Reading First Finding 2B: The FEMA-ing of the Process

FINDING 2B – The Department Awarded Grants to States Without Documentation That the Subpanels Approved All Criteria

Chris Doherty, who is beginning to look more like FEMA’s Michael Brown on steroids, functioned as the ultimate loyalist functionary, disregarding the process that the Law guaranteed in order to allow his overseers to guide billions into the coffers of McGraw-Hill and other Bush insider outfits of the education industry. The parallel to Brown does not end there because we will see Spellings, who promoted Doherty after her appointment, try to avoid indictment by scapegoating Doherty, who was chosen as an expendable pawn in the event that the Reading First thievery became detected.

The OIG investigation found that four states (New York, Nevada, Virginia, and Connecticut) and one territory (Puerto Rico) were awarded grants, even though their final applications on record show a Chair Panel Summary rating of “Disapproval.”

For example, the Panel Chair Summary for New York’s final application provided a rating of “Does Not Meet Standard” for three criteria. The three criteria were Instructional Assessments, Coherence, and Process for Awarding Subgrants. . . . As a result, some applicants were funded without documentation that they met all of the criteria for approval raising a question of whether these States should have been funded (pp. 11-12).

The OIG report is short on details regarding this point, but the finding adds to the pattern that shows an ideologically-driven breakdown of protocol and process and a politically-rewarding financial feeding frenzy that used the nation’s children to line the pockets of Bush loyalists and to satisfy the demands of a crackpot “science” aimed at a fascist-inspired form of social control. (Click here for some video clips of "direct instruction" if you think your stomach can take it.)