Public Education in America Faces Complete Privatization

The Bush "No Child Left Behind Law" Means Most Schools Will Fail by 2009!

The following is from a recent study based on data from Connecticut.

"The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) federal education reform law sets standards for student achievement and requires states to measure whether schools are meeting these standards. The ultimate goal is that, by year 2014, all children will be proficient in reading and math. There are interim goals schools must meet along the way; schools meeting these goals are said to be making Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP).  One of the major changes in NCLB is that states must report disaggregated data. Connecticut has been disaggregating student data on a school-by-school basis for more than a decade with Strategic
School Profiles.With NCLB, every state in the nation is required to undertake this reporting.  Specifically, schools must meet AYP not only for their student body as a whole, but separately for students in each ethnic group (non-Hispanic Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and American Indians). Also, students in poverty (that is, students eligible for free and reduced cost lunch), students with special needs, and students with limited English must eventually reach proficiency.2 States are required to report separately on progress of each of these groups in each school, except where the number of students in the group is very low. . . The NCLB goal — literally “no child left behind” — is that all students should be proficient in math and reading by 2014, including Blacks, Hispanics, children in poverty, and children with special needs.  Of course, these groups do not start at the same place. On the fall 2002 CMT, the statewide proficiency rate for non-Hispanic white students was 88% in math; the corresponding rate for Blacks was 56%. . . .The number of schools projected to fail AYP in future years is shown in black in the chart below (Figure 8). The number more than doubles from fall 2002 to spring 2006. As explained above, the doubling of the number of students during this period occurs because more schools will have enough special needs or poverty students to be counted.  The number of failing schools continues to rise — slowly in 2009, and more rapidly in 2012 and 2014.

The best way to understand why the number of schools failing AYP rises so dramatically is to look at which subgroups are failing, as shown in the chart below (Figure 9). From 2002 to 2006, the most dramatic change is in the number of schools where students with special needs miss the AYP target.  In addition, there’s roughly a doubling in the number of schools where Blacks, Hispanics, and students in poverty fail AYP. Clearly, these dramatic increases are the result of the doubling of the number of students taking the test, so that far more schools would then have more than 40 testtakers in these high-risk categories."  Edward Moscovitch, Cape Ann Economics, March 2004   TO READ THE FULL STUDY, CLICK HERE.

Bush Push for Charters:  The Evidence Says NO.

The first national comparison of test scores among children in charter schools and regular public schools shows charter school students often doing worse than comparable students in regular public schools.  The findings, buried in mountains of data the Education Department released without public announcement, dealt a blow to supporters of the charter school movement, including the Bush administration. . . . "There's just a huge distance between the sunny claims of the charter school advocates and the reality," said Bella Rosenberg, an special assistant to the president of the American Federation of Teachers. "There's a very strong accountability issue here." . . .Once hailed as a kind of free-market solution offering parents an escape from moribund public schools, elements of the charter school movement have prompted growing concern in recent years. Around the country, more than 80 charter schools were forced to close, largely because of questionable financial dealings and poor performance, said Luis Huerta, a professor at Columbia University Teachers College. In California, the state's largest charter school operator has just announced the closing of at least 60 campuses, The Los Angeles Times reported on Monday, stranding 10,000 children just weeks before the start of the school year.   DIANA JEAN SCHEMO, NY Times, 8/17/04
 

Bush Helps Banks, Not Students*

Faced with soaring tuition and dwindling aid, record numbers of students who would excel at college are no longer applying. If the trend persists, this country could easily return to the time when the poor were locked out of higher education and college was hardly a given for middle-class families.

To help prevent this, the aid programs contained in the federal Higher Education Act of 1965, which is due to be reauthorized this fall, need to be updated. The top priority should be increasing the amount of the Pell grant, which covered more than 80 percent of public-college tuition a quarter-century ago but covers only about 40 percent today.
NY Times Editorial, 4/25/04

Bush Isn't Balanced*

. . .Still others pointed out that the percentage of Americans graduating with bachelor's degrees in science and engineering is less than half of the comparable percentage in China and Japan, . . .And what is the Bush strategy? Let's go to Mars. Hello? Right now we should have a Manhattan Project to develop a hydrogen-based energy economy — it's within reach and would serve our economy, our environment and our foreign policy by diminishing our dependence on foreign oil. Instead, the Bush team says let's go to Mars. . . . And where is Wall Street? So many of the plutocrats there know that the Bush fiscal policy is a long-term disaster. They know it — but they won't say a word because they are too greedy or too gutless.   Friedman, NY Times, 4/22/04

Community College Shell Game*

At the same time that President Bush requested $250-million for a new job-training program, he proposed slashing funds for existing programs that benefit community colleges, including $300-million from the Carl D. Perkins program, which gives money to community colleges for training low-income students for jobs, and $64-million from the Workforce Investment Act (WIA), which funds training for displaced workers.
Along with cuts in other job-training programs, community colleges are likely to see a net loss in the federal funds they get for training workers. "Essentially, the president is robbing Peter to pay Paul," says Jason Walsh, director of field operations for the Workforce Alliance, a Washington-based advocacy group. "It's a shell game. The money that goes into the new proposal gets shifted from other very necessary work-force-training programs."  JAMILAH EVELYN, The Chronicle of Higher Education 3/19/04 Issue

Republican Calls for Repeal of NCLB*

Democratic legislators in Oklahoma were so unhappy with President Bush's No Child Left Behind school improvement law that they drafted a resolution calling on Congress to overhaul it. But at the last minute one of the state's most conservative Republicans, State Representative Bill Graves, stepped up with his own suggestion: Tell Congress to repeal it entirely.
The resolution passed, and Mr. Graves got a standing ovation.
"Some of my Republican colleagues grumbled because they don't like to see the Democrats jumping on President Bush," Mr. Graves said. "But I've always thought Bush was wrong to push that law."  SAM DILLON, NY Times, 3/8/04

Another Mistake by Rod Paige

Rod Paige, the education secretary, made a staggeringly stupid comment this week, comparing the nation's largest teachers' union to a "terrorist organization" because it opposes many elements of the two-year-old No Child Left Behind Act. This is the latest in a series of missteps by Mr. Paige. . .

Instead of dealing with central issues, the department has wasted time and money on things like making sure the districts permit the right amount of "constitutionally protected prayer."

Mr. Paige's "terrorist" remark has finally exhausted his credibility and disqualified him as a spokesman for national education policy. NY Times Editorial, 2/25/04

NCLB Rankers Conservatives*

Yet no issue has divided the President and his supposed allies as much as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). The simple fact of the matter is that the President’s proposed funding for education, and for NCLB, is the lowest in some time—a fact that the White House’s budget attempted to obscure with its renewed war on math. Where the average yearly increase in education spending since 1997 is about $4 billion, the White House has proposed a real increase of $26 million, amounting to a net 12.7 percent decrease in funding. Normally this sort of compassion would make conservatives beam, since it slashes federal education funding to states to about $100 million. Yet the cost of NCLB for each state is close to $1 billion, thereby demanding some way for states to generate $900 million dollars of revenue devoted solely to education.  Gautham Rao, Chicago Maroon, 2/24/04

Teachers Union Terrorists*

[Bush] Education Secretary Rod Paige said Monday that the National Education Association, one of the nation's largest labor unions, was like "a terrorist organization" because of the way it was resisting many provisions of a school improvement law pushed through Congress by President Bush in 2001. . . Mr. Paige had complained that the union seemed concerned more about its 2.7 million members than about children.. . .Reg Weaver, president of the National Education Association, said: "Secretary Paige's comments were pathetic and morally repugnant. They are no laughing matter. When our members learn of his comments, they will be outraged, and even more determined to make changes in the law."  ROBERT PEAR, NY Times 2/23/04

Fed Up with "No Child Left Behind"*

Two years after President Bush proclaimed a "new era" in American public education with the passage of his No Child Left Behind initiative, a growing number of state legislators and school administrators are looking for ways to opt out of requirements they view as intrusive and underfunded. . .Utah's Republican-dominated House voted last week to refuse to implement No Child Left Behind . . .Republican legislators in Arizona and Minnesota have introduced bills that would allow the states to reject parts of No Child Left Behind . . .The legislatures of at least 10 other states, from Virginia to Washington, have adopted resolutions critical of the law or requested waivers from the Education Department.  Michael Dobbs, Washington Post, 2/19/04

Bush Funds Private School Privatization Movement

Over the past three years, more than $75 million in federal education funding has been diverted to just a handful of private, pro-voucher advocacy groups. This torrent of public funding appears to benefit and strengthen the advocacy infrastructure created by a network of right-wing foundations dedicated to the privatization of public education. . . .The current education appropriations bill underfunds NCLB by more than $8 billion in 2004.  Similarly, last year NCLB was underfunded by nearly $6 billion. States, limited by constrained budgets and a weak economy, continue to struggle with the implementation of an underfunded federal mandate. Inadequate funding of NCLB impacts the ability of schools, districts and states to meet the educational improvement goals established by the Bush administration. . . By diverting millions of dollars to organizations with questionable allegiance to public education and concurrently underfunding NCLB, the Bush administration is actively setting public schools up for failure. . ..From 2001 to 2003, the Pennsylvania Virtual Charter School, another online school that is affiliated with Bennett’s K12 company, received more than $2.5 million in an unsolicited grant through the Fund for the Improvement of Education.50 It is unclear from Department records how this grant was used.  People for the American Way, 11/18/03

How "No Child" Really Works*

Here's how No Child Left Behind and your tests work in the classrooms of Houston and Chicago. Millions of 8 year olds are given lists of words and phrases. They try to read. Then they are graded, like USDA beef: some prime, some OK, many failed.
Once the kids are stamped and sorted, the parents of the marked children ask for you to fill your tantalizing promise, to "make sure they have better options when schools are not performing."
But there is no "better option," is there, Mr. Bush? Where's the money for the better schools to take in the kids getting crushed in cash-poor districts? Where's the open door to the suburban campuses with the big green lawns for the dark kids with the test-score mark of Cain?
And if I bring up the race of the kids with the low score, don't get all snippy with me, telling me your program is color blind. We know the color of the kids left behind; and it's not the color of the kids you went to school with at Philips Andover Academy.  Greg Palast, The Observer, 1/21/04

Why the Right Hates Public Education

In an article about education, it's appropriate to start with a pop quiz. Today's question: Republican strategists want to privatize education because:

a) Education is a multibillion dollar market, and the private sector is eager to get its hands on those dollars.
b) Conservatives are devoted to the free market and believe that private is inherently superior to public.
c) Shrinking public education furthers the Republican Party goal of drastically reducing the public sector.
d) Privatization undermines teacher unions, a key base of support for the Democratic Party.
e) Privatization rhetoric can be used to woo African American and Latino voters to the Republican Party.
f) All of the above.  Barbara Miner, The Progressive, January 2004

School Failures Linked to Poverty and Diversity

In California, a school in with a population in the top 25% in terms of family income and with a homogeneous ethnic makeup is about four times as likely to meet its Adequate Yearly Progress goal as a school with substantial diversity (six separate sub-groups) and in the bottom 25% in terms of income.

Click HERE to see graphically that the likelihood that a school will achieve the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) goals of the Bush so-called "No Child Left Behind" law, decreases directly with the amount of poverty in a school and the number of demographic groups enrolled in the school. Graphic contributed to Costanzo.org by Tom Dial, Ph.D., 1/7/04

Bush's School Law Bust*

A small but growing number of school systems around the country are beginning to resist the demands of President Bush's signature education law, saying its efforts to raise student achievement are too costly and too cumbersome.
The school district here in Reading recently filed suit contending that Pennsylvania, in enforcing the federal law, had unfairly judged Reading's efforts to educate thousands of recent immigrants and unreasonably required the impoverished city to offer tutoring and other services for which there is no money. . . This year 26,000 of the nation's 93,000 public schools failed to make adequate yearly progress, according to a teachers union tally, fueling predictions that the law could eventually label nearly all schools as failing. SAM DILLON, NY Times 1/2/04

"No Child" Policy favors schools that leave out diversity

President Bush's so-called "No Child Left Behind" Act is proving to be full of snares, contradicting state education goals, confusing and demoralizing teachers and principals, penalizing the neediest and, a new study shows, sabotaging schools with diverse student populations. Many of California's 3,000 public schools labeled as "needing improvement" actually had identical achievement levels as the 4,669 schools that did not prompt federal sanctions, a study released last month shows. The schools fell short not because of faltering academics but because their many subgroups -- based on family income, disability or ethnicity -- required meeting more targets, therefore risking more federal sanctions. . . .ISchool districts could benefit from knowing which students need greater help. But the information is instead misused by the federal government to label schools as failing, strip them of resources that would help them improve and, consequently, reinforce stereotypes of inferior performance by the poor and members of minority ethnic groups.  Palm Beach Post Editorial, Saturday, January 3, 2004
 

No Child Left Out of the Draft*

Others said the [No Child Left Behind] law focuses so narrowly on English and math that other disciplines will be lost. Lance Gunderson, who teaches in the vocational department at San Leandro High School, said classes such as his may disappear.

"My community, the business community, is outraged, appalled," he said. "The only other place kids can get shop classes, unfortunately, is in the biggest growth industry, the prisons."

Many in the well-informed audience were surprised at provisions of the law, even after having heard about it for a year. In particular, several attendees were stunned to hear that high schools must produce a list of all enrolled students for the draft board.  Jackie Burrell
CONTRA COSTA TIMES

Bush and Public Education

The current education appropriations bill underfunds NCLB by more than $8 billion in 2004.  Similarly, last year NCLB was underfunded by nearly $6 billion. States, limited by constrained budgets and a weak economy, continue to struggle with the implementation of an underfunded federal mandate. . . .the Bush administration has instead chosen to divert tax dollars to organizations that promote an education privatization agenda. Many
of these organizations form a close network of allies, created by the same right wing, proprivatization
foundations, and subscribe to similar missions and ideology. For example, organizations like the Black Alliance for Education Options . . ., received more than $2 million from the Bush administration  Ralph Nease, 11/18/3

Bait-and-Switch on Public Education

 how could voters not be disappointed by the Bush administration's mishandling of education policy generally, and especially its decision to withhold more than $6 billion from the landmark No Child Left Behind Act, the supposed centerpiece of the administration's domestic policy?. . .In some districts, more than 40 percent of the schools are called "in need of improvement." . . .The Bush administration wanted to trumpet No Child Left Behind, then fail to pay for it — without the voters taking notice. But Americans, who value education, can tell a bait-and-switch when they see one. If this issue comes back to bite the G.O.P. in the next election, the party will have only itself to blame.  NY Times Editorial 10/21/03

No Illusion Left Behind

I'm a recently retired Iowa elementary school principal, and I can't figure out why educators all over the United States aren't screaming and yelling about the federal No Child Left Behind law.  It's hard to tell whether this law is more a product of arrogance or ignorance, but either way it's shaping up to be a spectacular train wreck of a collision between bureaucracy and reality. The main thrust of the bill is that it requires all schoolchildren to be "proficient" in reading, math and science by the year 2014.   Hard to argue with that, until you learn that proficiency has been arbitrarily defined as the current 40th percentile of the nation. . . It's obvious to me that when 2014 rolls around and everyone has to hit the 100 percent standard, almost every school in the country will be labeled a "failing school." Is it possible this bill is an elaborate setup, designed by those hoping to usher in an era of vouchers, charter schools and other alternatives to public education?  Jerry Parks, Washington Post 9/21/03      

Making the Grade

THE MORE WE LEARN about how the No Child Left Behind Act is working in practice, the more we wonder whether it isn't time for Congress to look again at the legislation it passed, with the enthusiastic support of the president, nearly two years ago. . .Schools have paid so much attention to the complex accountability standards that many appear to have ignored other parts of the legislation, particularly those that call for improvement in teacher quality. The Education Trust, an advocacy group, has recently published a report showing that the teacher-quality standards have been ignored and diluted -- presumably because hiring good teachers costs a lot more than just administering tests. What is the value of tests without good teachers to help students succeed on them? The law needs revisiting.  Washington Post Editorial 9/15/03

Presidential Promise *

The Bush administration's mishandling of education policy is shaping up into a missed opportunity of epic proportions. The No Child Left Behind Act, passed by Congress with blaring trumpets two years ago, was supposed to remake public education by closing the performance gap between rich and poor children. . . Unfortunately, the Bush administration has failed to have the program fully financed.  . . The president's vow to ensure that poor and minority children — who will soon make up a majority of the work force — get a decent education was the most noble domestic goal of the Bush administration, and it is being betrayed by halfhearted follow-through on the part of both the White House and Congress. There is still time to turn things around. But right now, a historic opportunity to improve public education seems to be slipping away. NY Times Editorial, 9/5/03

Academic Duck Soup *  http://www.jobwatch.org/ima/chart2_20030905_650.gif

The] startling example of Marxist bookkeeping (Chico Marx, in the movie "Duck Soup": "Who are you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?") has now been duplicated in Houston, the hometown of funny numbers. As with Enron, the city's school system has kept a set of books that has absolutely nothing to do with reality. Some high schools reported absolutely no -- that's zero -- dropouts. That these schools were in impoverished areas made the figures either preposterous or a miracle. The school system -- not to mention George Bush -- preferred to see a miracle.

The so-called Texas Miracle is precisely why Rod Paige was named secretary of education. He was Houston's school superintendent before joining the Bush administration, and was chosen, the president said, because Paige knew that "accountability is the true foundation of education reform." Paige had the numbers.  Richard Cohen, Washington Post 9/4/03

Education Bust *

He was going to be the education president, and during the campaign in 2000 he hugged kids from coast to coast, crowing about the education miracle in Texas . . .You knew it was smoke when the "compassionate" George W. Bush put Dick Cheney on the ticket, a former congressman who had voted against funding for Head Start, against subsidizing school lunches and against federal aid for college students . . .Next week the Senate will take up the education budget proposed for next year... From the perspective of those who are pro-children, it's loaded with bad news. Not only does the bill fall far short of the photo-op promises Mr. Bush made to provide funding for programs to improve public education, but it would actually cut $200 million from the president's very own (and relentlessly touted) No Child Left Behind Act.  Bob Herbert, NY Times 8/28/08

No Child Left Behind Scam

Districts and schools that fail to make [the Annual Yearly Progress provision of NCLB] AYP--estimates by various states run in the 80-90% range--are subject to increasingly severe--and unworkable--sanctions.  Their staffs can be fired, their kids sent to another district, the district abolished.  Using the original formulation, the White House's own calculations revealed that had NCLB been in place for a few years, about 90% of the schools in North Carolina and Texas would have been labeled "failing schools."  North Carolina and Texas?  These are states that have been singled out in recent years for their progress on a variety of tests.  If they can't meet the standards, what hope is there for the rest?  None--that's the purpose of the law.  When the pre-ordained high failure rate occurs, vouchers and privatization will be touted as the only possible cures.  Gerald W. Bracey, EDDRA

Bush vs. Bush on Failing Schools  Gov. Jeb Bush says that Gulfport Elementary School did so well academically last year it is a due for a state bonus check of roughly $40,000. President George W. Bush says Gulfport Elementary School has performed so poorly that its parents must be allowed, less than a week before school begins, to pull their children out.. . . the famous brothers both claim to corner the market on education reform, but don't expect Gulfport principal Lisa Grant to share the laugh. She's been forced to mail out letters to parents without knowing why. "I guess it's hard because we don't have the data yet to look at," she told a reporter.  St. Petersburg Times Editorial, 8/4/03

Secretary of Education Rod Paige's Houston Schools:  The federal law requiring yearly testing in grades three through eight is fine but, as they say on the farm, you don't fatten cattle by weighing them.  NY Times Editorial 7/21/03

American Association of School Administrators (AASA) Supports NEA’s Legal Challenge to Unfunded Mandates in NCLB Law:  "AASA regrets that the administration and the Department of Education have chosen to use polarizing rhetoric rather than dollars to support this law. States and local school districts need sufficient funds to ensure the successful implementation of NCLB. Washington politicians claim that they are spending more money than ever on education, but the numbers don’t lie. At a time when states are facing their worst fiscal crisis in recent history, Congress is offering its smallest increase in education appropriations in eight years. AASA, July 03 

Bush Goes After Head Start:  President Bush called today for a major overhaul of Head Start, the popular Lyndon Johnson-era preschool program for poor children, that would add an academic focus to its traditional emphasis on health and nutrition and give some states the right to control its financing. . . .[Sarah Greene is] chief executive of the National Head Start Association, a nonprofit group that promotes Head Start. . . .   "We think it would absolutely destroy Head Start," said Ms. Greene  Elisabeth Bumiller, NY Times 7/8/03

"No Child" Dirty Secrets:  the feds are threatening to withhold $403.7 million in funding to the state [of Ohio] if [lack of compliance with Bush's No Child Left Behind law] isn’t rectified by Aug. 20, the first day of classes in the coming school year. . .The dirty little secret of the Bush plan is that many lawmakers, particularly conservative Republicans, think the federal government shouldn’t be telling the state what to do, especially in such sensitive matters as student proficiency testing.  Editorial, ToledoBlade.com 7/7/03 

Some People Left Behind:  At City College, which is part of the CUNY system, it's believed that most of the students come from households earning less than $25,000.

. . . For the students at CUNY . . .a tuition hike — in this case $800 a year — is the equivalent of a tax increase. . . . In New York City . . . residents have been hit with the largest fare increase in history (yes, that's another tax hike), the largest property tax increase in history, an increase in the sales tax and an increase in the top rate on income taxes. Even water fees are going up. . . .This is how it is in the United States these days, massive tax cuts for the very wealthy at the same time that the poor and working classes are being clobbered.  MORE Herbert, NY Times, 6/26/03

NCLB Expectations:  RAND behavioral scientist Laura Hamilton points out that fewer than two-thirds of Japanese and Korean students - the two highest scoring countries on internationally administered writing and math tests - meet proficiency standards recognized by the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Universal proficiency among American kids would require children with cognitive disabilities to perform better than 35 percent of the students in Korea and Japan. MORE. Michael Kelley, GoMemphis.com
 

No to Rural Teachers:  "To tell teachers who barely make $20,000 a year that they have to go back to college — frankly it would be easier for them to retire or move to a state where they could just teach one subject," said Linda McCulloch, Montana's superintendent of public instruction. "This could just throw our educational system into a mess."  Sam Dillon NY Times, 6/22/03

Billions Less in Student Financial Aid:  Late last month, the Education Department altered the formula used to determine how the vast majority of the nation's $90 billion in financial aid is distributed.

The changes, made within the department's statutory authority but without public input, are expected to reduce the government's contribution to higher education by hundreds of millions of dollars, tighten access to billions more in state and institutional grants and shrink the pool of students who qualify for federal awards. MORE.  Greg Winter, NY Times 6/14/03

Gutting Head Start: " 'With all due respect to the Bush administration, they grab on to something they decide is a problem, and they use it to annihilate an entire program,' Representative George Miller of California, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said."  DIANA JEAN SCHEMO, NY Times 6/11/03

Good Teachers Left Behind:  "Teacher Bill Byrd of Huntsville said he is one semester hour short of being a highly qualified teacher under the state's proposed definition. Byrd teaches 7th-grade math. He is a former system analyst and U.S. Navy officer and last year was one of three teachers in the nation to earn the new Troops-to-Teachers award, presented last fall by first lady Laura Bush. Byrd said that while he supports high standards, it is unfair to taint his reputation because he falls just one course short. He said it is especially wrong when the state has yet to adopt a standard and no time is left for him to get the one semester course he needs before the letters go out."  Charles Dean, Birmingham News 6/13/03

Teachers' Survey:  Committed but dispirited, most teachers say they are unfairly blamed for school shortcomings, undermined by parents and distrustful of their bosses  AP, CNN 6/4/03

Texas Children Left Behind:  George Bush is more than two years gone from the Texas statehouse, but his signature can-do issue as a presidential candidate — education — showed increasing wear and tear as this year's legislative session ground to a close. For one thing, his state, like others, had to relax the testing standards for the new federal No Child Left Behind Act to avoid failing youngsters wholesale and subjecting schools to federal penalties.  FRANCIS X. CLINES, NY Times 6/3/03
 

All Children Left Behind: 'Some states, such as Texas, have already changed their standards, perhaps to ensure that their schools are not labeled "failing."' Washington Post Editorial, 5/20/03

Equal Opportunity:  "According to USA TODAY research and interviews with both admissions directors and college consultants, private, four-year colleges routinely accept boys over girls who have better applications."  USA Today Editorial 5/22/03

. . . .vouchers found support only among a few constituencies. Fundamentalist Christians opposed to the secular nature of public schools embraced them, as did right-wing fringe groups fearful of socialist indoctrination by "government schools." . . .. And entrepreneurs salivated when Friedman predicted the rise of a multi-billion dollar education industry. PYLE, Texas Observer

"They want you to give a test to a third-grader this year and then test a new third grade next year and measure the adequate yearly progress. That's absurd. . . . "How can you know how well your kids have learned when you use a different group to compare them to?" he asked. "It doesn't make sense."  AP quoting Van Roekel in AberdeenNews.com

Bush Secretary of [Public School] Education Rod Paige says ""The reason that Christian schools and Christian universities are growing is a result of a strong value system. In a religious environment, the value system is set. That's not the case in a public school, where there are so many different kids with different kinds of values."   MORE

half of those who want to pursue higher education will be shut out.  Rand Corp.

"Don't blame schools, don't blame teachers" -- Blame the politicians

Des Moines Reguster

Who is Accountable?

"Education Secretary Rod Paige . . . personally finds Christian schools preferable for the values they teach" NY Times

Is the Profit Motive the Answer to Improving Schools?

Rimer, NY Times

Higher Education Funding Crisis - Links

"The Education Sell Out" New York Times

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