Surprise Surprise… Bush’s Reading First program plagued by favoritism and bad management.

This article on USA Today talks about Bush’s Reading First program, part of the No Child Left Behind Act. If you don’t want to read the article, here are the highlights:

review of the Bush administration’s reading program says the Education Department ignored the law and ethical standards to steer money how it wanted

suggests the department broke the law by trying to dictate which curriculum schools must use.

review panels were stacked with people who shared the director’s views and in which only favored publishers of reading curricula could get money.

Chris Doherty (program director), is resigning in the coming days

This was an intentional effort to corrupt the process.

The article doesn’t state exactly what curriculum the program was pushing, but it would seem obvious that they were pushing conservative views, and I would bet that they denied funding to schools that proposed any ‘liberal’ reading. I would guarantee that if there was a book that discussed Atheism in anything but a negative tone, they wouldn’t allow it.

Honestly, I don’t see how Conservative and Liberal are even defined anymore. Is there a list somewhere that defines exactly what what a Conservative feels is ok, and what a Liberal does? Isn’t it inherently wrong to subscribe to a group of any type when it comes to things like this? We should look at any issue without any bias, in my opinion. If you call yourself a Conservative or Liberal, you are more likely to form an opinion because ‘your group feels that way’. This doesn’t promote independent thought at all, it makes it more likely that people just follow someone elses lead, and not their own ideas.

UPDATE: Looks like the entire thing is about money and the “Good Ole Boys Network”. This article states the corruption was really about bullying states to use publishers who had Bush cronies as CEO’s and board members.