Tinfoil

Thanks to a battery check all the radio settings in my car are gone, so I tuned in a station I don't generally listen to. A woman who just wrote an article for The Nation (didn't catch the name) was answering softball questions about the No Child Left Behind act and its effects.

Claim: The act asserts that every child will be reading at grade level by 2014, regardless of recent immigration status or handicap. Ummm. Not a good way to start an argument.

Claim: The act requires the use of a Reading First curriculum, which scripts what a teacher is required to say. Umm. This sounds like overstatement, but isn't beyond the realm of possibility. One size fits all is bad. Very bad.

Claim: The act is a one-size fits all. I can believe bureaucrats can be that dumb. Not individually (usually), but certainly collectively.

Claim: The act "cannot be blamed on Texas and the Republicans," because it was created by a corporate/political committee in 1989 by Bush 1 and Arkansas governor Clinton. And everyone knows that Republicans are demons and Texas is hell :-)

Claim: One bad thing about the act is that Corporations (TM) supported it to make schools look bad so they could use vouchers and private schools and tutoring services to make lots of money. Even worse, by making people feel bad about themselves and their education, they won't complain as much when you ship their jobs overseas.

No, this wasn't Scrapleface; she meant it. Corporations to her are a magic monolith, all run from the same boardroom. That all the corporations I've heard of are desperate for well-educated workers means nothing to her; "Corporations" have a wicked agenda by definition, and what any good particular instance of a corporation may do doesn't matter--it must be a coverup.

Well, this is Madison.