Over at Politics K-12, my colleague Michele McNeil blogs about how an audit by the Education Department’s Inspector General has drawn attention to some problems in the two grant programs of the Center for Civic Education. The programs, We the People and Cooperative Civic Education and Economic Education Exchange Program, seek to foster civic education in K-12 schools.
The audit found that some spending by the programs wasn’t allowed by federal regulations and some couldn’t be supported by the right documentation.
Back in August, I wrote for Education Week about how administrators of the Center for Civic Education were hoping that the U.S. Congress would provide funding to back the center’s K-12 programs, even though President Obama had proposed in his 2010 budget to slash it.
Given the unfavorable audit, I wonder what the chances are now of the survival of the programs.
The Center for Civic Education gives away 11,000 classroom sets of books about the Constitution each year. It also hosts a competition each year for students to participate in simulated congressional hearings.