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?
(To review the series from the beginning, click here http://www.diatribune.com/... or here http://www.dailykos.com/... ).
THIS SERIES HAS ALREADY sketched the two rackets through which corporations close to the Bush family and the Bush administration are collecting federal funds: the testing-and-assessment racket, which has enriched long-established test-and-textbook-publishing giants, and the "supplemental educational services" racket. This one has spawned an array of brand-new enterprises almost overnight, springing and growing like weeds in a fallow field, their tendrils tracking the sources of federal funding just as sunflowers follow the sun. Those profiteering from these rackets caught on quickly, aided by their tenders in the U.S. Department of Education under former Secretary Rod Paige and present Secretary Margaret Spellings. But the rest of taxpaying America has caught on more slowly, as our mainstream media has largely ignored what requires more than a few minutes’ explanation.
For one example of the Paige-Spellings effort to fertilize the "supplemental educational services" racket, one needs look no further than a document published by Spellings’s Department of Education on May 1, 2006, one happily called "USDOE Questions and Answers on the Participation of Private Schools in Providing Supplemental Education Services (SES) Under NCLB." Readers may find it posted here http://www.ed.gov/... .
"How may a private school use the funds it receives for providing SES?" asks Spellings’s FAQ sheet. It answers itself, "The funds that an SES provider receives for providing SES are essentially income for the provider in exchange for its providing services to public school students. Any funds that a private school receives for providing SES may be used at the discretion of the school for any purpose, including for supporting non-SES students."
Are you the owner/administrator of a private school? Have you been champing at the bit to collect virtually limitless federal funding but restrained yourself because of all those sticky, tedious strings attached to federal dollars? You need restrain yourself no longer, says Spellings; so long as you’re willing to offer an unregulated service or two to public school students, you may collect string-free federal bucks ad nauseum, and we’ll all consider it "income for the provider." And you can use all those brand-spanking-new string-free dollars for whatever purpose your little private-school heart desires, even providing services to your already-enrolled private school students. Want to build a new gymnasium for your trust-fund clientele? Restore those mahogany balustrades in the headmaster’s residence? Maybe commission a new marble bust of Mendel for the arboretum? Just offer a reading lab for public school kids a couple of hours a week in one of your hallowed halls, and watch the federal checks come rolling in. It’s easy – and the best part is, it’s string-free! (And it gets even better: You CAN continue to exclude the sort of public school students you don’t want roaming your halls, because Spellings says you’re exempt from federal anti-discrimination laws!)
Again, read it for yourself here http://www.ed.gov/... .
As chance would have it, the U.S. Department of Education under Margaret Spellings wasn’t the only agency publishing a document in May, 2006. The Arkansas Office for Education Policy did too: a policy brief called "Supplemental Education Services in Arkansas." The brief presented the findings of studies conducted by various entities in Arkansas of the "supplemental educational service" providers that have sprung up to claim NCLB funding. Wonder what it said? Wonder no longer:
Of the 33 providers approved in 2005-06, 15 providers (43%) were based in Arkansas. While nearly all providers appeared to be for-profit companies, five providers were local universities or colleges, one was a magnet school, and one was a church. Although school districts themselves can serve as supplemental service providers (as long as they too have not been sanctioned), no districts in Arkansas have done so thus far. There appears to be a high turnover in the companies approved from year to year; in 2005-06, only 18 of the 33 service providers had been approved by the state in the previous year.
It is also quite difficult to determine the qualifications or effectiveness of approved service providers based on the state’s list. Although NCLB requires that all educational interventions be based on "scientifically rigorous evidence," a few providers submitted as evidence that they "did it last year." Most did claim that they hired certified teachers as tutors, and a few reported that external evaluations had been conducted on their programs in previous years. But for many providers, evidence of demonstrated effectiveness is only provided "upon request."
This point is laughable: When asked to demonstrate that their education interventions were based on "scientifically rigorous evidence," as NCLB-architect-turned-lobbyist Sandy Kress wrote in the law, some of these "supplemental educational service" providers simply said they "did it last year." Did what last year? Produced scientifically rigorous evidence of their intervention, or cashed the federal checks? And other providers responded that they would only turn over such information "upon request."
"Upon request"? Was the information not being requested by the state application for approval to operate in Arkansas? Was something more needed, perhaps a "pretty please" or an engraved invitation?
Here’s another doozy – and while this happens to come from the Office of Education Policy in Arkansas, I suspect this problem is not isolated to that state:
"...another provider, ‘Save Our Kids: Academics Through Sports,’ based in Crawfordsville, AR, presents as evidence of demonstrated effectiveness the fact that the program is ‘directed by a former Harlem Globetrotter who has worked extensively in after school programs and summer camps with low socioeconomic status students’."
Folks, this is what passes for "scientifically rigorous evidence" under Sandy Kress’s NCLB, as administered by Margaret Spelling’s U.S. Department of Education.
And one more from the brief, which you can read for yourself here http://www.uark.edu/... : "Likewise, the ‘Crisis and Conflict Communication Association,’ based in North Little Rock, AR, makes no mention of how the Association has (or potentially could) improve students’ math and reading skills. Rather, the program (which costs $175 per pupil per day) seeks ‘to provide students with the training, skills, and resources necessary to manage conflicts constructively, to solve problems creatively, to make difficult decisions collaboratively, and to develop students emotionally, socially, and cognitively in order to contribute in the creation of a save [sic] and constructive learning environment for all students and educators’."
Let’s review. The goal to be achieved is to improve students’ math and reading skills. But this "supplemental education service" provider, brought to life by Sandy Kress’s NCLB and Margaret Spellings’s U.S. Department of Education, charges $175 per pupil per day to do a whole host of things THAT HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH improving students’ math and reading skills.
One should not wonder whether Kress, Bush, Paige, Spellings and their ilk actually intended to dismantle public education through their No Child Left Behind; this goal seems almost an unspoken understanding now, not a mere topic for speculation. The pool of evidence is too vast, too deep, too profound to argue otherwise.
A TEXAN BLOGGER NAMED Stephen came to this unhappy realization only after making a trip with his church group from Houston to Austin in the summer of 2006, which he once described here http://createdfromnothing.com/... but now is accessible here http://profile.myspace.com/... . Stephen’s church joined with "The Metropolitan Organization," the Houston affiliate of the "Industrial Areas Foundation" of Texas. Under the auspices of TMO, Stephen’s church group went to lobby on education issues at the State Capitol.
He writes:
On the day of my lobbying effort the Texas IAF network was continuing its work to prevent the state’s budgetary surplus from being swallowed by property tax reductions and to secure more funding for public education, among other things. Though my nature is to unquestioningly support all things education, the reason for my tagging along wasn’t altogether altruistic: at the time I entertained the thought of joining IAF as an organizer (as its employees are known), and I figured it best to get a firsthand account of TMO and the other Texas affiliates in action.
An initial problem with my plan was my having no grasp whatsoever of the issues involved. IAF’s position, as explained to me, was relatively simple: IAF opposed any form of regressive taxation (or a tax that declines in proportion to income as a person’s income increases), because regressive taxes fall disproportionately on the poor. IAF also opposed any use of the state budget surplus, a portion of which came from cuts to the state’s children’s health insurance program, to buy down property taxes. IAF didn’t necessarily seek increased taxation; the organization felt that leaving property taxes unchanged and using surplus funds for teacher pay raises and increased education funds was a better way to spend the money. Finally, to ensure students in poorer districts received an education comparable to students in wealthier districts, IAF sought to maintain the equity provision linking funds provided to school districts.
Relatively new to the Texas tax and school funding system, I spent the ride to Austin reading a few Houston Chronicle articles and policy briefs by the Center for Public Policy Priorities to gain basic knowledge of the issues. Fortunately, when we arrived in Austin I was partnered with Roy, another Houstonian, whose interest in public education spanned decades. After we received our assignments for the day, we descended upon our designated targets.
As a novice at lobbying, Stephen gladly let teammate Roy lead the conversation with Texas Senator Jon Lindsay, a Houston Republican, in which Lindsay didn’t commit to supporting IAF’s position. A meeting with Texas Senator Kyle Janek, another Houston Republican, yielded the same result. But during their meeting with Janek, Stephen writes, "it suddenly hit me."
What I remember the most, though, was the discussion on proposed legislation regarding penalties against schools who failed to meet passing levels of the statewide education test. Under No Child Left Behind, a school is penalized for failure to meet standards for four straight years. The penalties in the proposed Texas legislation were even harsher, allowing a school to be shut down, taken over by a private corporation, or have its entire staff transferred if failing for two straight years.
When we attempted to point out this discrepancy, Sen. Janek stressed the need for accountability and asked us how long a school should be allowed to fail before changes were made and the children attending given a fair opportunity to succeed.
And suddenly it hit me.
I recalled the debates and political advertisements of the ‘80s and ‘90s, starring politicians of all levels, from DAs to presidential candidates, who tried to prove how tough they were on crime and paint their opponents as unreasonably soft. It was the era of Willie Horton and "3 strikes", when retribution finally slayed rehabilitation as the reasoning behind our prison system. Listening to Sen. Janek, I realized education is the new crime, the issue in which political careers can be established.
Of course, the problem with perverting "accountability" and punishing schools for low performance is William R. Horton, IV never killed anyone and never participated in a furlough program. He’s never committed a legal offense, actually. Instead, he’s an 8-year old public school student, whose life is ahead of him but whose life worth (according to the State of Texas) is determined by the third grade. If he passes his mandated test, his reward is continued public testing for the next nine years. If he fails the exam, there’s a possibility he’ll be wrongly labeled as having a learning disability and placed in special classes that prevent him from reaching his potential.
Though I left the capitol encouraged by the IAF’s work, I couldn’t help but feel discouraged at the devolution of public education policy, at least in the State of Texas. My biggest question was how had standardized testing become so important in the decade since I’d left secondary school. The answer, as usual, is in the money.
But that’s not the end of Stephen’s story. In September, 2006, he returned to Austin for the statewide IAF convention and attended a workshop on, of all things, profiteering in public education. He heard the scoop on George W. Bush’s education record in Texas. And he learned about "the ‘Gang of Five’ education testing firms, which includes NCS Pearson, CTB McGraw Hill, Harcourt Educational Measurement, Riverside Publishing (Houghton Mifflin), and ETS."
"But the most interesting thing I learned?" he writes. "I learned about Sandy Kress."
In the mid-1990s, Sandy Kress was a registered Democrat and Dallas school board member with connections to the city’s business community. At that time Dallas’s business community was concerned over the low standardized test scores of children in Dallas ISD and their effect on the city’s ability to attract new business to the area. Kress presented accountability as the remedy to the school district’s ills: Schools were to be treated under a business model, with a focus on (1) establishing standards through use of standardized testing; (2) breaking down test results by subgroups, so the scores of low-performing minority, low-income, and learning disabled students could no longer be hidden in aggregated scores; and (3) rewarding successes and punishing failures. Among the business leaders who supported Kress was a minority owner of an Arlington, TX, baseball team, George W. Bush.
Kress left the Dallas school board in 1996 and later moved on to Austin to become part of then-Governor Bush’s policy board. When Bush was elected president in 2000, Kress went to D.C., where he is credited with crafting No Child Left Behind and helping negotiate the legislation’s passage by gathering Democratic support. And after NCLB was signed into law? Kress registered as a lobbyist.
The aforementioned Gang of Five is similar to the five oil companies. They control 96% of the education testing market, a multi-billion dollar industry. Just as the oil companies make money from the discovering, drilling, producing, refining and selling of oil, the Gang of Five produces the standardized tests, the benchmarks (pre-tests schools administer to keep track of readiness for the real tests), curricula to ensure passage of the tests, and remedial curricula, in addition to other products. Interestingly, this creates the perversity of some companies benefiting when children fail the test, since No Child Left Behind mandates schools to provide tutoring programs when a school fails to meet the passage requirements for three straight years. However, there’s one major advantage of the Gang of Five over the oil companies and one major difference.
The advantage, at least until Vice President Cheney’s energy policy meetings become public record, is the Gang of Five’s ability to pass laws for their own economic benefit. You see, most of the Gang of Five have Sandy Kress as their lobbyist.
The difference is oil companies only have control of our most valued mineral resource, while education companies have control of our most valued natural resource: our children.
WHILE TEXANS CONTINUE to learn of the damage done to their state, their children and their futures by George W. Bush’s NCLB, Bush himself sees a different picture. In October, one month after Stephen posted his realizations, and less than three weeks before Election Day, Bush traveled to Greensboro, North Carolina, to praise his signature education plan. Associated Press reporter James Gerstenzang wrote that Bush "said he would not yield on one of its most controversial components: the requirement that standardized tests periodically measure students' progress."
Gerstenzang quotes Bush, "We'll be rational and reasonable, but what we will not do is allow schools to lower standards. And what we will not do is allow people to get rid of accountability systems."
Apparently, the Democratic National Committee was made aware of Bush’s visit to the Greensboro school, and they pre-empted the presidential visit with an email to reporters covering the event, Gerstenzang says in his report, which is available online here http://4lakidsnews.blogspot.com/... . The email cited "a study by Democrats on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce."
"According to their figures, Bush has shortchanged funding for the legislation by $40 billion since the law took effect, and in the 2007 budget he proposed providing half of the money promised for the most disadvantaged students," he writes.
But at the elementary school hosting his appearance, Bush announced that since the passage of NCLB, "the proportion of third-grade students reading at their grade level had gone from 46% to 76%." Of course, such gains were credited to NCLB, not to the parents or the teachers of those students. Parents and teachers play such a small role in a child’s achievement; testing and assessment, and "supplemental educational services" provided by Bush family friends and colleagues and paid for with federal funds play a much greater role.
Don’t take my word for it; here’s what the Associated Press reported:
He attributed such gains to No Child Left Behind's demand that schools monitor progress with standardized tests and then act to correct deficiencies uncovered by the tests. Critics argue that "teaching to the test" does not necessarily prepare students to become engaged in a broader curriculum.
Bush spent much of the day in North Carolina. He joined politicians, local officials and business leaders for lunch at a local barbecue restaurant, where he ate pork and chicken, hush puppies, barbecue slaw, peach cobbler and vanilla ice cream.
Later, in Randleman, N.C., he visited the Victory Junction Gang Camp for children with chronic medical conditions or serious illnesses, and then spoke at a closed-door reception that was expected to raise $900,000 for the Republican National Committee.
Do you think corporate testing-and-assessment giants would accept barbecued pork and chicken in payment rather than federal funds originally designated to help America’s children through public schools? Or that erstwhile "supplemental education service" providers might take peach cobbler and ice cream instead of limited public school funds? What’s the likelihood that the Republican National Committee might donate the $900,000 raised by Bush in North Carolina that day to those testing-and-assessment giants and those "supplemental educational service" providers so that the U.S. Department of Education could spent federal dollars on public schools rather than private schools? Nah, probably not likely. Every dollar given to public schools outright is a dollar that might improve students’ math and reading skills, which might be interpreted broadly to mean that public schools were effective, after all. Can’t have that, can we?
While Bush was praising his education agenda that month in campaign swings across the nation, however, his Secretary of Education was struggling mightily – and straining the bounds of logic – to defend it in Washington, D.C. It seems that a searing report from the Inspector General was released in September, and it had some interesting things to say about "Reading First," the presumed intellectual cornerstone of Kress’s NCLB. And in early October, Spellings was called to account by at least one member of the mainstream media.
For that note, stay tuned for Part 14.
And to review our progress, click these links, cross posted at Daily Kos and Diatribune:
Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 1
http://www.diatribune.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 2
http://www.diatribune.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 3
http://www.diatribune.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 4
http://www.diatribune.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 5
http://www.diatribune.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 6
http://www.diatribune.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 7
http://www.diatribune.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 8
http://www.diatribune.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 9
http://www.diatribune.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 10
http://www.diatribune.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 11
http://www.diatribune.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 12
http://www.diatribune.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
