follow the NCLB money trail from the testing companies and publishers to dubya and friends campaign coffers.

Follow the money trail.

Leave no quid pro quo behind!

apep

Another example of monetary rape by current administration. Where large money is concerned you will only do business with BushCo. And our kids suffer

More of the same from the completly full spectrum corrupt Bush/Cheney Administration. Their boundless criminality continues to shock and awe. The Bush appointees throughout Government are wrecking havoc on their respective agencies and the functions that they are expected to accomplish. The example of FEMA during the Katrina disaster is what can be expected across the board from anything that Bushco has had a hand in. It is time to call for Impeachment of Both the President and Vice president.

This administration was largely elected on the basis of morality and competence. By any independent measure, they failed miserably on both counts. From Scooter Libby to Jack Abramof to Enron to Halliburton to the Iraq War, the combination of arrogance, corruption, and immoral actions shows them to be the hypocrites they really are.

the goverment in toto is completely out of controll just remember that there was over 1800 pork chops in the federal budget this year, it is time to get rid of the whole mess the partys are demopublicans meaning that they all are spoiled. Our nation is hurting over the massive debt that has been run up and our industry has mostly all left the American shores Remember nafta was signed by Bill Clinton the great democrat since then we have lost most of our industry.

Hopefully someday soon the people in this country will realize that the Libertarians are right - the only proper function of Government is to protect its citizens from external enemies (military) and internal criminals (police). For everything else, butt out.

I know a lot of educators and the companies that supply text books....they aren't Rightwingers....you are being ripped off by your own benevelent caring, compassionate, liberal democratic, education bureaucrats

This administration was largely elected on the basis of morality and competence. By any independent measure, they failed miserably on both counts. From Scooter Libby to Jack Abramof to Enron to Halliburton to the Iraq War, the combination of arrogance, corruption, and immoral actions shows them to be the hypocrites they really are.

Frodo...you didn't toss the ring into the lava of Mt doom...didja?

Libby didn't do anything..that trial was a fraud, j Abramhoff had as many demos on the payroll as pubs....who's the hypocrites? don't critize the mote in our eyes while you have a log in yours.

Pubs, dems and ind.s all cheat and steal! To the victors go the spoils.
If anybody exists in the US that doesn't know our government (state and federal) is 90% corrupt (the other 10% is too dumb to steal) they are smoking to much happy weed.
Just wait until National Health care sucks another 20 to 30 % of your wages into the giant federal crack pipe! When our very own 'FED-MED' rolls around, you less- than-affluent oldsters will learn a new word. 'Triage'.
Pity also the Canadians who rely on the States for the health care they can't get through their own broken 'free' system. They will have an even longer voyage down to Mexican doctors and hospitals where they will then find themselves behind an endless line of newly disenfranchised Yanks.
If I were an American MD I would learn Spanish and maybe French in preparation for my new work place; Mexico. Viva club FED-MED!

Another good reason to shut down the Department of Education and get the federal government out of the education business. Most of what the feds do contributes nothing positive to education; all they do is to steal our money, throw it away on nonsense and force local officials to conform to counterproductive federal "guidelines".

If a local schoolboard pulled something like this, there would at least be an opportunity to throw them out and possibly jail some of them. With the feds there is no recourse.

There is recourse, trace the money connections, then arrest all whose names appear at the top. The underlings will no longer fear the "boss" we might hear more than a few whistles from those trying to reduce possible sentences for complicity. Bush is a citizen, subject to the same laws as the rest of us. When did any law changing this status ever get passed, and who passed it? Arrest them also for abuse of power. The revolution might yet be televised, think of the ad dollars...

Always fun to see the liberals blaim conservatives for their own malfeasance. Does anyone really think that when Bush came in he suddenly changed all of the DOE staff to his loyal right wing followers? Come on. The funny thing about bureacracy, it is always the same crooks ripping you off and wasting our money, no matter who is the president. The problem is government service is now a right and entitlement instead of an opportunity to help your country.

Thanks for some intelligent comment JT, I hope that this will cause a little pause in the mindless parroting of the "hate Bush camp" to the story...the Education Dept is filled with Liberal mind sets just like the universities and teaching pool. It would behoove us all to analyze the genesis of the problem, the total context, and the current state so that non-naive analysis can take place and some chance for solutions can be hoped for. I seriously doubt that any of this has ever reached the higher levels of the administration. It would be very wise for those troubled by the stories facts and implications to figure out who in Congress has the purse strings for this matter and go after them for accountability and answers.

Please think the facts through on this story. There is a genesis, a context, and a current situation. The administration, whom many blame with mindless parroting of liberal "hate the president" blather, have not stopped to think this through. The purse strings, as always, belong to the Congress. It's called Federal Government and the Liberals have been growing it for a long time. This president hasn't controlled it nearly as much as hoped, but didn't start it or accept the money from many lobbyists and unions who are very liberal. So, wake up, be where you are, and look at the facts and we might get somewhere...You are right to be upset, but make sure that your energy is focused on the real culprits...please...

It is a shame that there would be any name calling and mud slinging on any matters having to do with our pitiful government. We need to take away their air time for sure. If they do come up with anything good. They should pass it on to the Commander & Chief, and let him go over it with his magic wand, and then pass it on to the public for their approval.
All the thinking has already been done and the results are out there for everyone to see.

The goal of government has always been to divide and conquer.
And they have succeeded . Look at the vote. Split right down the middle. They accomplished this by
taking over the public schools, and every other aspect of our lives.

And they have done it with the help of the news media. Who has taught
our kids the most? where do they learn this behavior even before we get a chance to teach them anything. We put them in front of the TV-Baby Sitter at a very young age ad they suck it in like a vacuum cleaner.
Yes, things are bad, and are going to get worse. We are doomed to our own ignorance. We are going down a path that goes no ware but down.
What good can come of it unless we
wake up and take back our kids.

I was principal of a Reading First school during this time. There was a report by "reading experts" indentifying approaches that were "scientifically proven" to
"work" for teaching reading. The companies whose textbooks incorporaated the scientifically proven approaches the best and most completely were placed on a limited list that could be adopted by Reading First school. The people who put the qualified basal readers together were called in to train teachers.

Sounds good, but it lead to a "one size fits all" model of instruction where those students who didn't master on the first attempt were given the same approach, louder and slower and in smaller chunks.

Some say it's working. It's pretty analytical and I think it ignores the complexity for the young reader of putting the reading act all together.

I know some of the companies were pretty cut-throat about getting on the approved list, and deliberately undermined smaller companies who didn't have the resources to politic it. From where I stood, it didn't appear to be corruption per se by educators, but an attempt by educators to identify stuff that working or would work. Maybe I'm naive, but everyone was trying to get the best science going to break the ice with children whose reading skills seemed frozen in time.

A federal agency publishes crooked data? ::gasp!:: To everyone who says Bush is the cause of this, you're partially right, but only because he's signed laws expanding the Federal bureaucracy's scope. I wish Reagan had made well on his promise to get rid of the DoEd - at least we wouldn't have NCLB, the likes of which would make even Josef Stalin blush. This is why I don't consider Bush a conservative: he plays authoritarian ball with regard to social issues and he plays left wing ball with regard to economic issues.

I recently had a discussion with an associate of mine about the state of American education. I argued that in fact the most decentralized models of education in the US have worked far better than the centrally-planned socialist systems we all grew up with. Surprisingly, one of the most successful school divisions in the country San Francisco, a system that is almost completely decentralized and based on school choice. I decided to quit debating with my associate when she made the unproven and untrue argument that education can't function in a capitalist system. This debate isn't about Bush vs. the world or other such nonsense, but about how much power the federal government has grown to have. I think the Framers would be rolling in their graves if they saw the size of the Federal government today.

Ya know, it didn't take much to separate church from state and remove God from public education. Just how long is it going to take to separate Feds from Education?