U.S. Reading Program Benefits Bush Friend

[CatWoman]

I think one of the Bush Brothers -- Neil?-- is making money off this as well.
A Texas businessman listed as a major fundraiser for President George Bush has made millions of dollars in profits from a federal reading program that critics say favored administration cronies at the expense of schoolchildren.

A company founded and owned by Randy Best, who is listed by the nonprofit group Public Citizen as a Bush "Pioneer" during the 2000 presidential campaign, received the lucrative contracts under a Bush administration initiative called Reading First.

Only those who pledged to raise $100,000 or more are considered "Pioneers" by the Bush campaign. Best told the Blotter on ABCNews.com that he did not raise $100,000 and personally gave only the legal limit of $4,000.

After receiving the Reading First contracts, Best was able to sell his company, Voyager Expanded Learning, for $360 million. According to his critics, the company was valued at only $5 million a few years earlier, a figure Best disputes.

"At the time of the sale, the company that bought the program justified this to their stockholders on the basis that this program had done extremely well under Reading First and was very politically connected," said Robert Slavin, a leading educator at Johns Hopkins University and critic of the Reading First program.

Slavin, the brother of an ABC News executive, says a program he developed was rejected by the Department of Education despite its record of success.

Best, of Dallas, denied his connections to President Bush helped him win any of the federal reading program contracts.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/05/us_reading_prog.html