From the desk of Betsy Combier:

This is how funding for public school education works:

Lobbyists are paid to get as much federal funding as possible into the pockets of their clients who are very powerful (wealthy) members of the politico-educational complex (which includes the legal industry, textbook publishers, unions, tutoring services, drug industry and insurance companies).

National organizations pursue the money through the politico-educational complex by touting whatever "educational" policy is the flavor of the month, and awards are given to fellow members of the complex to support the lobbyists in Washington in their efforts to "sell" the latest policy, and/or reward them for jobs well done.

The press is told to avoid any stories about corruption, fraud, corporal punishment, false claims, or anything else that may deter the politico-educational complex from being in total control of the information going to the public about public education. The public must be left in the dark about what is really going on, "at all costs" (emphasis added - Editor). An example of this is the report posted by the NYC Partnership on "Children First" reforms and Mayoral control. We were surprised at the information presented in this report being so inaccurate, and called the press office of the Partnership to ask whether or not anyone could verify the information. We were told "Well, we have no one in the field." At lease on the websitethere is a disclaimer that the statistics and information were gathered by the New York City Education Department, and thus this "report" is actually a public relations piece for the Mayor.

Federal programs are set up in such a way that the services are there to some extent, depending on the individual leadership of the organization, but the actual amount of dollars spent on the children ranges from zero to maybe 30%. We cannot know the exact % because schools, educational agencies and anyone else receiving public funds never release accurate information about where every dollar is spent.

Anyone who questions, reports on, speaks out, or does anything to get in the way of the flow of money into the pockets of the politico-educational complex is tortured, thrown out of his/her agency/school/business, legally defamed, certified by "medical practitioners" as crazy, 'unfit for duty' and left as destitute as possible. Once on the radar of the politico-educational complex, a perpetrator of honesty and truth has almost no chance of becoming free of retaliation, as the underground blacklist network that covers America cannot afford to be exposed in any way, usually is not willing to buy off the victim, and can never be sure that the victim will never talk. Random terror permeating the school/business/agency of the whistleblower obviously did not work in the first place.

The funding of public school education, therefore, has nothing whatsoever to do with children, their needs, or their potential. Finding out what children actually need to achieve in school would require too much money and time, and the information gathered may point to the activities of members of the politico-educational complex that must never be publicized because this would be a true disaster for the groups who have perpetrated the fake news published in our newspapers and produced for our TV stations paid for by the groups whose interests are money, money, and policies that get them more money.

So, we come full circle.

Our conclusion and recommendation: Teachers, administrators, and parents who understand what educational funding is all about - that it is a spending problem - need to continue to use the internet and blogs to expose members of the politico-educational complex, and have local "Abramoffs" and "Tassones" finally brought to task for their crimes. We the public also must design strategies that support the funding of children, their needs, and their individual achievement. Let's give every child in America the money they already are supposed to get through the federal government for education, and have them and their parents/guardians use these funds as they, not our government agencies, choose.

And, we need a Sarbanes-Oxley Act that covers non-government and charitable organizations.

Summary of Sarbanes-Oxley

The Department of Justice is Going After the Person Who Leaked Bush's Eavesdropping On US Citizens

The Secret Lives of Lobbyists and "Research Associates"

Bush's Eavesdropping, Abramoff's Deception, Delay's Bribes, Fake News and Secrecy: It's a Cultural Thing

Scandal In the Bush Administration: Michael Scanlon and Rep. Richard Ney Join Lobbyist Jack Abramoff and Tom Delay

Whistling in the Wind

Opening the Door to NYC Education Corruption Part I: Update on Retaliation of All Whistleblowers

Texas Educator's Witness Protection Program

The Buying of the Media in America

The US Education Department Spent $700,000 of Taxpayer Money on a Survey of Articles and Reporters

Education Funding is a Mess and State Education Finance Lawsuits Hope to Change This.:New York, Texas, then Missouri, then...

NYC Public High School Students are Playing Hooky From Their Schools; A Sign of Neglected Needs?

For Immediate Release
December 22, 2005
Contact: Linda Embrey
Communications Office
703-838-6737; press@nsba.org

Statement by
Joan Schmidt, President
National School Boards Association

Congress Utterly Fails In Its Commitment to America's Schoolchildren

LINK

The following is a statement by NSBA President Joan Schmidt, a school board member from Fairfield, Montana, on Congress' end-of-session votes on education:

"This week, in a flurry of end-of-session votes, the U.S. House and Senate approved several education-related matters, including a 1 percent cut in funds for public education, and the creation of a private school voucher program within a hurricane relief plan. These measures, instead of being voted on openly and honestly on their own merits, were attached to the Defense Appropriations bill.

"This has been a year of great challenges for our nation, from war to devastating hurricanes. The greater the challenges, the more impressive is the response of ordinary Americans. Our public schools have faced these challenges. We continue working hard to raise student achievement and carry out the intentions of the No Child Left Behind Act. Public schools nationwide have made immediate adjustments to welcome and educate thousands of students whose lives were turned upside down by the hurricanes. Many of our Gulf Coast districts are working day and night to rebuild under the most difficult of circumstances.

"But meeting those challenges fully and effectively requires our elected leaders in Congress to do their part. That means fulfilling promises to adequately fund critical programs like No Child Left Behind and special education, and maintaining a commitment to put public schools first. Yet when it comes to public education, the actions of Congress, particularly in the final days of this session, have been abysmal. The nation's defense bill, which includes funding for our troops during a time of war, should never have been used as a cover to enact bad legislation for our public schools. But that is precisely what Congress has done. The House voted this week in the middle of the night to cut education funding and simultaneously enact a private school voucher program under the guise of hurricane relief. And now the Senate has followed suit and prepared to head home for the year, leaving behind broken promises to America's schoolchildren.

Our nation's leaders, who demand so much from our public schools, should show an unwavering commitment to make sure schools can meet those demands. Congress failed utterly in that commitment and failed America's schoolchildren in the first year of this session, which is expected to end later today. When Congress returns in 2006 for its second session, school board members will demand a renewed commitment by our elected leaders to redeem themselves and support our public schools not just in words, but in actions."

The National School Boards Association is a national federation of state school boards associations that represent more than 95,000 school board members who govern the nation's public schools. The organization's mission is to foster excellence and equity in public elementary and secondary education throughout the United States through local school board leadership.

National School Boards Association Advocacy & Legislation

December 22, 2005
CONTACT:
Nicolle H. Grayson
(202) 293-1217, ext. 351

Funding Gap 2005:
Most States Shortchange Poor and Minority Students

LINK

(Washington, DC)  Most states significantly shortchange poor and minority children when it comes to funding the schools they attend, according to a report released today by the Education Trust.

Nationally, we spend about $900 less per pupil on students educated in our nation's poorest school districts than those educated in the wealthiest. Worst yet, in some states, this funding gap exceeds $1,000 per pupil.

The problem is widespread. In 27 of 49 states studied, the school districts serving the highest concentrations of poor students spend less per pupil than the lowest-poverty districts. The dollar figures in this analysis were not adjusted for the extra costs of educating low-income students.

The Education Trust also analyzed funding data by applying a widely used 40-percent adjustment to account for the additional costs of educating low-income students.

When this adjustment is applied, the funding gap between high- and low-poverty districts grows to more than $1,400 per student, and the number of states with funding inequities increases to 38 states.

Under-funding is also pervasive in districts educating the most minority students: In 30 states, the school districts serving concentrations of minority students spend less per pupil than the districts that educate few children of color; when the numbers are adjusted to account for the extra costs of educating the low-income students these districts serve, 35 states have minority funding gaps.

This annual analysis of school funding focuses on the money that state and local governments provide to school districts by looking at data for the 2002-03 school year, the latest year for which such financial data are available. The report focuses on state and local policies because these jurisdictions, rather than the federal government, control more than 90 percent of the dollars received by public schools, and they bear the lion's share of the responsibility to close these gaps.

"In far too many states, we see once again that the children who need the most from our schools receive the least," said Ross Wiener, policy director of the Education Trust. "While the federal government should spend more on education, this can't be used as an excuse for states to ignore their discriminatory education funding policies.

"The fact that we still are talking about funding gaps shows a lack of political will to do what's right."

The Education Trust report acknowledged that providing more money to schools does not, by itself, guarantee gains in student achievement. Rather, the money must be spent wisely on resources proven to increase student learning, such as hiring qualified teachers and providing extra support to struggling students.

"This nation has embraced the goal of ensuring that every child - no matter their color, family background, or socioeconomic status - will receive an education that allows them to compete in a rapidly changing global economy," said Kati Haycock, director of the Education Trust.

"Indeed, there are districts and schools all across the nation that are educating students to high-levels daily without additional dollars," Haycock said. "But if we are to truly fulfill our promise to educate all students, we need to ensure that school systems have the resources they need to get the job done. We've got to abandon school-funding practices that consistently give poor and minority kids less than their fair share."

Some states, like Illinois, stand out for being particularly unfair when it comes to funding schools. Illinois continues to have one of the biggest funding gaps in the country, at a whopping $2,065 per student, without adjusting for the additional costs of educating low-income students. And the state has made no progress in closing this gap since at least 1997.

New York also stands out for neglecting to fairly fund poor and minority school districts. New York spends $2,280 less per student in its poorest districts than its does on students educated in its wealthiest school districts. Even after New York was ordered to deal with these funding gaps, policymakers have failed to take action.

"Even relatively small gaps add up to big inequalities for poor and minority children," said Haycock. Take for example, a state like Colorado, which has a gap of $101 per student between its highest- and lowest-poverty districts. If Colorado closed its funding gap, a typical low-income high school of 1,500 students would have an additional $151,500 to fund school improvements.

Some states are taking a serious look at their funding gaps and are working to close them, the report notes. Maryland, for example, appointed a bipartisan commission to examine education funding. The commission recommended large infusions of new money in the highest-poverty school districts, and the state's political leaders are working to carry out those recommendations.

"Shortchanging the educational needs of students growing up in poverty has always been immoral," Haycock said. "But these deep inequities in resources are absolutely untenable in the face of the demands of the 21st-century economy. How can we, as a nation, profess to care so much about poor kids and kids of color and then give them less of everything they need to succeed in school?

"Fortunately, policymakers in some states are making the right choices and putting money behind their convictions," she said.

"But, as this report shows, most still have a long way to go."

The Education Trust works for the high academic achievement of all students at all levels, pre-kindergarten through college, and forever closing the achievement gaps that separate low-income students and students of color from other youth.

Guess Who's Still Left Behind
By Ross Wiener
Monday, January 2, 2006; A13

LINK

This past fall new national data were released on the academic achievement of our young people. In some ways the latest results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as the Nation's Report Card, were consistent with other recent performance indicators: There is some progress in math and almost none in reading, and more progress in elementary schools than in middle schools (where reading levels actually have declined since 2003).

This modest progress is disappointing. Despite the intense focus on improving the academic achievement of struggling students since enactment of the No Child Left Behind law, we have to stop and ask why more progress has not been made in narrowing the achievement gaps that separate low-income students and students of color from their peers.

The results are sobering from at least one other perspective: The knowledge and skills of students of color and those from low-income families are not just low compared with white and more-affluent students. They are also low in absolute terms, shutting these students out from meaningful civic engagement and economic opportunity.

The scores of African American, Latino and low-income fourth-graders indicate that the average student in these groups demonstrates skills below the level required to classify numbers as even or odd. Eighth-grade students from all of these groups on average score far below the level that would indicate an ability to convert written numbers into decimals.

One thing put in stark relief is the low level of state standards. Students who demonstrate proficiency on their own state's tests often perform far below that level on NAEP, suggesting that the states have set standards too low to indicate adequate academic preparation. But the differences are more than a matter of rigor -- they also reflect the quality of the tests we're using. State tests more often assess basic skills, whereas demonstrating proficiency on NAEP requires students to apply knowledge and critical reasoning. If we are going to maintain the fiction that it is acceptable to have different reading standards in Mississippi and Maine, then national policy needs to provide some incentives for states to align their expectations and assessments with the demands of the real world.

The most important lesson from these results, however, is that we are not doing enough to improve teaching and learning in our public schools. There is no question that educators are trying harder to reach students, especially those students who have struggled, but there is a crippling lack of intellectual capital in many of our lowest-performing schools. Instead of confronting this problem, we reward teachers with higher status and higher pay the farther away they get from the students who need the most help. This is true across districts, within districts and even within individual schools, where the most experienced and effective teachers are assigned to the "best" kids.

After the latest NAEP results, the Education Department finally began paying attention to the federal law's focus on teacher quality. Just two days after the national data were released -- after almost four years of the Bush administration neglecting this issue -- Education Secretary Margaret Spellings sent a letter to every state superintendent, ostensibly serving notice that the department was going to ask for more data on teachers and require states to develop plans for ensuring that poor and minority students get their fair share of qualified and experienced teachers. Unfortunately, the letter represents one more broken promise to poor and minority students: States have already been told they do not have to report inequality in access to qualified secondary school teachers, despite the administration's professed interest in high school reform. Moreover, the states are not being asked to publicly release their equity plans as the law requires. This is a shame, because research documents that teachers make a dramatic difference in how much students learn and also that students who need the most academic help get the least in terms of teacher talent. Attention to teacher quality should have been first on the agenda for leaving no child behind -- not an afterthought.

We don't have the luxury of deciding whether we want to take on the heartache and hard work of improving public education. Given the rapidly increasing pressures and demands of the knowledge-based economy, we need to make sure that we take more students to higher levels of achievement. That means pegging standards to the real-world challenges our students will face as adults. But nothing will make up for a lack of commitment to raising teacher quality.

We will forever consign millions of poor and minority children to the margins of society if we do not act now to give them the teachers they need and deserve. The latest test results indicate that we have maintained and even built a little on recent gains but that the heavy lifting in education reform is still in our future.

The writer is policy director for the Education Trust, a nonprofit research and advocacy group.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

GOALS 2000, the Backbone of Education Reform and the Implementation of Standards in America, is Failing Our Young People

Summary of Sarbanes-Oxley

Cleaning Up After the Fall

Teacher Salary Grid Hampers Education Reform

Analysis of NAEP Results

The Lies of Our State Education Departments Are Exposed in the Latest NAEP Test Results

The Impact of Funding Adequacy Litigation

The Latest Dismal NAEP Scores: Can We Narrow the 4th-Grade Reading Gap?

Campaign For Fiscal Equity

School for Profit:
by Betty Brink

Sonnenberg was "very, very impressed with Voyager's reading intervention curriculum."
Rangel: Sonnenberg "was a master at getting funding out of D.C. for the district's reading programs."
The Fort Worth school district has never done an evaluation of whether Voyager programs are helping students learn to read.
Garner: Voyager "is sucking funds away from other school programs."

George W. Bush has relied heavily on advisors who helped put together Texas educational reforms.
Last February, Fort Worth school district ethics expert Rufino Mendoza sent acting superintendent Joe Ross a strongly worded memo alleging that one of the district's most highly touted and powerful employees had committed a serious conflict-of-interest violation. Marsha Sonnenberg had been in charge of reading and language arts acquisitions for Fort Worth schools since 1998. In the memo, released to
Fort Worth Weekly under an open records request, Mendoza wrote that Sonnenberg had recommended that the district buy a reading program produced by a company for which she was a consultant.

"This is in direct violation of Board Policy" that bars any employee with influence over contracts and payments from accepting any benefit from companies or people doing business with the district, Mendoza wrote. "It is most important that our top-level cabinet exemplify what is expected from all ... employees. ... If we are to hold one person accountable for unethical behavior, we must hold all individuals accountable or our entire process is compromised."

Sonnenberg did not deny doing work for the company called Sopris West Educational Services, which was trying to sell the district its $87,000 reading program for middle-school special education students. According to Mendoza, she admitted that she had played a role in the development of the curriculum, called Language. But she told Mendoza she had not been compensated for what she said were suggestions on how to improve the product. Still, the ethics expert told Ross, "compensation, as you know, doesn't necessarily mean receipt of money."

It could mean helping out an old mentor. Sopris executive Louisa Cook Moats, a well-known reading expert and researcher, is listed on Sonnenberg's resumé as a reference, someone she had "been trained by and worked with." And a regional Sopris administrator, Closie Ray, formerly worked with Sonnenberg
in the Fort Worth district offices, which Mendoza thought might also give the "appearance of impropriety."

Sonnenberg resigned her $97,900-a-year position at the end of the 2004-2005 school term " a decision she said this week that she'd made before the ethics flap. The Fort Worth district didn't buy the Sopris program.

Because of the concerns raised by Mendoza, another program purchase pushed by Sonnenberg was also halted. The reading administrator had recommended that the district spend another $84,000 on a curriculum called Passport, also for middle-school special education classes. That one is put together
by a company called Voyager Expanded Learning - a company whose contracts with the Fort Worth district alone jumped from $100,300 to more than $620,000 in one year, under Sonnenberg's direction. And if Sopris has a few friends in somewhat lofty places, it's not a patch on Voyager, the brainchild of Randy Best, Dallas entrepreneur and big-money backer of George Bush.

Start, again, with Sonnenberg's resumé. Besides Moats, she lists among her reading-research mentors Reid Lyon and Doug Carnine, both of whom wound up in Washington, D.C., as advisors to Bush and his now-controversial No Child Left Behind act. Lyon and Sonnenberg are believers in phonics and made that
method the cornerstone of Bush's reading initiative.

One of the phonics-based commercial programs Lyon has pushed is Voyager's - which has gotten him in hot water with critics, in New York and elsewhere, who charge that the administration's reading initiatives were actually written to support a few commercial programs - programs, perhaps not surprisingly, developed by Bush administration friends. Sonnenberg, a vivacious, candid woman, told the Weekly that Voyager's program has succeeded because it is impressive and because it fills an important niche. But not all agree. Its detractors say that Voyager has indeed become a major success story in the annals of educational entrepreneurship, based not on producing a superior product but on its founders' ability to attract well-funded and well-connected investors and to hire top educators away from public schools that then become its clients, not to mention pouring massive amounts of money into Bush's campaigns. Its
corporate connections reach the White House by the front door.

Along the way, Voyager has been helped by government policy changes like that mandated by the Texas Legislature in 2003, which attached a little-known rider to an appropriations bill to give the Texas Education Agency $12 million to spend on reading - that is, to spend on a single intervention program for struggling readers in kindergarten and elementary schools. All districts had to use the one program chosen by TEA or pay for their own. The TEA's choice: Voyager.

Some Fort Worth schools were already using the Voyager program at that point, but when the TEA started funding it in 2003, Fort Worth expanded the program district-wide. After all, Sonnenberg said, "It was free" to schools, if not to taxpayers.

Long-time reading teachers familiar with Voyager, however, were outraged at the TEA decision. "If Voyager were a superior program and reasonably priced, I would not object," retired teacher Donna Garner said. "However ... it is not a great program, and it certainly has no long-term, longitudinal research conducted by independent researchers which proves that Voyager is better than other reading intervention programs that are less expensive. .... This deal helped Bush's friends at the expense of the state's at-risk kids."

Even Fort Worth's director of special education wrote in 2003 that she "wasn't that impressed" with Voyager. When schools in the state of New York bought Voyager under pressure from Lyon, Big Apple public advocate Betsy Gotbaum blasted the state's decision as one that chose what was best for a company rather than what's best for our children. After observing it in the Birmingham schools for a year, University of Alabama professor Fran Perkins called Voyager's curriculum "the best example of the worst reading program for young children" she'd ever seen.

Others see Voyager as part of a larger right-wing push to privatize public education. In the October issue of the Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, university researchers Patricia Hinchey and Karen Cadiero-Kaplan wrote that by "putting public funds into private pockets" with its blatant promotion of companies such as Voyager, the Bush administration is setting the stage for a widespread acceptance of for-profit charter schools funded by public money, a threat "not only to public education, but democracy
itself." Ultimately, the authors wrote, the No Child Left Behind initiative is designed to fail, and when it does, public school teachers will be the 'scapegoats' and the private sector will become the rescuers.

Retired reading teacher and former Fort Worth school administrator Judith Scott said the highly touted educational reforms in Texas aren't working and that she is "tired of educators getting a bum rap" for the failures. "You only have to look at the people" who ushered in those reforms, she said, to understand why they have failed. They were politicians, millionaire businessmen or big-time attorney-lobbyists, with no history in education, she pointed out. And Marsha Sonnenberg, the reading expert, "never even had
a reading certificate."

The whole reform movement, Scott said, became 'a political football' that gave power and money to Bush supporters and promoted his 'phonics-only agenda.'

And in spite of all of the millions that have poured into the district for new reading programs since 1998, reading scores for most Fort Worth students have not improved.

Still, Sonnenberg said, anecdotal evidence from principals and teachers convinced her she had made the right decision when she brought Voyager into the classrooms. "I was told over and over that schools with low-income and low-performing kids were seeing dramatic improvements in their kids' reading skills." When asked if there was any hard data to back up her claims, she said no. "I could never get the district's program evaluators, for whatever reason, to do the studies."

A local journalist who formerly served as education editor of a major daily newspaper doesn't remember that as a time spent dealing with stories of good and bad teachers, educational achievements, or even school budgets. Instead, she remembers it as a time when her voice, snail, and e-mail boxes were
perpetually overflowing with urgent messages from people trying to sell something to schools and students.

Larry Shaw, head of a local teachers union, noted the same trend when he commented a few years ago on the schools' sale of 'branding rights' to private companies, allowing them to put their names on auditoriums, football stadiums, and the like. When a visitor shows up on one of these campuses,
Shaw said, "he better not bend over, or a Pepsi-Cola banner might be slapped across his backside."

Entrepreneurs of every stripe, it seems, have realized in the last decade or so that schools are not just places where scholars and future presidents are made. They are places were fortunes can be made - especially with a few friends in the right places.

In Fort Worth, scandal erupted several years ago after Thomas Tocco, then superintendent of schools, committed more than $15 million to an unproven computer math program owned by one his associates and even went so far as to write glowing letters of endorsement to Congress in order to help the buddy
get millions in education grants. Years later, consultants brought in by Ross deemed the program to be 'not worth the money.' Too bad. The money had already been spent.

In the years since, the process of turning public schools into branding laboratories (give a kindergartener an Apple and she's yours for life!), billboards (ads on school buses) proto-markets (soft drink machines in the hallways), and public troughs for private gain seems to have accelerated. The debate over whether to teach phonics isn't just about how kids learn " it's about which company's reading program has the best lobbyists."

By 1994, Dallas entrepreneur Randy Best had made a fortune in investment banking. That year he decided to branch out. He rounded up investors and, with $3.5 million in hand, founded a for-profit company called Voyager Expanded Learning. One of those investors was Charles Miller, a millionaire
friend of George Bush. The Texas governor tapped Miller to lead the statewide task force on school reform. Miller was also a friend of Margaret Spellings, another education advisor who would become secretary of education when Bush became president.

Despite its for-profit nature, Voyager's stated purpose was altruistic: Best wanted to provide after-school programs to latchkey kids. His program was simple. He would use existing school facilities - free of charge if he could convince the school districts that what he was doing was providing tutoring rather than baby-sitting services - and he would offer poorly paid teachers good hourly pay to stay late and tutor the kids using methods that were more fun than studious. The programs offered everything from sculpting to drama, and they were highly successful, branching out across North Texas until other after-school program providers that had to be regulated by the state cried foul because Voyager had gotten a pass as a "tutoring" service. Best shook off his critics, continued the after-school programs, and took his
tutoring service to a higher level: Voyager became a for-profit publisher of reading programs that he sold to the schools as phonic-based intervention programs for at-risk kids.

Voyager Expanded Learning was first used in the Fort Worth schools during the 1997-98 school year at a cost of $59,190. At that time it was an after-school tutoring program aimed at struggling elementary students. For the next seven school years, according to documents released by the district under an open records request, purchase orders for Voyager programs came to a total of about $331,000.

Then in the 2004-2005 school year, Sonnenberg dramatically increased the number of schools using the program, and in just one year Voyager was paid $620,698. A lot of that money came from TEA, but some of it also came from Title I funds and direct federal grants under No Child Left Behind.

TEA's choice of Voyager, over eight other vendors, as the single-source statewide provider for the $12 million at-risk reading program was highly controversial and fraught with charges of favoritism.

Donna Garner, the retired reading teacher, called the decision unconscionable. "This [was] an 'I smell a rat' deal," Garner said. "It is sucking funds away from other school programs, all to put dollars in the
pockets of those backers who are behind the company."

Garner, who monitors TEA regularly, lives near Waco. She's an unrelenting critic of the state's current educational standards known as the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, and is chief author of an alternative standards document that other teachers helped her write in 1997.

Garner and a few other reading teachers had been asked to join the large group - mostly administrators and researchers - that had been pulled together by the Bush task force on school reform to write new standards for the state's schools. Sonnenberg also served on the writing team. Those standards became the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, called TEKS, and the basis for the statewide testing program.

But after a few weeks, Garner said, several of the classroom teachers became convinced that the committee was going to produce standards that were "vague, not knowledge-based, and impossible to understand by teachers or students." They bolted, put their lives on hold for months, and produced the
Texas Alternative Document, a knowledge-based set of standards that were grade-level specific and had real accountability built in, she said. Their document, praised by outside peer reviewers, was ignored by TEA. But while their standards were not accepted by Texas, some portions of the TAD are being used in California and more than a half-dozen other states, she said. "We are well known and respected outside our own borders." TAD, she said, is not copyrighted, is "free for the taking," and none of the authors has ever made a dime off it. Sonnenberg, Garner said, "flirted with the TAD group for a time, but went back to the Bush-supported TEKS group. "

Garner has nothing kind to say about the business types like millionaire investor Charles Miller and lawyer-lobbyist Sandy Kress, who headed up Bush's Texas school reform initiatives and laid the groundwork for what would become the No Child Left Behind act, making that document, in Garner's eyes, seriously flawed.

"Back in the '90s when we Texas Alternative Document writers were trying to get the governor's office to realize the importance of grade-level-specific standards based upon academic knowledge, all (Miller and Kress) could understand was spreadsheets," Garner said. "These people never did realize that you can"t make students and teachers accountable unless they know to what they are being held accountable." Now, she said, that same mentality pervades Bush's national educational initiatives.

As for Voyager's curriculum and other Bush-backed phonics-based programs, Scott, a former Fort Worth Title I administrator who worked with Sonnenberg, said a one-size-fits-all approach to the teaching of reading is impossible. "Kids learn differently," she said. "And if you have a child with a hearing problem - and there are many such kids - who can't distinguish sounds, you're setting that child up to fail if phonics is your only option." But the money is in phonics today, she said, and "all of the programs Sonnenberg
bought for the district tie back to Bush and federal dollars."

Sonnenberg said she was "very, very impressed with Voyager's reading intervention curriculum, and I had no hesitancy recommending it to the district." She said Voyager sent folks out to talk to teachers and
administrators and discovered the need for reading intervention programs that would help bring at-risk children up to speed. "Voyager was one of the first to develop such a program, based on phonics," she said, which did give the program an advantage in getting the No Child Left Behind nod.

Fort Worth schools trustee Juan Rangel said Sonnenberg "was one of the reading gurus out of a tight circle that started in Austin. She was a master at getting funding out of D.C. for the district's reading programs. ... Look at her connections."

One of her long-time Fort Worth co-workers, who asked not to be identified, said that with Sonnenberg gone, the district's loss politically and financially is 'incalculable.'

The conflict of interest concerns that many still believe led to Sonnenberg's resignation would likely not have been flagged under Thomas Tocco - the former superintendent wasn't known for his keen concern for ethical issues. Those years were rocked by scandals that ranged from Tocco's sexual peccadilloes to his blatant promotion of a buddy's computer math program to a massive internal bidding scam that drained $15 million from a district already bleeding red ink, sending one high-level administrator and
a favorite contractor to federal prison. As Rangel described it, a culture of "wink, wink, nod, nod" marked the Tocco regime, and for many, the lines between what was permissible for a public servant and what was not had long been blurred.

But with Ross in the driver's seat last winter, a new school board president in place, a wholly revamped ethics code, and a search on for a permanent superintendent, the district began working to remove the image of cronyism and corruption that had come to hover over it.

Sonnenberg had been brought in by Tocco as the district's reading consultant in spite of the fact that her resumé showed that in a long educational career, she had never taught reading. In fact, the only classroom experience she had came in the late '60s, when she taught history at a junior high school in her hometown of Port Arthur for four years. After that, Sonnenberg climbed the administrative ladder in East Texas schools, winding up in Wharton in 1990 as the assistant superintendent for curriculum instruction. In all those years, she was never in charge of reading programs. The only thing on her resumé alluding to any reading experience are the four reading researchers who she said she "trained (with) and worked with."

She told the Weekly that her interest in reading developed when she was teaching. "I discovered in the classroom that our children can't read, and it made me angry," she said. She began to do her own research, sought out experts in the field, and embarked on a quest "to do something about it."

By the time she joined Gov. Bush's reading task force in 1996, she had come to know future presidential advisors Reid Lyon, then the director of reading research at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and Doug Carnine, director of the National Center to Improve the Tools of Educators at the University of Oregon. Carnine had been an advisor to Bush in Texas on his reading reform initiative which became the model for Reading First.

It was Lyon, when he joined the Bush team in Washington, who began to push for Voyager's use across the country, including in New York City schools, where his pressure drew public controversy. Lyon strongly criticized the reading intervention program the district was using. He warned that it did not meet the standards of No Child Left Behind and that the district faced losing millions in federal dollars if it didn't change programs. "It was made clear to state officials ... that if they wanted Reading First money, they needed to use ... a Texas-based company, Voyager Expanded Leaning," Hinchey and Cadiero-Kaplan wrote in the education journal article last fall.

In a letter strongly opposing the switch, Gotbaum, the city's public advocate wrote that she could find no published scientific evaluations of Voyager's curriculum (in spite of the fact that it purports to be a
'scientifically based reading' program), but she did find plenty of critics. She cited Alabama professor Perkins' charge that it was the 'worst reading program' for young children she'd ever seen and a survey of Birmingham teachers who criticized it for being 'too narrowly focused' and grading 'too optimistically.' Gotbaum found similar complaints in other southern states' districts: Students in Voyager did no better than regular students; teachers disliked the program's 'inflexibility'; it limited creativity, and it was
deemed by many to be a waste of money.

In October 2003, Fort Worth's director of special education, Cynthia Walker, wrote to her department head, Leslie James, that she wasn't 'that impressed' with the Voyager program. The program's first workbook "goes from nothing to high level awfully quickly (and) the teacher's guide is not very user
friendly," she said. But, she wrote, " I'm going to defer to Marsha."

Ann Ware, who evaluates district programs for their effectiveness and cost-benefits, said Fort Worth has made no studies of Voyager to date. By 1997, Voyager was in 700 schools in 17 states, and Best had lured former Richardson schools superintendent Robert Johnson away to become president of the company. Johnson had bought the program for several Richardson schools when he was in charge. Same for Dallas superintendent Chad Woolery, who put the program in Dallas schools and wrote an endorsement letter for the company. In 1997 he left the school district to become president of Voyager
Foundation, the nonprofit arm of the company that raises scholarship money for kids whose parents can't afford to pay for the company's after-school program.

That same year, The Dallas Morning News reported, Voyager added two more public school stars to its roster: Brookhaven College president Walter Bumpus to head its east coast region and Oakland, Calif., schools superintendent Carolyn Getridge to oversee programs in several western states.

Texans for Public Justice, an Austin-based watchdog group that tracks the influence of money on politics, reported that Georgia state school superintendent Linda Schrenko went behind the backs of her state board of education in 2001 to award a $1.1 million grant for a Voyager reading program. A month later, top Voyager executives contributed $56,750 to Schrenko's ultimately unsuccessful gubernatorial bid.

In Texas, the company also has close ties to two past commissioners of education, Mike Moses and Jim Nelson. Neither were available for comment. Moses went on to become the superintendent of Dallas public schools, where he expanded the use of the Voyager program and, in the revolving door culture of the education community, hired a former Voyager high-level employee, Carmyn Neeley, as an assistant superintendent. Her husband Joe Neeley, who had been hired by Moses as deputy commissioner at the TEA, left Austin to go to work for Voyager when Moses took over the Dallas schools.

Nelson, an attorney who took the commissioner's post following Moses, was lured away by Voyager in 2002 as a vice-president. Nelson's wife also works for the company. In June 2004 he was hired as superintendent of the Richardson schools, a move that generated controversy and charges of conflicts of interest. Moses had been hired by the district to conduct its superintendent search, and he recommended only one person: Nelson.

"When he was hired, he [Nelson] warned us that conflict of interest questions over Voyager would come up," said Jeanne Guerra, the Richardson district's communications director. The district had used the program and was considering it again, she said. "We had a committee of teachers and administrators to look at different reading intervention programs, and they told us that Voyager was the best." Nelson had nothing to do with the decision, she said.

Best's most valued political contact, however, was his friend George W. Bush. The Dallas entrepreneur contributed more than $45,000 to Bush's gubernatorial campaign, according to a report by Texans for Public Justice. At about the same time, the report said, Bush endorsed spending $25 million
in state funds on after-school programs. When Bush ran for the presidency, Best was a "pioneer" who raised $100,000 for the campaign. And after the self-anointed education president's baby, No Child Left Behind, was passed in 2002, Voyager became one of the first programs approved for federal
funding under the Reading First initiative that was part of the program.

Best just couldn"t go wrong with Voyager. In February he sold his cash cow to ProQuest, Inc., the new name of century-old Bell & Howell, for more than $340 million. He promised his investors in 1994, the Morning News reported then, that in 10 years their investments would pay off. He was off by only
one year.

ProQuest/Voyager spokesman Chris Cook said that, in spite of its critics, Voyager has a proven track record of success, with a 98 percent renewal rate from districts over a five-year period. "School districts don't continue to purchase programs that don't work," Cook said. In any event, he added, "This is an entirely new program under ProQuest. Mr. Best is no longer involved."

And now Best is embarking on another educational voyage, Sonnenberg said - an on-line university that will offer continuing education courses for teachers. And again he's adding to his trophy case of top educators to help him launch the new venture. Reid Lyon, the Bush reading czar, recently left a lifetime in the public sector to become a senior vice president of research and evaluation for Best. And Sonnenberg, who keeps up with her old friend, said that he has also hired Rod Paige, former secretary of education
for Bush, and Mike Moses.

Sonnenberg said this week that she believes she never had an ethical conflict with Sopris, though she served on the company's advisory board. "I worked for free, and there was no conflict of interest, as I understand the term," she said. She recommended the company's Language program, she said, "because I knew and respected the professionals at Sopris who developed it." She was 'shocked' when the conflict charge came up, she said. The issue had nothing to do with her departure and caused "no damage to my reputation," she said. She is now working as a freelance reading consultant with clients ranging from the Department of Education to small school districts to commercial educational-product companies. She declined to name those clients, but she said she stays in close contact with Randy Best, who calls her frequently to ask her advice.

Mike Sorum, the new chief academic officer for the district, said he doesn't know why Sonnenberg resigned but he did say that, in spite of her long history with the district's reading programs, she would not be coming back as a consultant under new superintendent Melody Johnson.

Mendoza, however, said the district is left with what he called "critical questions" about the integrity of the purchasing process itself: Do purchases of the district's reading products go through the usual competitive process? And more importantly, does a textbook committee recommend the products?

And if they are paying even minimal attention, educators and parents also still have questions, about why this country's children continue to be such poor readers. Five years into the 21st century, about 40 percent of American children were not proficient readers. that is, able to read fluently, comprehend, and retain knowledge. In Texas that figure is an abysmal 77 percent. Those figures are not from state reading tests such as the TAKS. They come from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, an independent arm of the Department of Education that takes the pulse of the nation's schools each year and looks at trends every five years. Its recent findings indicate that U.S. schools show little "significant difference" in the performance of kids in the early grades since 1992 and literally no differences in the math and reading scores of 17-year-olds over the past 34 years.

Rangel, the Fort Worth trustee, is dismayed that so many children still do not read with proficiency. "Reading is the heart of all learning. If that heart isn't pumping, you can forget everything else. Too many kids in this district," he said, whether they are white, black, or brown, "are not being
taught to read at a level that will give them the tools they need for college, for a profession, and for an enjoyable, well-rounded life."

And in spite of a plethora of reading programs, the district's reading scores on the state's 2004-2005 TAKS still remain lower than the state average at every grade level. This year's third-graders did better than any other grade, passing at a rate of 85 percent, still below the state average of 89 percent. But beyond third grade, reading scores dropped significantly - to 65 percent for fifth-graders.

What those scores tell him, Rangel said, is that there are probably too many reading programs. "The child is lost in a maze of programs that are totally different from grade to grade. They come from different vendors that aren't compatible with each other. The kids are confused. But they are not stupid. Our kids are smart. They can learn, if we simply use common sense and give them continuity. Same thing for our teachers. We have great teachers, but we have to give them the resources to teach with."

"That's exactly the question I'm asking," said Sorum. "Do we have too many reading programs, are they compatible, and if not, what do we do about it?" Sorum said he and Superintendent Johnson are taking a critical look at the 'multiple programs,' especially from the student's perspective. "It's very confusing for them." The third-grade readers are doing well, he said. The district now needs to build on that success with a curriculum document that has continuity. "That's the major reason I was hired to work on this," he said. "We're definitely moving toward more cohesiveness. And teachers will be brought in to the decision-making process: They know better than I do what they need."

The fact that this district still has so many poor readers can be laid at the feet of Tocco, Rangel said, because the former superintendent thought that throwing money at a problem would fix it. "He bought every (reading program) there was. And kept buying and buying. He was not a classroom teacher, and he never did understand what is needed in a classroom."

"It's not scripted reading programs or computer math programs that are needed," he said. "It's good teachers with good tools."

Betty Brink
Fort Worth Weekly
2006-01-19