Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 23

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Tuesday May 29, 2007 · 1:05 AM PDT

2007/05/29 · 01:05

In Part 22, found here http://www.diatribune.com/... and here http://www.dailykos.com/... , entities as disparate as the National Council of Churches, the Forum for Education and Democracy, Fairfax County (Virginia) Superintendent Jack Dale and others weighed in on NCLB, none approvingly, and we observed that by keeping the focus on the false challenge that these and other folks – and millions of parents, teachers and students – into knots, they all continue to give corporate lobbyist Sandy Kress, and the corporate elites profiteering from NCLB, including Bill Bennett, Brother Neil Bush, Bush family friend Harold McGraw III and Bush Pioneer Randy Best, a free pass to continue whistling past the wreckage at the schoolyards, and continue cashing their checks. At the bedrock of these headaches and heartaches is a simple truth: For those who created this odious law, the goal was never to educate children, the goal was to make money.

Mandevilla

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Friday May 18, 2007 · 10:12 AM PDT

2007/05/18 · 10:12

In Part 21, found here http://www.diatribune.com/... and here http://www.dailykos.com/... , we learned from various sources that the bipartisan majority that adopted the original No Child Left Behind as drafted and promoted by former White House senior education advisor Sandy Kress in 2001 was fragmenting as the debate for reauthorization of Kress’s law begins this year. Columnist David Broder drafted an entire column on the conservative "backlash" against the measure, and the Heritage Foundation threw its support to a replacement bill that would take withdraw federal participation from public education. At the other end of the spectrum a U.S. News and World Report writer predicted it was "unlikely" that the bill would be changed much in the current debate. But none of these dug beneath the surface to find the corruption in the twin rackets embedded by Kress in the original statute, the testing-and-assessment racket and the supplemental educational services racket, through which corporate elites close to the administration and family of George W. Bush have collected billions of dollars in business and profits.

Mandevilla

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Wednesday May 16, 2007 · 1:13 PM PDT

2007/05/16 · 13:13

In Part 20, found here http://www.diatribune.com/... and here http://www.dailykos.com/... , we found evidence that the foundation laid by former White House senior education advisor Sandy Kress for his No Child Left Behind may be crumbling under the weight of corruption and its own twin rackets, testing-and-assessment and supplemental educational services. Through those rackets, corporate elites close to the administration and family of George W. Bush have collected billions of dollars in business and profits. While fighting natural market forces, those elites are also fighting to protect the gravy train, which is why they’ve hired Kress, now a corporate lobbyist, to shore up support for his statute as Congress considers reauthorizing it this year. It’s an uphill climb, as more and more items reported by the mainstream media reveal no accountability, scandal and corruption by the insiders left in charge when Kress left the Bush administration – including Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, Kress’s helpmeet in all-things-NCLB.

Mandevilla

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Tuesday May 15, 2007 · 12:20 AM PDT

2007/05/15 · 00:20

In Part 19, found here http://www.diatribune.com/... and here http://www.dailykos.com/... , we read the color-by-numbers interview given by former White House senior educator advisor Sandy Kress to Education Next, an organ of the Hoover Institution. In it, Kress delivered his hazy-heroic view of his rewrite of Lyndon Johnson’s Elementary and Secondary Education Act, now called No Child Left Behind. In his account of NCLB’s birth and growth, there is no mention of profiteering by corporate elites nuzzling the Bush administration and family, no mention of the billions funneled from public schools to the private sector, no mention of the scandals plaguing Reading First, the cornerstone of Kress’s education boondoggle. And, of course, there was no mention of Kress’s design of the twin rackets found inside NCLB, the testing-and-assessment racket and the supplemental educational services racket. This was Kress in soft light, as he might have been interviewed by Barbara Walters, not Kress in broad daylight, tailed by Mike Wallace.

Mandevilla

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Sunday May 13, 2007 · 9:32 PM PDT

2007/05/13 · 21:32

In Part 18, found here http://www.diatribune.com/... and here http://www.dailykos.com/... , we returned our attention to former White House senior educator advisor Sandy Kress, whose rewrite of Lyndon Johnson’s Elementary and Secondary Education Act turned that statute into an automatic teller machine for the corporate elite cozening to the administration and family of George W. Bush. For the past few years, Kress has been paid to lead his corporate masters to that ATM, but most recently has been hired to help them protect it from scrutiny and harm by a rational Congressional majority. Since the law is up for reauthorization this year, business profiteers worry that Kress’s twin rackets – testing-and-assessment and supplemental educational services – might be jettisoned and, with them, billions of dollars in private sector profits. While some recent public appearances garnered chilly responses for the architect of No Child Left Behind, the Hoover Institution gave him a warm reception in March.

Mandevilla

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Friday May 11, 2007 · 10:52 AM PDT

2007/05/11 · 10:52

In Part 17, found here http://www.diatribune.com/... and here http://www.dailykos.com/... , we dissected and disproved Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings’s denial of culpability in the corruption of Reading First, the presumed intellectual cornerstone of Sandy Kress’s No Child Left Behind. But our foray into Reading First and Spellings’s denial was a tangent, and we return now to the trail of former White House Senior Education Advisor Sandy Kress, who rewrote Lyndon Johnson’s Elementary and Secondary Education Act, re-naming it No Child Left Behind and turning it into an automatic teller machine for the corporate elite cozening to the administration and family of George W. Bush. The statute that once promised equal access to public education to millions of American children now promises billions of dollars in profits to Kress’s corporate clients through a pair of rackets: testing and assessment, and supplemental educational services. And Kress himself? He’s being well-paid to solve the problems that he was well-paid to create. What a guy.

Mandevilla

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Thursday May 10, 2007 · 1:17 PM PDT

2007/05/10 · 13:17

In Part 16, found here http://www.diatribune.com/... and here http://www.dailykos.com/... , we reviewed the Inspector General’s straightforward recommendations to eliminate corruption found in administration of the Reading First program, the presumed intellectual cornerstone of Sandy Kress’s No Child Left Behind. Those recommendations were given response by Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, who wholly agreed with them, and did so twice in writing, but who also balked at the details of the IG’s findings, and who oddly threw former Secretary of Education Rod Paige and former Reading First Director Chris Doherty under the bus, pre-emptively absolving herself of any responsibility for the mess.

Mandevilla

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Saturday May 05, 2007 · 8:08 AM PDT

2007/05/05 · 08:08

In Part 15, found here http://www.diatribune.com/... and here http://www.dailykos.com/... , we watched as an Inspector General’s report peeled back layer after layer of corruption, cronyism and federal law-skirting – even law-breaking? – by the administrators of Reading First, the presumed intellectual cornerstone of No Child Left Behind. As we observed in that chapter, this pattern of bending, breaking and replacing federal law will personal preferences should ring familiar to former White House education advisor Sandy Kress, who broke and replaced Lyndon Johnson’s Elementary and Secondary Education Act with NCLB for George W. Bush, just before leaving public service to collect substantial earnings from the global lobbying powerhouse Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld.

Mandevilla

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Friday May 04, 2007 · 7:05 AM PDT

2007/05/04 · 07:05

In Part 14, found here http://www.diatribune.com/... and here http://www.dailykos.com/... , we reviewed the first half of the Inspector General’s final report of its investigation of Reading First, the presumed intellectual cornerstone of No Child Left Behind. Rather than finding that children were learning to read, however, the Inspector General found that Reading First administrators were learning to break and replace federal law with their own preferences. The pattern should ring familiar to former White House education advisor Sandy Kress, who broke and replaced Lyndon Johnson’s Elementary and Secondary Education Act with NCLB for George W. Bush, just before leaving public service to collect substantial earnings from the global lobbying powerhouse Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld.

Mandevilla

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Thursday May 03, 2007 · 8:41 AM PDT

2007/05/03 · 08:41

In Part 13, found here http://www.diatribune.com/... and here http://www.dailykos.com/... , we reviewed part of the Rod Paige-Margaret Spellings effort to fertilize the "supplemental educational services" racket found within former White House senior education advisor Sandy Kress’s No Child Left Behind, the statute that Kress authored on behalf of George W. Bush and which now provides his bread-and-butter as a corporate lobbyist. Also, we read laughable evasions by those "supplemental educational service" providers of the "scientifically rigorous evidence" requirement of the law in Arkansas, and we witnessed a Texan blogger’s realization that public education is merely the newest issue on which politicians can establish careers. Finally, we remembered Bush’s pro-NCLB campaign rhetoric during a stop in North Carolina in October, 2006, where he enjoyed barbecued pork and raised $900,000 for the Republican National Committee.

Mandevilla

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Wednesday April 11, 2007 · 2:01 PM PDT

2007/04/11 · 14:01

In Part 12, found here http://www.diatribune.com/... and here http://www.dailykos.com/... , Alex Knott of Public Integrity reminded us that former White House senior education advisor Sandy Kress, who rewrote Lyndon Johnson’s Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and turned it into George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind, now works for the global lobbying powerhouse Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld. As one of Akin Gump’s well-connected lobbyists, Kress makes rain for such luminaria as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and NCS Pearson, a testing-and-assessment company that has profited by untold millions from the testing mandated by NCLB – the statute drafted by the selfsame Kress. Thus, Sandy Kress earned his living in Texas as Bush’s education tutor, earned his living in the White House writing Bush’s education law, and makes his living today leading the corporate elite to the many Kress-designed spigots flowing with federal education funding. Doesn’t the symmetry of this glorious knot sparkle?

Mandevilla

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Tuesday April 10, 2007 · 9:46 AM PDT

2007/04/10 · 09:46

In Part 11, found here http://www.dailykos.com/... and here http://www.diatribune.com/... , reporters Andrew Brownstein and Travis Hicks led us from "Reading First" developer Doug Carnine to Ed Kame’enui and Deborah Simmons, two researchers from the University of Oregon who set the revolving door a-spin again, alternating public service and private consulting for companies profiting from No Child Left Behind, thanks to former White House senior education advisor Sandy Kress’s re-write of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). So the list of Bush Profiteers continues to grow, featuring presidential brother Neil Bush, presidential family friend Harold McGraw III and former Education Secretary Bill Bennett, U.S. Commissioner of Special Education Edward Kame’enui, former Voyager President Randy Best, former Voyager Senior Vice President Jim Nelson, and Voyager Vice President Karen Nelson.

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Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 23

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Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 20

Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 19

Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 18

Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 17

Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 16

Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 15

Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 14

Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 13

Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 12