U.S. Reading Program Benefits Bush 'Pioneer' Fundraiser

[sabra]

Source: ABC News Blotter

A major Texas fundraiser for President George Bush has made millions of dollars in profits from a federal reading program that critics say favored administration cronies at the expense of schoolchildren.

A company founded and owned by Randy Best, who raised $100,000 to qualify as a Bush "Pioneer" during the 2000 presidential campaign, received the lucrative contracts under a Bush administration initiative called Reading First.

After receiving the contracts, Best was able to sell his company, Voyager Expanded Learning, for $360 million. It was valued at only $5 million a few years earlier.

"At the time of the sale, the company that bought the program justified this to their stockholders on the basis that this program had done extremely well under Reading First and was very politically connected," said Robert Slavin, a leading educator at Johns Hopkins University and critic of the Reading First program.

Slavin, the brother of an ABC News executive, says a program he developed was rejected by the Department of Education despite its record of success.

Read more: http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/05/us_reading_prog.html

[Solly Mack]

1. Wonder if his company got funds from the Barbara Bush Foundation for literacy...

[Rageneau]

2. I teach ESL and Basic Literacy and I HATE these materials.

For over a year, I've been a volunteer tutor of basic reading skills and English as a Second Language. Our local office is well-supplied with the Voyager Reading Series and uses the Best testing system. I have found both of these woefully inadequate as teaching/assessment tools.

Ironically, my main objection to the Voyager series is that its subject matter is always, insufferably, politically correct, with many exercises focused on such things as battered women or fetal alcohol syndrome. These are important topics, of course, but not for someone who is just learning to read English. For them, "Run, Dick, Run!' still gets better results.

For some time now, I've been conflicted. I've always hated the Voyager series, but I figured (because of the subject matter) that it was being put out by incompetent but well-meaning liberal or at least progressive sources. Now, I feel all better, knowing that the materials that I've hated all along come from the same people I've hated all along.

[proud2BlibKansan]

4. We had Voyager for one year and then dropped it

I didn't like what little I saw of it. But this year we have Slavin's Success for All and it is HORRIBLE. I would rather go back to Dick Jane and Sally.

[proud2BlibKansan]

3. Well we have Slavin's program in my school and it SUCKS!

Slavin is an opportunistic ass.

[txaslftist]

5. Isn't that pretty much a given?

That any federal program that spends our money has a Bush contributor as the primary beneficiary is SOP.

[callous taoboy]

6. Teacher here. I'd bet my house that NCLB has been a huge

MEpublican financial motherload. Testing and re-testing and, often, re-testing again the same third grader is making people in the testing industry RICH! Never mind that it is a grueling, demeaning process to put a nine year old through. Never mind that it makes no pedagogical sense to do this. If there is a way to exploit public institutions for private, MEpublican gain, the Bushies are going to be very interested.

[Joanne98]

7. I can't wait until we get something on Margaret Spelling.

I suspect she's up to all kinds of no good!