The New York Times recently profiled three educators whose work might inspire the next draft of school reform in an Obama administration. Among the community activists and academics, one name jumped out: Susan B. Neuman, professor of educational studies at the University of Michigan.

In 2001, President George W. Bush tapped her to lead the office responsible for rolling out his signature education law, No Child Left Behind. The journey from Bush acolyte to Obama mentor suggests a radical transformation. "She quit in 2003, disillusioned with the law," according to the Times article, which calls her recent work— including a new book to be released this month— "a vast mea culpa for her time in Washington."

The insider-turned-apostate is an irresistible storyline, one we're likely to see more of as Bush leaves office and the skeletons begin to rattle out of the White House closets. Already, the Bush Administration has produced Paul O'Neill, the former Treasury Secretary who claimed Bush's inner circle began clamoring for war in Iraq 10 days after the inauguration, eight months before 9/11. Christine Todd Whitman, the former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, quit in opposition to Vice President Dick Cheney's insistence on easing air pollution controls. Most recently, former Bush Press Secretary Scott McClellan wrote that the White House favored "a political propaganda campaign" over well-established facts to sell the Iraq War.

In Neuman's case, however, that storyline doesn't quite work. Her departure from Washington was quick, mysterious and, until now, never fully explained. According to eight former U.S. Department of Education officials — and confirmed by e-mails and others who knew her — Neuman was forced to resign when an ethics investigation put her in the middle of an all-too-familiar Bush nexus of self-dealing, conflicts of interest and Texas.

"She's clearly engaging in revisionist history," said Michael Petrilli, an official at the department from 2001 to 2005 who now serves as vice president of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Foundation. "She quit in the same way Richard Nixon resigned in the middle of Watergate. If Susan hadn't resigned, she would have been fired."

At the time she became assistant secretary of elementary and secondary education, Neuman was a leading figure in the fight to close achievement gaps that was at the heart of No Child Left Behind. In academic circles, she was known for her groundbreaking work studying the learning environments of students in inner city Philadelphia."I've had my heart broken many times when I see the quality of instruction," she once said. Neuman described pre-schools where the children lay in cribs with the television on all day while books stayed in unopened boxes. In another school she visited, children had to sit on potty seats for two hours per day.

P. David Pearson, dean of the University of California-Berkeley's Graduate School of Education, worked with Neuman when they served as co-directors of Michigan's Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Ability. He calls her "a first-rate researcher." But like a lot of Neuman admirers, Pearson observed a dramatic transformation after her appointment by Bush. "Boy, it was a sea change," said Pearson. "Rigor — really the illusion of rigor — rather than resources became her mantra. She was speaking out in favor of approaches she had opposed in her research. She began talking like a true believer."

It's easy to forget amidst all that's ensued from Iraq to Katrina to Wall Street that Bush was supposed to be the "education president." Neuman's selection as assistant secretary demonstrated the primacy the administration placed on reading and research-based practices, both of which had been hallmarks of Bush's Texas Reading Initiative. But the transition from Texas to the national stage was rocky. In a June article in Time, Neuman likened the department to "a pressure cooker" where she faced conservatives who wanted to expose the failure of public education and "blow it up a bit."

The department was dysfunctional in other ways. While Rod Paige was ostensibly the education secretary, many former officials say they got their marching orders from the person who ultimately succeeded him, Margaret Spellings, then a domestic policy advisor at the White House. Her conduit was Beth Ann Bryan — Paige advisor, friend of Spellings and associate of First Lady Laura Bush.

Such an environment would have tested the most Machiavellian of government operatives, but critically, Neuman had virtually no experience in politics or management. Over time, she grew increasingly isolated. "She'd be very angry about something, make a decision in the evening, and it was undone by morning," said Richard Long, a veteran lobbyist for the International Reading Association. "In the field, she'd say one thing, and have to call back the next day to clarify because she misspoke. People never knew whether they were coming or going. And she told her staff not to talk to anyone."

Such was the backdrop in late 2002 when events were set in motion that led to her resignation. Though Neuman was in charge of overseeing all of NCLB, her first love was reading. The Bush Administration created Reading First, a $1.8 billion initiative for students in grades K-3, and set aside a smaller pot of money for Neuman's pet project, Early Reading First, which focused on pre-school.

That fall, a panel of peer-reviewers had selected the first slate of 30 school districts to receive $72 million in Early Reading First grants. But that slate didn't go out. Neuman and Bryan successfully argued that the proposed list did not reflect department priorities and needed to be re-ordered.

Such moves were neither illegal nor unprecedented. But one former senior department official who heard the arguments suspected Neuman and Bryan wanted to "cherry-pick" the winners based on "who was naughty and who was nice," and urged them to be careful. According to e-mails obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, Bryan asked her friend Marsha Sonnenberg, then the executive administrator for reading in the Ft. Worth, Texas schools, to come to Washington to help reorder the slate. But on Nov. 1, Neuman informed Brian that "Marsha cannot work with us, since she has applied for an erf grant." Within days, however, that barrier had vanished. A staffer told Neuman that "Marsha is coming in to read all 250 applications."

In an interview, Sonnenberg revealed that Ft. Worth's application was among the many she reviewed. While she signed a document indicating she did not write the application, that arguably did little to eradicate the conflict of interest: Sonnenberg examined a reading grant proposal from a district where she was in charge of reading, and gave it a favorable rating ("Well, it was one of the better ones," she explained matter-of-factly.)

But that lapse paled in comparison to the ethical minefield department lawyers discovered soon thereafter: Several of the districts advanced in the re-ordered slate used Neuman's own curriculum.

Lawyers believed Neuman had violated the ethics agreement she signed upon coming to the department. The document required her to recuse herself from any activity that could have "a direct and predictable effect on the financial interests" of several organizations with which she worked previously — among them Scholastic, Inc. Scholastic is the publisher of "Building Language for Literacy," a pre-school curriculum co-authored by Neuman.

One former department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the revelation panicked the department's leadership. "It was like 'Oh my God, you're not only moving up friends, but your own curriculum?'" the official recalled. "Even if it's the greatest curriculum in the world, you can't do that when you're assistant secretary."

Sonnenberg confirmed that she advanced many districts that used "Building Language for Literacy," but insists she was given no warnings against doing that, or privileging Ft. Worth's application. "Honest to God," she said, "if there was something wrong with my reviewing Ft. Worth's application or districts that wanted to use Susan's work, no one ever told me so."

Neuman hung up the phone when a reporter sought comment for this article, and did not respond to numerous requests sent by e-mail. A spokeswoman for Scholastic said Neuman terminated her consulting contract with the company when she became assistant secretary and didn't resume her ties until six months after her resignation.

Since she received no royalties for her work, Neuman appears to have had no immediate opportunity to enrich herself through the arrangement. But it could have benefitted her indirectly by giving greater visibility to her curriculum, leading to more consulting contracts and other financial rewards once she left office. What is undeniable is that the episode presented a major PR problem for the Bush Administration at a time when critics were already calling his education agenda a boondoggle for the publishing industry. Furthermore, because Neuman was a presidential appointee — and Bryan, who had longtime Texas connections to Bush and Spellings, was also heavily involved — the incident left the president uncomfortably exposed.

In a conference call that included senior education officials and several Bush advisors, White House attorneys took a hard line. "They said the White House was very culpable," recalled the former official. "They wanted to have Susan escorted out of the building by agents of the Federal Protective Service. It was Rod [Paige] who spoke up for the dignity of the office and said, 'Do we have to be so dramatic?'" It was agreed that Neuman would be asked to resign.

By all accounts, she was reluctant to leave. Until close to the very end, Neuman insisted she had done nothing wrong. She claimed she was just carrying out Bryan's wishes, and accused department attorneys of not protecting her. The end came following a phone call from Darv Winick, a veteran Texas hand whom Bush tapped as chairman of the National Assessment Governing Board. "I suggested that there are times when you hold 'em and times when you fold 'em, and that this might be one of those times to move on," Winick recalled in an interview.

Neuman resigned on January 13, 2003, a few days past the first anniversary of the day NCLB was signed into law.

In many ways, the episode presaged the ethical storm that would engulf Reading First several years later. Three inspector general reports and two congressional investigations found the larger program may have been influenced by favoritism, a lack of transparency and a peer review process that didn't properly screen for bias. Though both programs are popular with teachers and have shown anecdotal signs of success, national studies of their effectiveness have demonstrated mixed results.

After Neuman left the department, the original, unaltered Early Reading First grant slate went ahead according to the original reviewers' wishes. Bryan left the department three months after Neuman to join NCLB-architect-turned-publishing lobbyist Sandy Kress in a lucrative position at legal giant Akin Gump in Austin, Texas. She also serves as executive director of the Laura Bush Foundation for America's Libraries. She declined to comment for this article.

Neuman returned to academe, re-committing herself to the groundbreaking research that established her reputation. She has yet to speak publicly about the circumstances surrounding her resignation, nor has she taken responsibility for her role in implementing the Bush policies she now criticizes. Picking up the Times' theme, if her post-Administration work amounts to a mea culpa for her time in government, some observers wish there had been a little more confession to go along with that repentance. Given her radical transformations, some colleagues who have known her for years say it is difficult to know where Susan Neuman really stands. "I am uncertain whether her pre-Bush positions were false but aimed at getting support in the education community, or if her Bush positions were false but aimed at getting administration support," said Timothy Shanahan, former president of the International Reading Association and a professor at the University of Illinois.

In her post-Bush life, Neuman has chosen to speak largely through her work. Her new book, "Changing the Odds for Children at Risk" repudiates NCLB's central tenet that disadvantaged children can attain high achievement through schools alone. "It's hard for me to criticize her, because she's really got her game back as a scholar," said Berkeley's Pearson. "On the other hand, there's a part of me that feels she needs to do her penance for what she did to education."

Andrew Brownstein is a freelance education writer living in Washington, D.C.

Published November 18, 2008
Copyright EducationNews.org 2008