GAO: Rules Were Bent on Education Grants

[NVMojo]

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Education Department bent the rules to award grants worth millions of dollars to hand-picked applicants in 2001 and 2002, congressional investigators have found. The moves were not characterized as illegal and no corrective action was required.

In a review released by a top House Democrat, the Government Accountability Office detailed three cases in which the department made exceptions to benefit certain applicants. In at least two of those cases, the groups getting money had ties to the Bush administration.

Also, the GAO found four other occasions in which grants went to applicants that had not been recommended by anyone on a three-person panel that reviews proposals, thus violating agency rules.

Since 2003, the Education Department has made changes to improve how it awards competitive grants, and the agency has generally followed those rules, the GAO found.

Yet even with those changes, the GAO found, the department has been lax at times - such as in failing to document whether applicants had been screened to see how well they manage money.

snip...

The GAO is the investigative arm of Congress. The report was requested by Rep. George Miller of California, top Democrat on the House education committee. Miller said the report shows Bush administration cronies benefited at the expense of school districts.




more...

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/bw-cong/2006/mar/03/030308680.html

[The Backlash Cometh]

1. Broken, BROKEN. Not bent. The rules were broken.

[Auntie Bush]

2. This one sentence says it all!

"Bush administration cronies benefited at the expense of school districts."

[NVMojo]

3. I wonder which of these cushy deals cited were based on NCLB?

I know there's got to be some graft in that No Child Left Behind bullshit. Bush doesn't do anything because he gives a shit about people, average people, we are all just wallets to him and his cronies.

[Auntie Bush]

12. It seems to me that I heard that Neil Bush owned or controlled

(profited) from some teaching method using his teaching aids that are "encouraged" to be used in NCLB. Obviously I don't remember the details (Maybe someone else does.) but I DO remember thinking that Neil Bush was going to make out like a bandit with that deal and it was another example of bush* cronyism. Maybe it should be renamed familyism.

[cantstandbush]

4. Just to fill in some of the details

<snip>
The GAO said it is not recommending that Education Secretary Margaret Spellings take action on any of them, however, because there were no "clear violations" of federal law. The grant awards happened during the tenure of Spellings' predecessor, Rod Paige.

-The Arkansas Department of Education got $2.3 million for a project with K12 Inc., an online curriculum company founded by William Bennett, who was education secretary under the first President Bush. Federal officials changed their selection methods and expanded their funding list to include Arkansas, and all the other projects lost some money as a result.

-The American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence got a $5 million grant even though its proposal was not recommended by two of the three experts on a peer review panel. The board is a project of the conservative Education Leaders Council. One of the council's founders, Eugene Hickok, was under secretary of education under Paige.

-America's Charter School Finance Corporation got an unspecified award despite ranking sixth on a list of four grantees that peer reviewers had recommended. A senior political appointee was ordered to "re-review" the competitors that had finished fifth and sixth. The grantee list was then expanded to five, and America's Charter was bumped up to fifth to qualify. Program officials told the GAO they had never experienced a case like it.

---

[rodeodance]

5. sigh!!!1

[NYC]

10. William Bennett.

What a surprise.

[rodeodance]

6. Bush administration cronies benefited at the expense of school districts.

[WhiteTara]

7. these people would steal the

opium suppository out of their dying grandmothers a**. I have never heard of such blatant theives before in my life!

[Nothing Without Hope]

8. K & R. Sickening, but not surprising. n/t

[UpInArms]

9. related: Education Dept. bent rules to give millions to Bush Cronies

{okay - so that's not exactly the "headline" of this article, but it should be)

http://www1.wsvn.com/news/articles/national/BO15417/

(AP) -- The Education Department bent the rules to award grants worth millions of dollars to hand-picked applicants in 2001 and 2002, congressional investigators have found. The moves were not characterized as illegal and no corrective action was required.

In a review released by a top House Democrat, the Government Accountability Office detailed three cases in which the department made exceptions to benefit certain applicants. In at least two of those cases, the groups getting money had ties to the Bush administration.

Also, the GAO found four other occasions in which grants went to applicants that had not been recommended by anyone on a three-person panel that reviews proposals, thus violating agency rules.

<snip>

The GAO is the investigative arm of Congress. The report was requested by Rep. George Miller of California, top Democrat on the House education committee. Miller said the report shows Bush administration cronies benefited at the expense of school districts.

...more...

[54anickel]

15. Doncha just get sick of that "well, it wasn't illegal" defense these

cretins constantly pull outta their ass?

So did they happen to stumble across some damned loophole, or did the loophole exist by design?

[Wordie]

11. Kick

[NVMojo]

13. there is no end to the twists and turns of Bush corruption

[WhiteTara]

14. tell the truth...crimes were committed

I am sick of the euphemisms. These people are criminals of the worst sort, they have betrayed the public confidence.