The man who made students disappear in Houston to bring scores up added to Romney ed team

[geefloyd46]

The short bio of Paige released by the Romney campaign states that he once was superintendent of Houston's schools. But it fails to mention that Paige, once he was in Bush's cabinet, became mired in an ugly scandal, when the news broke that the Houston school system, the seventh largest in the nation, had falsified its dropout stats during Paige's tenure.

As the Los Angeles Times put it:
A series of internal audits and external investigations that followed found that nearly all of the schools examined in Houston, with the nation's seventh-largest school district and where U.S. Education Secretary Rod Paige had been superintendent, were vastly underreporting dropouts.

A New York Times editorial explained why this was particularly embarrassing for Bush and Paige:
As a presidential candidate and Texas governor, George Bush boasted that his state's school accountability system would be a model for the nation. A focus on basic skills and frequent testing had turned around an underperforming set of school systems in a state with a large poor, nonwhite population. In particular, he said, Houston was leading the way. When he was elected president, Mr. Bush selected Rod Paige, the Houston superintendent, as his education secretary.

It turns out the Houston schools have not lived up to their billing. Their amazingly low high school dropout rate was literally unbelievable—the educational equivalent of Enron's accounting results. The school district has found that more than half of the 5,500 students who left in the 2000-1 school year should have been declared dropouts but were not.

Dr. Paige, who has declined to comment on the Houston scandal, can remain silent no longer. He was brought to Washington to provide national educational leadership. With Houston facing a crisis of fiddled data, he owes it to the country to share his thoughts on how this happened and what it means.

fuller story here with links to wash post: and mother jones here: fuller story here with links to wash post: and mother jonesL http://laborspains.blogspot.com/2012/05/rod-paige-other-bush-administration.html

[CurtEastPoint]

1. Ph. D in Physical Education. Also...

Big supporter of No Child Left Behind, a program widely hated by teachers in all fifty states. In a meeting to the National Association of Governors on 23 February 2004, Paige referred to the National Education Association (the largest teachers' union in the country) as a "terrorist organization". The statement required apologies and interesting explanations later that day.

Smooth move, Mittens.

[Turbineguy]

2. Well it is the most important qualification

Liar? Check!

Harm to ordinary people? Check!