Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 23

by Mandevilla

Community

(This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday, May. 29, 2007 Tuesday, May. 29, 2007 at 1:05:56am PDT

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.

(To review the series from the beginning, click here http://www.diatribune.com/... or here http://www.dailykos.com/... . And regular readers should feel absolutely free to send these texts and links to their friends, neighbors, co-workers, family members, church pastors, elected leaders, teammates and even to members of their local media. It’s a certainty that every single community in the nation is affected by the viruses placed by Sandy Kress in NCLB. Everyone deserves to be informed.)

Here’s a simple truth, the first of two important simple truths we should take from today’s edition: It’s all about the money. Say it with me: It’s all about the money.

We’ve learned that Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings has "washed her hands of the problem, said it’s a state problem." Apparently this, and blaming one’s predecessor, is what passes for bold, courageous leadership from the executive branch today. What about the legislative branch?

Leaders in the legislative branch go one small step further, we learned from Education Week magazine, as Senator Ted Kennedy and Rep. George Miller "pledged to continue their investigation into the program." While are Kennedy and Miller significant to this series? Because Kennedy chairs the Senate Education Committee, and Miller chairs the House Education Committee, the two legislative committees that will vote this year to reauthorize NCLB.

So, fortunately, Congressional leaders are aware of the corrupt connections between the Bush Administration, its Department of Education and the corporate elites reaping a harvest of profits from the federal education statute. UNfortunately, none of them has yet taken the step of naming the really big names, the ones we’ve identified in this series with no more sophisticated research capability than – you guessed it – the Internet.

And therein is the second of the important simple truths contained in today’s edition: Everything one needs to know to connect the general dots between the sins and the sinners in this odious enterprise can be found on the Internet, in the public domain. This simple truth proves that the Bush administration and its vile profiteers have succeeded at hiding proof of their misdeeds right in front of our eyes. What does it say of us that we – and I’ll include the mainstream media in this big-tent WE – don’t lift the finger to find this information, use the finger to call the authorities and point the finger at the appropriate culprits? Are we waiting for someone else to do it? For whom are we waiting?

Which brings us to the question that concluded our last edition: Is there anyone in a position of power and authority who will (connect the dots between NCLB and Bush’s profiteers) and begin naming names? In Part 22, I answered my own question with an absolute "yes and no," saying I’d found one who goes further than anyone else has yet.

To end the suspense, it’s Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who occupies, as a matter of fact, one of the most important positions from which to study this issue, AND to connect the dots, AND name the big names, AND then take the appropriate action to solve the problem: Not only is she a candidate for the presidency and has a massive megaphone to use in drawing attention to the bad guys, but she’s also on Kennedy’s Senate Education Committee, which means she’ll cast one of the key votes when the Senate version of NCLB is debated.

Before anyone gets too excited, though, let’s look at what she has and hasn’t said about Bush’s profiteers. Reporter Holly Ramer of the Associated Press wrote here http://www.boston.com/... , "Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton on Friday criticized the Bush administration for outsourcing teaching to private tutoring companies, arguing that many firms have close ties to Republicans."

"This is Halliburton all over again," the New York senator said.
The 2002 No Child Left Behind Act requires school districts to provide free tutoring in math and reading to poor children in schools that repeatedly fail to meet state testing standards. Clinton said that amounts to $500 million a year being paid to tutoring companies and other supplemental service providers that aren't held accountable.

"Nobody's looking over their shoulder. And we're not really seeing results," she members of the National Education Association's New Hampshire chapter.

"Why would we outsource helping our kids to unaccountable private sector providers?" she said. "They don't have to follow our civil rights laws, their employees don't even have to be qualified, they aren't required to coordinate with educators, there's a grand total of zero evidence that they're doing any good."

Many of the providers have close ties to the Republican Party and President Bush, she told reporters later.

"It's not enough that there are no-bid contracts that are taking money away from our troops not delivering services to them in the field, now we have these contracts going to these cronies who are chosen largely on a political basis, and we have nothing to show for it," she complained.

In essence, she said everything except the names of the profiteers that we’ve identified in our series, which is more than anyone else has done yet.

And while we’re on that topic, think about who "anyone else" includes. If we assume with good reason that the contenders for the Republican nomination aren’t going to cross the corporate giants that succor them, that leaves us with only the Democratic candidates for president to count on. And among that number, which ones have gone even as far as Clinton in identifying the profiteers? Has Governor Bill Richardson? Has former Senator John Edwards? Has Rep. Dennis Kucinich? Has former Senator Mike Gravel? Has Senator Joe Biden? Or, significantly, has Senator Chris Dodd or Senator Barack Obama?

I separate Dodd and Obama from the rest of the pack because these two men occupy precisely the same rare space as Clinton: All three are presidential candidates who currently sit on Kennedy’s Senate Education Committee, as I learned here http://help.senate.gov/... . So if any members of Congress should have access to the necessary research to smoke out Bush’s NCLB profiteers, AND the opportunity to take the necessary steps to plug the profiteering holes in Kress’s law, AND the motive to bring this corruption to the public’s attention right-by-God-now, it’s these three. Unless, of course, you add the trio’s singular counterpart in the U.S. House, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who occupies exactly the same special spot, as I learned here http://edworkforce.house.gov/... : He’s a presidential candidate who sits on George Miller’s House Education Committee and will get to vote on Miller’s version of NCLB at the committee level.

By virtue of the cosmic confluence of governance and politics, these four candidates – Clinton, Dodd, Obama and Kucinich – have the tools of the federal legislative branch at their fingertips to investigate, fumigate and educate, and by virtue of their status in the majority party of that branch, they also have the ears of the men who are leading the path toward reauthorization, Kennedy and Miller.

But wait. Their special status is admittedly powerful, but they aren’t the only ones who could be using the megaphone of their presidential campaigns to draw lights and cameras to one of the greatest, costliest schemes of federal corruption in history. As a former Senator, what does John Edwards have to lose by demanding the facts connecting those profiteering from Sandy Kress’s law and the Bush administration? As a sitting governor, what does Bill Richardson lose by asking how many federal dollars his state has been forced to pass to the private sector? And while he doesn’t sit on Kennedy’s Education Committee, Senator Joe Biden surely has the same access to information and the media as his colleagues who do. Must we count only on former Senator Mike Gravel to name names? If so, how does one bring our series to the good Senator’s attention? The work has already been done, after all.

"Executives from some of the nation’s largest and most influential corporations, as well as many small, local businesses, have turned their focus on education policy and have made involvement in the schools an imperative," writes Michael Sandler in Congressional Quarterly, which I assume is available to members of Congress and other presidential candidates. "A number of executives have spoken out on the issue for years, of course, and played an active role in enacting the education law five years ago that is arguably the most significant domestic achievement of the Bush administration. Now, as the statute that Bush dubbed ‘No Child Left Behind’ comes up for reauthorization, an even larger force from the business community is trying to influence the outcome."

Though I have no subscription to this paper either, helpful readers shot me the text of Sandler’s April 2 stories, which contain these gems for review by any presidential candidates within range:

Worried about the general economy and their own balance sheets, business has pooled its resources and rallied behind a serious lobbying campaign on the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind.
Leading the effort is the Business Roundtable, an organization of some of the top CEOs, who have been lobbying on education policy for decades. They are getting a boost from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which was not involved in 2001 but has made education a top priority this time, spreading the word across the country among its local chapters.

In addition to hiring top lobbyists, business has forged a strong relationship with two liberal Democrats who chair the Senate and House Education committees: Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Rep. George Miller of California.

"I think it is serious, as serious as it can be, in terms of the big issues," said Miller.

...
Perhaps the best chance for overcoming these obstacles is the prestige, money and powerful voice of an organized business lobby with a mission.

Does it concern anyone else that the corporate elite who have benefited most from Kress’s NCLB claim relationships this cozy with Kennedy and Miller?

And here, not halfway through Sandler’s text, comes the author of this malefaction himself, Kress, who now boldly proclaims that children aren’t yet tested enough in elementary grades, and who proposes that students be subject to standardized testing even earlier than the third grade. Who benefits when kindergartners have to take high-stakes standardized tests? The testing-and-assessment companies by which Kress is paid to lobby, of course.

The Business Coalition for Student Achievement, a lobbying group made up of the Roundtable, the Chamber and other business organizations, points to these reports as proof that Congress should not wait another year to reauthorize the education law. Furthermore, it has drafted a series of broad changes that it would like implemented.
At the top of the group’s priority list is to raise academic standards and improve assessments so they are more aligned with college and workplace expectations. That includes giving business leaders a say in what students learn.

The group’s lobbyist, Sandy Kress, envisions a time when representatives from the business community join state school administrators and leaders from higher education institutions for the drafting standards and curricula. He sees them all sitting in a room as assistants bring them drafts of high school standards for math, critical reading and writing, to start. At some point, they would draft standards for lower grades, too.

Students would be expected to meet those standards through a number of state assessment tests. Today, federal law requires that students get tested in math and reading in grades 3 through 8, and at least once again in high school. Beginning next year, states must also test students in science three times starting in the 3rd grade.

"If these standards are learned and this test passed, we believe those who do can come in and either study at a higher level without the need for remediation, or be able to handle — without a whole lot of retraining — a job now," Kress said.

In case anyone needed a fresh introduction to Kress, Sandler delivers this one:

Kress, a Texas lawyer and lobbyist, has a connection to Bush reaching back to the early 1990s, just before Bush ran for governor. At the time, Kress was a Democrat on the Dallas School Board, where among his subordinates was Margaret Spellings. Despite their different party affiliations, Bush supported Kress in a tough re-election campaign and helped him raise money. When Bush entered the governor’s mansion in 1995, he chose Spellings as his education adviser, and the two of them called on Kress for help. Kress followed Bush to Austin and then subsequently to Washington, as a special presidential adviser on education.
Kress proved indispensable during the 2001 negotiations on the education law, working closely with interest groups and lawmakers, particularly Democrats, behind closed doors.

"Sandy is the one who really evolved from the executive branch to write No Child Left Behind," said Dale E. Kildee of Michigan, who has been the No. 2 Democrat on the Education and Labor panel throughout this decade. "He’s the one who really knows the bill, who carried out the president’s wishes and was our chief contact at the White House."

Business leaders thought that strategy was so effective that they hired Kress as their lobbyist. He works out of his office in Austin, flying to Washington every few weeks for meetings.

Despite his new assignment, Kress sees himself in a similar position, as the champion of high standards and "continuous improvement" in all schools, with the goal of all students graduating ready to either attend college or join the workforce.

With every policy issue and question, Kress ultimately brings the conversation back to what he calls "the awareness of a very changed world." When he talks about it, he gestures upward, as if indicating where schools should go.

"Any softening or weakening of our national posture on standards and rigor and accountability is unacceptable," Kress said during a recent interview in Washington. "It would almost be laughable. You could almost see business leaders and education leaders and political leaders in the big cities of India and China snickering at the Americans."

Yes, snickering at Americans. In order to convince Americans that his corrupt law is good for America, he conjures images of evil foreign nationals ridiculing us. Kress and his NCLB, then, are America’s defense against ridicule.

That’s funny, when you consider all the federal dollars being spent on the technology that Kress says will serve the same purpose – and when you consider that technology’s actual value. Washington Post reporter Amit Paley told the sorry tale on April 5 here http://www.washingtonpost.com/... : "Educational software, a $2 billion-a-year industry that has become the darling of school systems across the country, has no significant impact on student performance, according to a study by the U.S. Department of Education. The long-awaited report amounts to a rebuke of educational technology, a business whose growth has been spurred by schools desperate for ways to meet the testing mandates of President Bush's No Child Left Behind law."

If leaders in China and India are snickering at us as Kress imagines, it may be because our administration allows precious tax dollars to be siphoned to the private sector through spigots big enough to drive Volkswagens through. Do we need any more evidence of corruption? Paley offers some:

The technology -- ranging from snazzy video-game-like programs played on Sony PlayStations to more rigorous drilling exercises used on computers -- has been embraced by low-performing schools as an easy way to boost student test scores. But the industry has also been plagued by doubts over the technology's effectiveness as well as high-profile bribery scandals, including one that led to the resignation of the Prince George's County schools chief in 2005.
The study, released last night, is expected to further inflame the debate about education technology on Capitol Hill as lawmakers consider whether to renew No Child Left Behind this year.

"We are concerned that the technology that we have today isn't being utilized as effectively as it can be to raise student achievement," said Katherine McLane, spokeswoman for the Department of Education.

Industry officials played down the study and attributed most of the problems to poor training and execution of the programs in classrooms. Mark Schneiderman, director of education policy at the Software and Information Industry Association, said that other research trials have proven that the technology works, although he said that those trials were not as large or rigorous as the federal government's.

"This may sound flip or like we're making excuses, but the fact is that technology is only one part of it, and the implementation of the technology is critical to success," said Schneiderman, whose group represents 150 companies that produce educational software. "We need to take every study with a grain of a salt and look at the overall body of work."

The study, mandated by Congress when it passed No Child Left Behind in 2002, evaluated 15 reading and math products used by 9,424 students in 132 schools across the country during the 2004-05 school year. It is the largest study that has compared students who received the technology with those who did not, as measured by their scores on standardized tests. There were no statistically significant differences between students who used software and those who did not.

...
In the Washington region, the debate over educational software raged most prominently in Prince George's, where Superintendent Andre J. Hornsby resigned and was indicted on suspicion of arranging for the school system to buy $1 million worth of software from LeapFrog SchoolHouse, where his then-girlfriend was a saleswoman. The indictment says that he demanded and received kickbacks. The schools have not made any major software program purchases since.

County Superintendent John E. Deasy said the programs aren't magic bullets. "No technology adds value by itself," he said. "Just employing software is not likely to lift test scores for students."

And Paley came so close to identifying another illustration of corruption in a later bit of text, but stopped short of naming the name, maybe because he really doesn’t realize the connection. If not, I hope someone will send him the series links.

The illustration? I’ll let Paley draw the picture, but I’ll remind readers that Sandy Kress, architect of NCLB, now works for Akin Gump of Washington, D.C., whose clientele includes the educational products giant Pearson, and Pearson’s many subsidiaries. Remember: Kress wrote the NCLB language that directs federal dollars through state and local districts into the private sector for such things as testing-and-assessment and supplemental educational services, and now he guides testing-and-assessment companies and supplemental educational service providers along the path to those profits. For example:

Nationally, perhaps no school system better represents the fears of industry supporters than that of Los Angeles, which spent $50 million in 2001 to buy Waterford Early Reading, distributed by software giant Pearson Digital Learning.
Ronni Ephraim, a chief instructional officer for the district, said the company gave presentations that described how successful the program was for other schools. Los Angeles school administrators soon began praising it.

"Teachers loved it. Kids loved it," Ephraim said. "Waterford gave us data from their tests that showed it was working. Everyone said, 'Oh my God! The kids are doing so well.' "

But a school district evaluation found that students using Waterford were not scoring better on standardized tests than those not using it. "I'm so embarrassed to admit this," Ephraim said, "but when we heard the results we said, 'This can't be true.' "

...
To persuade companies to participate in the study, researchers promised not to report the performances of particular programs. Among the businesses whose products were in the study were LeapFrog SchoolHouse, PLATO Learning, Scholastic Inc. and Pearson.

So here we are, on the precipice of NCLB reauthorization for another six years. And what are the prospects for a smooth, fast approval process? Stay tuned. A storm is brewing, and we’ll look at the forecast in Part 24.

And to review our progress, click these links, cross posted at Daily Kos and Diatribune:
Part 1 http://www.diatribune.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...