Reading First, created by President Bush's signature No Child Left Behind law, offers intensive reading help for low-income children in the early grades. But investigators say that federal officials intervened to influence state and local decisions about what programs to use, a potential violation of the law. Some of the people who were influencing those decisions had a financial interest in the programs that were being pushed, officials said.
"I think we're very close to a criminal enterprise here," House Education and Labor Committee chairman George Miller, D-Calif., said at an investigative hearing Friday. "Have you made any criminal referrals, Mr. Higgins?"
Well that just about sums it up.
Whenever I think of scandals on this scale, I always come back to that infamous quote from Republican strategist Grover Norquist: "My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."
Then, natch, cue a picture of New Orleans after Katrina.
That is how it is supposed to be. It is Republican (Bush specifically) exercise in governance. It is not an accident. It is supposed to be like this.
I think the word I am looking for is "intent". When you elect people who hate government to run it, well, you end up with Katrina and Iraq, and the list goes on and on.
NCLB is dead. And I'll be glad to help with the remaining nails.
Someone hand me a hammer. Let's put this coffin in the ground.
Republicans have once again killed with incompetence what they couldn't kill with ideology.
And did Chairman Miller really expect an affirmative response when he asked if any criminal referrals had been made? Sheesh. He was, after all, talking to the party of "drown it in a bathtub".
Even he must realize that.
1 comment:
And let's not forget that when you carry NCLB to its logical conclusion, the system leaves all children behind. The basic criteria of an underperforming school is that it is below average, that sets the stage to close half the schools in the country every year. In practice that doesn't happen, but the idea that it could just a glaring example of how bad this law really is. Some of the statistics and emphasis on minority groups was good to know, but now its time to cut NCLB loose and put that money in the classrooms, not states, not districts or even schools. We should take every penny of NCLB funding and allocate it equally to every public school classroom in America. That's where the money needs to go. That's where it will do the most good for students.
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