Critics Say Education Dept. Is Favoring Political Right

By Michael Dobbs
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 2, 2004; Page A19

When Arizona schools superintendent Lisa Graham Keegan and a group of predominantly conservative educators launched the Education Leaders Council (ELC) in 1995, their proclaimed goal was to upset an educational establishment long dominated by the Democrats and left-leaning teachers unions.

Nearly a decade later, Keegan and her allies have become the establishment -- and the left is crying foul.

People for the American Way, a liberal advocacy group, recently released a report depicting Keegan's group as the center of "a network of right-wing foundations" that have received more than $77 million in U.S. Department of Education funds to promote their "school privatization" agenda. The report noted that a co-founder of the council, former Pennsylvania education secretary Eugene W. Hickok, is now the second-ranking official at the federal department.

While there is a tradition of Republican and Democratic administrations rewarding allies, critics argue that the amount of money steered toward conservative educational groups by the Bush administration far exceeds the practices of the past.

"It's a farce," said Kathleen Lyons, spokeswoman for the National Education Association, the largest teachers union in the country. "On the one hand, we have the Bush administration claiming that its education reforms are all scientifically based, and on the other hand, we see the administration providing a grab bag of Santa gifts to conservative groups."

The People for the American Way report "exposes a stealth campaign by the administration to reward groups that support its private-school voucher agenda at the expense of strengthening public schools," said Edward M. Kennedy (Mass.), ranking Democrat on the Senate education committee.

"Balderdash," said Education Undersecretary Hickok. If there were any favoritism, he said, it was "favoritism in the sense that we support those organizations that support No Child Left Behind," a law President Bush signed in January 2002 that aims to raise educational standards through high-stakes testing and better-qualified teachers.

"Welcome to the vast right-wing conspiracy," laughed Keegan, chief executive of the ELC, who was a candidate for secretary of education after Bush was elected.Education Department records show that the ELC received $13.5 million over the last two years for its "Following the Leaders" project, which develops computer programs to monitor implementation of the No Child Left Behind law. A further $45 million in grants has been awarded to groups closely associated with Keegan's organization, such as the National Council on Teacher Quality and the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence.

The bulk of the money the department gave Keegan's network has gone to developing alternative forms of teacher certification. The No Child Left Behind law stipulates that every student has the right to a "fully qualified" teacher, a requirement that has strained traditional teacher training colleges.

Keegan said it is only natural that the Bush administration should want to correct a liberal bias in American education by giving grants to groups that share its philosophy. While she rejects the "right-wing" tag, she says "it is necessary to be ideological in education these days if you want to promote academic standards, school choice, and new routes to certifying teachers that work against the grain of current ideas in education."

Keegan said she founded the ELC in opposition to "an alphabet soup" of groups with close ties to the Clinton administration and the liberal education lobby. The most prominent of these was the Council of Chief State School Officers, founded 95 years ago to give state school systems a Washington voice.

The council has subsequently sought to remake its image as a nonpartisan group. This year, it received $3.5 million from the Education Department in contracts to help implement No Child Left Behind in all 50 states, significantly less than the $9.9 million in grant money that went to the ELC. Contracts generally carry more conditions and reporting requirements than grants.

Hickok said only some of the money awarded to the ELC came from the secretary's discretionary funds; the most recent $9.9 million grant was a congressional earmark. He said the publicly announced award of $35 million over five years for the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence must still be appropriated by Congress.

According to Hickok, there is a tradition at the Education Department of awarding discretionary grants. The money is channeled through the Fund for Improvement of Education, the size of which varies from year to year depending on appropriations. Officials said Education Secretary Roderick R. Paige had $25 million in discretionary resources at his disposal this fiscal year, out of an education budget of $56.5 billion.

Other groups that have benefited from Education Department grants include K12, a for-profit company founded by Reagan administration education secretary William J. Bennett to promote home schooling, and the Black Alliance for Education Options, which provides information about vouchers and school choice.