A former adviser to the federal Reading First program will leave his current position at the U.S. Department of Education at the end of next month, the agency announced one week after a congressional report questioned whether he had gained financially in that previous job by promoting certain commercial products.
Edward J. Kame鈥檈nui will resign as the commissioner of special education research at the Institute of Education Sciences, which is a division of the department, at the end of June, the IES said in a May 16 statement.
Mr. Kame鈥檈nui had been serving under a two-year agreement at the institute, which was set to expire at the end of next month, and he had already planned to leave the institute at that point, IES spokesman Mike Bowler said. He will return to his faculty position at the University of Oregon, in Eugene, according to the statement released by IES Director Grover J. 鈥淩uss鈥� Whitehurst.
Controversy swirled over Mr. Kame鈥檈nui鈥檚 previous role as a technical-assistance adviser to the $1 billion-a-year Reading First program, which was established as part of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002 to improve reading instruction in the early grades. A report released May 9 by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., said that Mr. Kame鈥檈nui served as a high-level federal adviser to states while promoting a commercial reading program that he had written.
During that time, Mr. Kame鈥檈nui was responsible for providing advice to states about the kinds of texts and assessments that would meet Reading First requirements. Between 2003 and 2006, he earned at least $150,000 a year in royalties and compensation from Pearson Scott Foresman, which publishes a textbook he wrote with another university professor, according to the congressional report.
Senate investigators described financial gains acquired by Mr. Kame鈥檈nui and three other researchers who served as regional service directors of Reading First. Overall, outside income 鈥渟oared鈥� for the researchers between 2001 and 2006, when they were serving as consultants to Reading First, according to the report released by Sen. Kennedy, the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee.
Following that Senate report, Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., who chairs the House Education and Labor Committee, called on Mr. Kame鈥檈nui to resign. Rep. Miller said Mr. Kame鈥檈nui had been 鈥渓ess than candid鈥� in earlier testimony before his committee in April, which explored alleged improprieties in the implementation of Reading First.
Just last week, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings was asked after a hearing by the House committee if she would ask Mr. Kame鈥檈nui to resign. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 know,鈥� the secretary responded. She made no mention at that time of any previous plans by Mr. Kame鈥檈nui to leave the department at the end of a two-year stint.
Work Praised
Mr. Kame鈥檈nui鈥檚 current supervisor, Mr. Whitehurst, praised his work at the Institute of Education Sciences, which oversees research on a broad range of school issues. Mr. Kame鈥檈nui helped arrange the staffing and organization and helped manage studies and grants at the National Center for Special Education Research, Mr. Whitehurst said. 鈥淭hese are significant accomplishments,鈥� the IES chief said in a statement.
Mr. Kame鈥檈nui has been working at the IES under a two-year term under the federal Intergovernmental Personnel Act, which arranges partnerships between educational institutionsand federal agencies, institute officials said.
Cindy Cupp, a Georgia-based reading-program publisher whose complaints about alleged conflicts of interest in Reading First helped spark investigations into the federal program, said she hoped the exposure given to Mr. Kame鈥檈nui鈥檚 activities would lead to stricter oversight of the programs.
But she said she also was disappointed that complaints she made years ago, after her products failed to get approval for purchase with Reading First money, were not, in her view, taken seriously until relatively recently. Last week鈥檚 Senate report, she said, 鈥渄ocumented a lot of the things that people who had been following [Reading First] for years had thought.鈥�
鈥淏ottom line, why did it take this long?鈥� she said of recent probes into the implementation of Reading First. 鈥淚f [federal officials] had looked into this at the time, they could have saved taxpayers thousands and thousands of dollars in investigations.鈥�
