No Bush Left Behind - Neil Bush's "curriculum on wheels"

[soup]

Tonight's bout of insomnia fueled by the following:

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."
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_42/b4005059.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_companies

check it out here:
COW product page
http://www.ignitelearning.com/productPage.shtml

The Relatively Charmed Life Of Neil Bush
Despite Silverado and Voodoo, Fortune Still Smiles on the President's Brother

By Peter Carlson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 28, 2003; Page D01

For the last several years, Bush's main business interest has been Ignite!, the educational software company he co-founded in 1999. To fund Ignite!, Bush has raised $23 million from U.S. investors (including his parents), as well as businessmen from Taiwan, Japan, Kuwait, the British Virgin Islands and the United Arab Emirates, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Last year, Ignite! also entered into a partnership with a Mexican company, Grupo Carso Telecom. The partnership enabled Ignite! to lay off half of its 70 employees and outsource their jobs to Mexico.

>snip<

However, Ignite! has been attacked by other educators for dumbing down history. Among its controversial aspects is a lesson that depicts the Seminole Wars in a cartoon football game -- "the Jacksons vs. the Seminoles" -- the animated Indians smashing helmets with animated white settlers. The Constitutional Convention is taught in a rap song

>snip<

Humes wasn't impressed, either. "There was a lot of rhyming and games," he says. "It reminded me of what my son uses -- but he's in kindergarten."

When Bush spoke at Whitney, several students began arguing with him.

"He was very surprised," Humes recalls. "You had to see the look on his face when one young woman got up and said she liked calculus. He said it was useless. This is the branch of mathematics that makes space travel possible, and he said it was useless."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35297-2003Dec27?language=printer

March 23, 2006, 9:01PM
Former first lady's donation aids son
Katrina funds earmarked to pay for Neil Bush's software program

By CYNTHIA LEONOR GARZA
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

Former first lady Barbara Bush donated an undisclosed amount of money to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund with specific instructions that the money be spent with an educational software company owned by her son Neil.

Since then, the Ignite Learning program has been given to eight area schools that took in substantial numbers of Hurricane Katrina evacuees.

>snip<

Regarding the fact that Bush's earmarked donation also benefited her son's company, Becker said, "Mrs. Bush is obviously an enthusiastic supporter of her son. She is genuinely supportive of his program," and has received many letters from educators who support it. Bush "honestly felt this would be a great way to help the (evacuee) students."

>snip<

Information about the effectiveness of the program, through district-generated reports, was not readily available Wednesday, according to an HISD spokeswoman.
http://chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/metro/3742329.html

Schools Matter

This space will explore issues in public education policy; and it will advocate for a commitment to and a re-examination of the democratic purposes of schools. If there is some urgency in the message, it is due to the current reform efforts that are based on a radical re-invention of education, now spearheaded by a psychometric blitzkrieg of "metastasized testing" aimed at dismantling a public education system that took almost 200 years to build.

Saturday, March 25, 2006
Dubai, Gramma Bush, and Having "The COW"

>snip<
And here is a clip from the outline of the Social Studies Curriculum. Wonder what messages could be conveyed in some of these highlighted chapters?

Understanding Our Democracy -The Rights and Responsibilities of the
Citizen 1787-Present
Three Branches
States' Rights
The Influences of Factions
The Electoral Process
Constitutional Amendments
How a Bill Becomes a Law
The Individual vs the State
Limited Freedom of Speech
Sacrificing for the Greater Good
Voting
The Media
Protest and Civil Disobedience
http://schoolsmatter.blogspot.com/2006/03/dubai-gramma-bush-and-havi_114330314791919410.html

Ignite!

By William Bowles

05/11/03: (Information Clearing House) This maybe small potatoes by comparison with all the other Bush clan scams, but nevertheless Ignite! Learning has made Neil Bush $20 million over the past three years. Not bad for a guy who ran Silverado S&L into the ground. With accusations of nepotism flying around all over the place, especially now that Neil Bush is trying to get the Florida school system to buy into his learning software (at $30 a pop per student per year), the state that his brother Jeb is governor of, it’s no wonder. Connected is the wholesale privatisation of state services, which opens such areas as education to the predations of people like Neil Bush and indeed, the whole issue of influence peddling.

That Other Bush Boy The president's brother Neil hopes to profit from his family's influence.

by Michael Scherer May/June 2001

http://www.motherjones.com/magazine/MJ01/neilbush.html

Bush brother trying to sell FCAT software to Florida schools

Monday, October 28, 2002 Associated Press

http://www.naplesnews.com/02/10/florida/d799030a.htm

Governor's Brother Marketing School Software

by Victoria Langley

Monday October 28th, 2002

http://www.flanews.com/archives2002/1028School.htm

Bush family in software row

By Nick Farrell <28-10-2002>

Big bother for little brother in nepotism charge

http://www.vnunet.com/News/1136331

source:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3334.htm

Neil Bush selling state FCAT Software

>snip<
Katie Muniz, a spokeswoman for Jeb Bush, said the governor has never talked with his brother about the business.
Gov. Bush's use of the FCAT complies with a law supported by another brother - President George W. Bush. The president's "Leave No Child Behind" law forces states to use testing as a measuring stick for schools.
Jeb Bush's education agenda has been criticized by Democratic gubernatorial nominee Bill McBride, who has attacked the governor for his reliance on the FCAT to grade schools.
Ryan Banfill, spokesman for the state Democratic Party, called Ignite's marketing campaign in the state problematic, saying it creates a strange appearance.
"I don't know where the money's going to come from for this," Banfill said. "These districts are hard pressed to pay for chalk, let alone to put money in the pocket of the Bush family."
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Culdesac/billbennett.html

Barbara Bush Earmarks Katrina Donation to Neil Bush Company
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/3/23/133818/843

Barbara Bush was an INVESTOR in son's company
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/3/25/11735/8660

NYT: Report Says Education Officials Violated Rules
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2843304

some fun from Boing Boing, (because if I don't laugh, I'd go quite insane):
Friday, March 24, 2006
Fake titles for Neil Bush's software company, Ignite! Learning
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/03/24/fake_titles_for_neil.html

[Dammit Ann]

1. thanks, now we both can't sleep.

not that i was before because of this...
THE DAMMIT CHRONICLES, although, now i have to crack open another beer and blog.

[soup]

7. "wait'll they get a load of the bush boys"

Gotta tell ya, I go from hope to disbelief, to despair, to rage, to complete and utter sadness, then back around again in the course of about 20 seconds flat nowadays. It's exhausting and overwhelming. Sure wish I could figure out a way to shut it down and get a solid night's sleep.

Bookmarking your blog. Good name, very fitting.

[sandnsea]

2. Google Bill Bennet and K12

Yep, it's always about funneling money to their corporate cronies. They can push through any crazy fuckin' idea and make millions. But people who are working hard to actually DO something in this country, they can barely get by.

[Why Syzygy]

3. They put a whole new spin

on the word SCAM. I always thought if I could think of a scam, I could do it?
They are MASTERS. We've got to get ahead of their game.

Lowlifes. No, I can't run a scam. My name isn't Bush either. I'm going to hold my tongue until I stop thinking of profanities.

Is there a god? Or is that just another scam run? I hate these people. oops I let it slip.

[proud2BlibKansan]

9. Well since you mentioned it . . .

A true story about Bill Bennett

By Reed Hundt

When I was chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (1993-97), I asked Bill Bennett to visit my office so that I could ask him for help in seeking legislation that would pay for internet access in all classrooms and libraries in the country. Eventually Senators Olympia Snowe and Jay Rockefeller, with the White House leadership of President Clinton and Vice President Gore, put that provision in the Telecommunications Law of 1996, and today nearly 90% of all classrooms and libraries do have such access. The schools covered were public and private. So far the federal funding (actually collected from everyone as part of the phone bill) has been matched more or less equally with school district funding to total about $20 billion over the last seven years. More than 90% of all teachers praise the impact of such technology on their work. At any rate, since Mr. Bennett had been Secretary of Education I asked him to support the bill in the crucial stage when we needed Republican allies. He told me he would not help, because he did not want public schools to obtain new funding, new capability, new tools for success. He wanted them, he said, to fail so that they could be replaced with vouchers,charter schools, religious schools, and other forms of private education. Well, I thought, at least he's candid about his true views. The key Senate committee voted almost on party lines on the bill, all D's for and all R's against, except one -- Olympia Snowe. Her support provided the margin of victory. On the House side, Speaker Gingrich made sure the provision was not in the companion bill, but in conference again Senators Snowe and Rockefeller, with White House support, made the difference. The Internet has been the first technology made available to students in poorly funded schools at about the same time and in about the same way as to students in well funded schools.


http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/10/1/105329/697

[izzie]

4. Why is any one shocked? They go where the money is.

After all Bush's brother has to make millions also. The school system in this country is getting to be a cash cow for the crooks just as the Military is. The Royals used to do the same thing with the Church backing it all. It seems power is always the same. Greed is the thing.

[Why Syzygy]

5. so what happens next?

No schools? No military?

When do we get to get rid of the Church? Ever?

[izzie]

6. As always it cleans itself up and then goes down once more.

It is endless. The Federalist Papers told us we would always have to be on the look out for such things. Our big trouble seems no one wants to keep at it. One hardly thinks we have found a way to breed all good people. Adams said that power would have to we watched all the time as they could not be trusted. The reason to make the govt. so hard to do anything in. So be it.

[CabalPowered]

8. Nothing more than a shell company used to buy influence

Sure they have a product but beyond that.... When Ignite! first opened its doors, I attempted to make contact with them and never did speak with anyone. All my phone calls went to voicemail and emails went unanswered.

[LWolf]

10. It's nice to see this getting some press, anyway.

I guess.

We knew this, and tried to get people to listen, 6 years ago when GWB hit Washington. Some of us from states that incubated state versions of the "standards and accountability movement" were aware of it years before that.

Education is nobody's issue, though. People would rather bitch about schools and teachers while their attention is focused on what some talk show person said, or what someone in Congress said. People don't seem to give a shit about what their favorite politicians have actually authorized for public education. At least they don't care enough to make it a priority.