No Bush Left Behind (Neil)

[ProSense]

OCTOBER 16, 2006
NEWS & INSIGHTS

No Bush Left Behind

The President's brother Neil is making hay from school reform

Across the country, some teachers complain that President George W. Bush's makeover of public education promotes "teaching to the test." The President's younger brother Neil takes a different tack: He's selling to the test. The No Child Left Behind Act compels schools to prove students' mastery of certain facts by means of standardized exams. Pressure to perform has energized the $1.9 billion-a-year instructional software industry.

Now, after five years of development and backing by investors like Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal and onetime junk-bond king Michael R. Milken, Neil Bush aims to roll his high-tech teacher's helpers into classrooms nationwide. He calls them "curriculum on wheels," or COWs. The $3,800 purple plug-and-play computer/projectors display lively videos and cartoons: the XYZ Affair of the late 1790s as operetta, the 1828 Tariff of Abominations as horror flick. The device plays songs that are supposed to aid the memorization of the 22 rivers of Texas or other facts that might crop up in state tests of "essential knowledge."

Bush's Ignite! Inc. has sold 1,700 COWs since 2005, mainly in Texas, where Bush lives and his brother was once governor. In August, Houston's school board authorized expenditures of up to $200,000 for COWs. The company expects 2006 revenue of $5 million. Says Bush about the impact of his name: "I'm not saying it hasn't opened any doors. It may have helped with some sales." (In September, the U.S. Education Dept.'s inspector general accused the agency of improperly favoring at least five publishers, including The McGraw-Hill Companies, which owns BusinessWeek. A company spokesman says: "Our reading programs have been successful in advancing student achievement for decades; that's why educators hold them in such high regard.")

The stars haven't always aligned for Bush, but at times financial support has. A foundation linked to the controversial Reverend Sun Myung Moon has donated $1 million for a COWs research project in Washington (D.C.)-area schools. In 2004 a Shanghai chip company agreed to give Bush stock then valued at $2 million for showing up at board meetings. (Bush says he received one-fifth of the shares.) In 1988 a Colorado savings and loan failed while he served on its board, making him a prominent symbol of the S&L scandal. Neil calls himself "the most politically damaged of the brothers."

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[proud2BlibKansan]

1. $3800 for a machine that plays videos and cartoons

Good luck with that plan, Neil. We can't afford pencils, thanks to the unfunded mandates in your brother's dumb education law. No way will we be able to afford a machine that plays videos.

Besides, if my principal walked in my room and saw me playing a cartoon video instead of teaching, she would have my head.

Is everyone in your family clueless??

:rofl:

[OzarkDem]

3. Its just a front for bribery

Neil is a family "bag man" just like the rest. Anyone who wants to buy influence or protection pays him a few million for whatever crap he's selling.

[radwriter0555]

2. neil bush, another republican pedophile. 12 year old chinese hookers ring

a bell?

[tanyev]

4. The COW. How sweet.

Named in honor of his mama.

[ProSense]

5. Bush Reading Program Gets Failing Grade

Bush Reading Program Gets Failing Grade

Audit: Bush's Billion-Dollar a Year Reading Program Beset by Favoritism, Mismanagement
By BEN FELLER
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - A scorching internal review of the Bush administration's billion-dollar-a-year reading program says the Education Department ignored the law and ethical standards to steer money how it wanted.

The government audit is unsparing in its view that the Reading First program has been beset by conflicts of interest and willful mismanagement. It suggests the department broke the law by trying to dictate which curriculum schools must use.

It also depicts a program in which review panels were stacked with people who shared the director's views, and in which only favored publishers of reading curricula could get money.

In one e-mail, the director told a staff member to come down hard on a company he didn't support, according to the report released Friday by the department's inspector general.

Snip...

Reading First aims to help young children read through scientifically proven programs, and the department considers it a jewel of No Child Left Behind, Bush's education law. Just this week, a separate review found the effort is helping schools raise achievement.

But from the start, the program has been dogged by accusations of impropriety, leading to several ongoing audits. The new report from the Office of Inspector General an independent arm of the Education Department calls into question the program's credibility.

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[walldude]

6. My question would be how many of those programs sold

were paid for with Barbara Bush's Katrina donation that she demanded only be spent on her son's "software".