corrente

"If you want to play in our revolution, you have to live by our rules."
- Tom Delay (R-Texas).

Via Cursor a link to Sydney Schanberg's recent article on Bush's education swindles. (past and present) See: A Texas Hoax May Be the President's Waterloo

Schanberg writes:

Over the past year or so, getting headlines in Texas but only modest coverage elsewhere, the "Texas Miracle" has been disrobed. It was a scam, a hoax. The governor had put the fear of Bush into the school bureaucracy. You will perform, the principals and superintendents were told. You will dramatically bring down the dropout rate and dramatically raise the reading and math scores. Bonuses were promised to those who succeeded, demotions and pay-docking to those who didn't.

Suddenly, as if in the Land of Oz, kids in low-income districts who had been dropping out of high school at rates of 30 and 40 percent and higher were apparently born again, burying their faces in their books into the wee hours. And then the truth came out. They were still dropping out at the same old percentages; they just weren't being counted as dropouts. They weren't even being listed as "whereabouts unknown"—as if they might have moved to another district and forgotten to leave a forwarding address. They had simply disappeared. They were los desaparecidos. Maybe General Pinochet had them kidnapped for interrogation and torture.

Anyway, if you want to read more about the "Texas Scandal," I recommend you get on the Web and look up a series of marvelous pieces that a fine reporter, Michael Winerip, has been doing in The New York Times. (My only quibble is that all the articles have been half buried on the education page at the back of the Metro Section, instead of starting on page one. After all, we do say we really care about kids and education.)

As a sample, here is some of what Winerip found on the scene in Houston, where he described Sharpstown High School: "[This] poor, mostly minority high school of 1,650 students had a freshman class of 1,000 that dwindled to fewer than 300 students by senior year. And yet—and this is the miracle—not one dropout to report. Nor was zero an unusual dropout rate in this school district that both President Bush and Secretary of Education Rod Paige have held up as the national showcase for accountability. . . . Westside High here had 2,308 students and no reported dropouts; Wheatley High 731 students, no dropouts. A dozen of the city's poorest schools reported dropout rates under 1 percent."

This was the district cited as the model for Bush's No Child Left Behind law enacted by Congress in the first months after his inauguration. Congress authorized $18 billion to launch the program nationwide. Oddly, the president has budgeted only $12 billion, lopping off one-third of the money. This is the disconnect that runs through nearly all of the president's cornerstone policies. He utters grand slogans and then slips behind his Wizard of Oz curtain and pretends that's all he has to do. Just wear a sincere tie or some military-style clothing and speak the appropriate stately catchwords while standing in front of a giant flag, and then say "God Bless America" at the close, and people will give him the second term his father was unable to achieve.

Jamie McKenzie writing in the September 2003 issue of No Child Left observes:

Some of the change strategies being used against American schools by the current administration have already been tried in Texas but recent news reports cast doubt on the integrity, authenticity and value of those change strategies.

What was once proudly called the "Texas Miracle" - an impressive (apparent) shift in school performance - might have been more of a flimflam operation in some places than a true miracle, judging from the harsh audit report published by the TEA (Texas Education Agency) ruling on procedures used by the Houston ISD when reporting dropouts in 2000.

As far back as the year 2000 when the current President was Governor of Texas and the Secretary of Education was Superintendent of the Houston ISD, the TEA (Texas Educational Agency) issued a harsh report warning that the Texas system for recording dropouts when combined with various incentive programs would lead to serious under-reporting and under-counting. (Dropout Study: A Report to the 77th Texas Legislature) In short, the report stated that some schools and districts might sweep the dropout problem under some magic carpet. Instead of taking care of these troubled students, the system might erase them.

Much more info and links from No Child Left. See: Cooking the Education Books? Works of Mass Deception?

Whats with these BushCo yokels? Has any one of em ever done an honest days work?