clean up government. That said, there are certain allowances in federal procurement to go to “sole sources”, or favored sources or preferential sources, but the reasons have to be justified as to being in the best interest of the government, not cronyism.By Rick
September 23, 2006 1:52 PM | Link to this
This was posted on the Miami Valley Issues Board. Belmont Highschool By Pillar Hello, I’m a former student of Belmont High School, if you can refer to it as an institution of education at all. I’m eighteen-years-old now, I didn’t graduate from Belmont because I was too busy trying to run away from the atmosphere of abusive teachers and drug addicted security guards. I like very many other kids who attended Belmont, had fear walking through those double doors every morning I went, which is why I also skipped class. When you walked through the doors, you could almost instantly hear someone plotting to hurt another student. There were various racially provoked riots that happen at Belmont that the Media doesn’t know about. So personally, I don’t think it has anything to do with kids not wanting to learn, but when you been them in that type of atmosphere, where the teacher doesn’t care then they don’t care. What example are we supposed to follow? The one we’ve never been shown? Kids skip school at belmont not always because it’s fun or they’ve been punked into doing it by peer pressure, they do it because they fear for their safety when they walk through the doors. However, one of the sub-topics of your message I can’t exactly provide an answer for, because the loud music and the speeding isn’t exactly the result of Belmont being a shoddy highschool. Well ma’am, I hope this perhaps gave you a little more insight to what happens inside of that place and I hope you don’t think we’re all hoodlums