In weird sort of Zen meditation on the nature of oversight, the Department of Education overlooks a stark conflict of interest by selecting the company which implemented a billion-dollar reading program to evaluate the very program that it implemented. And the company in question has been criticized by the Ed. Dept.'s inspector general for failing to avoid conflict of interest problems when it originally implemented the program. Reading First, part of President Bush's signature No Child Left Behind education law, provides intense reading help to low-income children in the early elementary grades. RMC Research Corp. was hired to establish and implement the program starting in 2002, under three contracts worth about $40 million. Recently, the Education Department's inspector general reported that RMC failed to keep the program free of conflicts of interest. For example, RMC did not screen subcontractors for relationships with publishers of reading programs. Now, Reading First is in the midst of a congressionally mandated evaluation under a 2003 contract with a team that includes RMC, based in Portsmouth, N.H. (h/t ThinkProgress)