Dept. Bent Grant Rules, GAO Finds

Award tied to Bennett’s former firm questioned.

The U.S. Department of Education bypassed its own policies when officials awarded a grant early in President Bush’s first term that benefited a company founded by former Secretary of Education William J. Bennett, as well as others to groups with close ties to the administration, federal auditors have concluded.

The Government Accountability Office highlighted three cases in which Education Department officials skirted normal grant procedures, and it found several more in which the rules were bent.

In a reference to two of the grants, the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, said the department “broke from established practice by altering its selection methodology after it had developed a list of...