What do you call a man who, in the following order:

• Obtains a key position to advise the government on rules governing a reading initiative that will create roughly a billion dollars of new sales annually,
• signs royalty-based contracts with a major publisher for two textbook series to be sold in that market,
• advocates to the government with his publisher on behalf of their reading program,
• directs a government center that will guide states in their purchasing decisions under the program,
• allows his publisher to use his name, picture and role in the government program prominently in its advertising,
• throughout this period earns around $150,000 a year in royalties from the sales of his textbook,
• based on his reputation gets appointed to run an independent government research agency,
• sees all of the above revealed in several Department of Education Inspector General audits, a House education Committee hearing and a Senate Education committee report, and
• still has his job as the head of an independent government research agency?

What do you call that man? Clever? Charmed? Ethically challenged?

The Senate Education and Labor Committee report on Reading First consultants calls him Edward Kame' ennui.

Download it all below.

Here’s how edbizbuzz retells the story:

From August 2001 to January 2003, Dr. Kame' ennui advised the Department of Education on guidance concerning how Reading First would be implemented, particularly the law’s directive that purchases be restricted to materials that have some basis in Scientifically Based Reading Research - essentially some form of program evaluation. He was team leader of the Reading First Assessment Committee charged with evaluating the technical adequacy of reading assessments. He authored the program’s Consumer Guide distributed to state education agencies, and presented at the Reading First 2002 Leadership Academies.

From 2003 to 2005, Kame' ennui was Director of the Western Technical Assistance Center, a Department support activity for  Reading First implementation contracted out to the nonprofit RMC Research Corporation. In May 2005, Dr. Edward Kame' ennui was appointed the first Commissioner of the Department of Education's National Center for Special Education Research. Up until his appointment Kame' ennui had a direct influence on state purchasing of Reading First materials. So far, no problem.

Now come the problems. After he began this important work for the government, Dr. Kame' ennui contracted with Pearson/Scott Foresman (Pearson) to author the Reading Intervention and Reading Street series, specifically developed for the Reading First market. (Neither has been subject to a meaningful program evaluation.) He failed to disclose his conflicts or recuse himself from government decisions where he had a financial stake. He permitted his publisher to uses his name and wording of his role in Reading First (“He served as the team leader on the Assessment Group of the Reading First Initiative for the U.S. Department of ED”) that implicitly suggested government endorsement of his texts. He influenced the implementation of the law to favor his programs and earned some $500,000 in royalties from Pearson in the process.

As far as your editor is concerned, Kame' ennui should have resigned for allowing even the appearance of a conflict of interest. Secretary Spellings should have insisted on it for just one of his ethical shortcomings. Department employee and Reading First director Chris Doherty was rightly removed for his ethical lapses, but leaving such a prominent official in place makes a mockery of accountability – a value the Secretary touts at every public appearance.

The story in these emails should convince any fence-sitters that this guy has to go.

On April 26 of 2002, while Kame' ennui was chair of the Reading First Assessment Committee, he signed the first of three contracts with Pearson to author textbooks and videos for the Reading First market.  Around June of that year, representatives of Pearson set up a meeting with the senior-most Department official responsible for Reading First implementation, Assistant Secretary of Elementary and Secondary Education Susan Neuman.  On June 4, Nancy Winship, Editorial Director of Reading for Scott Foresman, sent the following email to Kame' ennui.

Ed: On June 21st or June 27th, Susan Neuman will be meeting with several people from Pearson Education, including Peter Jovanovich, Head of Pearson Education. Susanne (Singleton, Vice President and Publisher of Scott Foresman) has asked me to inquire about your availability and your willingness to attend this meeting….

Kame' ennui agreed and on June 6 Winship sent an email combining basic lobbying instructions and discussion of his compensation arrangements in a way that suggests representation on behalf of the firm was a normal part of his general business relationship. Indeed, his contract with Pearson does require Kame' ennui to make marketing appearances to advance sales of his materials.

Let me give you a few goals for the meeting with Susan and tell you who the participants are: In addition to Peter Jovanovich and you, there will be Jeff Taylor, a lobbyist (non–attorney appropriations lobbyist with Barnes & Thornberg), Sandy Cress (Sandy Kress, education advisor to President Bush and attorney-lobbyist with Akin Gump), and Kathy Costello, President of Pearson Early Childhood Group. They’d like to discuss with Susan how the Reading First initiative is being rolled out to the nation, and in some ways express some concerns about the way the information is being rolled out to customers. They also want to express Pearson’s (and Scott Foresman’s) commitment to sound educational programs. What I’d like to do is propose that you and Deb (Deborah Simmons, Kame' ennui’s co-author, also implicated in the Reading First investigation) come into Chicago on your usual 5:30 arrival and have dinner with Susanne and me on Wednesday the 19th. That way we can discuss your contracts and give you a little more information on the meeting with Susan.” (Emphasis added)

This meeting has the attention of Pearson’s top management. In emails of June 10 and 11 responding to a request by Kame' ennui to add Simmons to the meeting with Neuman, Winship makes clear that Singleton is herself responding to “higher ups” in Pearson.  

June 10. Ed: I will forward your request on to Susanne (who will forward it on to the appropriate people. Unfortunately, I am not the one making the decisions about the meeting.

June 11. Susanne has heard back from the higher-ups. Deb should plan attending the meeting as well.

The meeting was apparently a noon luncheon at the Tenpenh Restaurant in Washington on June 21st.   On June 27, Kame' ennui reported his views on the meeting to Winship.

Nancy: My sense is that the meeting with Susan went fine and that Pearson and SF (Scott Foresman) got her attention but will need to determine a process for continuing to follow up with here. She is clearly in a very different place now than she was four years ago and appears to have a very prescriptive position about basal reading programs, teachers, and the teaching of reading. I think Pearson is in a favorable position to exact influence through through Sandy Kress. We’ll need to keep a presence with her regarding access and informed participation. I hope this helps. Take care. Ed. (Emphasis added.)

Assistant Secretary Neuman seems to have been surprised about Kame' ennui’s business relationship with Pearson and understood that his dual status was, to put it mildly, problematic. The Committee report has no direct evidence, but a June 24 email from Dr. Douglas Carnine (another target of investigation) to Kame' ennui suggests as much.

I found out why Susan was upset at the meeting…. [B]eing an author is quite possibly a conflict of interest, in terms of leading a national professional development for RF (Reading First). The reason I know this is that Chris (Doherty, Reading First Director?) frantically tried to reach me over the week end, at her request….

Bottom Line: While Kame' ennui was working for the Department as a key consultant on Reading First regulation and implementation - a matter that clearly required not only the reality of impartiality but the appearance of impartiality – he was also engaged in high-level lobbying on behalf of Pearson’s corporate position on Reading First.

Your editor is ashamed to feel compelled to point out the obvious: this is a very serious violation of professional responsibility – whether you want to apply the principles of agency in common law, or just common sense as plain as the nose on your face. Kame' ennui’s behavior would certainly be grounds for termination or a lawsuit in any business setting – and “resignation” would be the result within 48 hours of public disclosure.

This guy has been hanging in there for weeks. Please, please Ms. Spellings, don’t tell us that our government’s standards should be lower. Ask the Doctor to pack his bag.

Footnote for the House and Senate Education Committees:

In principle, there is a competition going on between an old education industry based on marketing centered on multinational publishers, and a new education industry based on contributions to student performance.m  It stretches credulity well past the breaking point to argue that Congress intended NCLB's Reading First provisions to result in the purchase of roughly the same old untested textbooks as before. The only plausible reading of the law's discussion of scientfically based reading research is that schools would be restricted to programs that had passed some form of evaluation based on the scientific method. (Listen to New Education Economy's® "Letter from the Editor" on the topic of market regulation.) The billion dollar a year market created by this law should have been the new education industry's beachhead onto territory controlled by the major publishers. That's not how it turned out. The question is why.

The Administration's preference for phonics provides only part of the answer. There are at least two programs integrating phonics with solid evaluations - Direct Instruction and Success for All. They turned out to be bit players in sales, crowded out by the traditional publishers and their untested programs.

Every participant in the June 21st luncheon at Tenpenh - and Nancy Winship, need to be hauled before Congress, put under oath, and asked about the events leading up to the luncheon, the discussion at the restaurant, and the follow up.

• What exactly did the Pearson officials, Kame' ennui, Simmons, Kress and Taylor "discuss with Susan (about) how the Reading First initiative is being rolled out to the nation"?

• What "concerns about the way the information is being rolled out to customers" did Pearson intend to "express" at the meeting and which did they express?

• What was it about the lunch that made Dr. Kame' ennui report to Pearson his "sense... that the meeting with Susan went fine and that Pearson and SF got her attention but will need to determine a process for continuing to follow up with here."? What got Neuman's attention? 

• Who said what at the lunch that led Kame' ennui to conclude that "Pearson is in a favorable position to exact influence through Sandy Kress?"  What "influence" was he referring to?

• What plan did Pearson decided on for Kress to follow up? How did he follow up?

• What did Kame' ennui have in mind about how Pearson would meet the "need to keep a presence with her regarding access and informed participation"? Did Pearson and Kame' ennui discuss meeting the need for a "presence"? What was discussed? What did Pearson decide and then do?

It's worth remembering that this meeting took place in 2002, when the Reading First market was still being shaped by government decisions about market regulation, advised by consultant's like Kame' ennui. As far as the new industry providers knew, Reading First should have favored their evaluated programs. To the extent Kame' ennui and Pearson improperly intervened to change the rules in their favor, they harmed the new providers in very material ways - and the taxpayers, students and Congress. If this simply passes unanswered by government, investors will not be attracted to the new industry, and the market will remain the territory of large publishers with little incentive to improve program quality. So much for scientifically based research, so much for Congressional intent.

The sale of materials under Reading First falls within the realm of government contracting. Most departments would treat private efforts to infiltrate their internal decision processes in order to manipulate government contracting very seriously. People literally go to federal prison. (Listen here for the analogy to the Air Force Boeing Tanker scandal.) The Secretary of Education would like to say "oops," in effect give Kame' ennui a "get out of jail free" card, and restart the clock. Congress needs to pursue the small matter of justice, and its responsibility to insure the integrity of government generally, and particularly in market regulation. Investing in the new education economy shouldn't be like investing in Russian oil.