Is Our Pundits (And Newspapers) Learning?

I happened to stumble across this review in The Philadelphia Inquirer of a new book by conservative bomb-thrower Laura Ingraham with the laughable title of Power To The People (see, the freepers aren't doing their jobs if they're not trying to turn language traditionally associated with the '60s and left-wing politics inside out). And I'm sure no one reading this is surprised that a conservative screed such as this received such favorable treatment in the Inquirer, right?

There is so much about this wretched woman and her bilious garbage that could be answered in this review...the typical wingnut mantra of public schools and teachers unions that celebrate Hollywood decadence and do not show proper deference to corporate America, the fiction that 12 million illegal immigrants - assuming that's the correct number - can be forcibly removed from this country, or in lieu of that they can "deport" themselves, the evergreen Ted Kennedy drunk jokes (as if Ingraham's ideological kinsmen are vice free), etc.

But what I want to focus on here is the following paragraph (I don't expect book reviewer Frank Wilson to examine Ingraham and what she says in the same way as a hard-news journalist, but maybe he should have had someone else check out Ingraham's claims a bit more thoroughly)...

But there seems to be a softer tone to Power to the People (as opposed to "Shut Up And Sing," which was incendiary enough to motivate one nutjob to threaten the life of Dixie Chick Natalie Maines - my note). Liberals and conservatives alike, for instance, might want states to "get out of the textbook selection process and let the individual teachers pick the materials that fit best for them."

(Ingraham is referring to No Child Left Behind here, of course).

It seems that our conservative-commentator-turned-literary-propagandist would do well to read this article written last October by Michael Grunwald of the Washington Post about Reading First, a "billion-dollar-a-year effort" that began as part of No Child Left Behind ostensibly to sponsor "scientifically-backed research" to promote teaching methods (the fact that Bushco sounded like they care about science here is the first thing that smelled fishy). However, the group ended up piloting unproven programs for the sake of its Repug-simpatico benefactors.

As noted in the article...

Department officials and a small group of influential contractors have strong-armed states and local districts into adopting a small group of unproved textbooks and reading programs with almost no peer-reviewed research behind them. The commercial interests behind those textbooks and programs have paid royalties and consulting fees to the key Reading First contractors, who also served as consultants for states seeking grants and chaired the panels approving the grants. Both the architect of Reading First and former education secretary Roderick R. Paige have gone to work for the owner of one of those programs, who is also a top Bush fundraiser.

On Sept. 22, the department's inspector general released a report exposing some of Reading First's favoritism and mismanagement. The highlights were internal e-mails from then-program director Chris Doherty, vowing to deny funding to programs that weren't part of the department's in-crowd: "They are trying to crash our party and we need to beat the [expletive] 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."

...

Bush administration officials frequently say that Reading First does not play favorites or intrude on local control, that states and districts are free to choose their own textbooks and programs -- as long as they're backed by sound science. But aggressive muckraking by the newsletter Title 1 Monitor and reading advocates at the Success for All Foundation have eviscerated those claims, and the inspector general's report officially contradicted them, accusing the department of breaking the law by promoting its pet programs and squelching others. In his internal e-mails, Doherty frequently admitted using "extralegal" tactics to force states and local districts to do the department's bidding. A report by Success for All documented how state applications for Reading First grants that promoted the preferred programs were the only ones approved.

In fact, the vast majority of the 4,800 Reading First schools have now adopted one of the five or six top-selling commercial textbooks, even though none of them has been evaluated in a peer-reviewed study against a control group. Most of the schools also use the same assessment program, the same instructional model, and one of three training programs developed by Reading First insiders -- with little research backing.

"They kept denying it, but everybody knew the department had a list," said Jady Johnson, director of the Reading Recovery Council of North America. "They're forcing schools to spend millions on ineffective programs."

And as blogger Jim Horn tells us here, quoting the following communication between Doherty (shades of "Baghdad Bob" here) and Reid Lyon, the buffer between Doherty and Education Secretary Margaret Spellings...

Confidentially: …Well, I spoke to [a New Jersey official] with a roomful of others on their end and they are HALTING the funding of Rigby and, while we were at it, Wright Group. They STOPPED the districts who wanted to use those programs. We won in Maine, we won in New Jersey. Morale is sky high across the country. State plans have gone from–on average–crap, to each one being–at least on paper–strong and aligned with [scientifically based reading research], and we have lots of monitoring muscle to flex and [technical assistance] brains to provide. Strong law, great funding, solid, guiding science. We are winning.

—Mr. Doherty to Mr. Lyon, in reference to the rejection of reading textbooks that they viewed as not meeting federal requirements, Sept. 5, 2003

(And I'm sure the "wink-wink" implied in the bracketed, bolded section was picked up on by Lyon.)

And this post showed how another Bush family member, Neil, ended up benefiting from getting a big, heaping slice from the NCLB pie for his consulting company.

I realize Laura Ingraham isn't going to tell us the truth, but someone in the Inquirer should have refuted her on her accusation that the states could possibly be selecting bad textbooks for our kids.

But then again, what would the Inquirer be if they weren't willfully propagandizing for conservatives (and gosh, we have Kevin Ferris to look forward to again tomorrow - o joy of joys!).

Oh, and one more thing – here is the song with the title of Ingraham’s book reflecting the way the phrase was originally meant, just for the record.