As the Bush administration is so eager to remind us, its members have a record of accomplishment. That includes Secretary of Education Rod Paige -- a member of Bush's old Texas posse. Prior to becoming the man responsible for insuring that No Child is Left Behind, Paige architected some of the nation's highest dropout rates and an alleged plot to cover them up as superintendant of the Houston Independent School District.

The district enjoys a 75% dropout rate -- much worse than the state's already underwhelming 83% average. In response, and presumably in an effort to uphold its place as a model for the No Child Left Behind act, district officials "miscounted" nearly 3000 dropouts in the 2000/2001 school year. Staff at one district high school were found to have falsified records to show that no students dropped out.

Paige responded to critics by claiming the charges, already proven completely accurate, were politically motivated. He said, "If they can muster substantial dirt on the Houston school system, then they hope to damage the national implementation of No Child Left Behind."

It's a familiar refrain from George's posse: All they're trying to do by pointing out that policy X doesn't work is to destroy policy x, and that's worse than counterproductive -- it's not American!

One time I knew this guy. He had horrible lesions on his penis. He postulated that what would help was a lot of rigorous unprotected sex with bargain basement Thai hookers, and he undertook his regime. His lesions got worse, and his doctor said, "Stop having unprotected sex with Thai hookers. It's making your lesions worse. Let's try something else." He said, "Fie on your, quack! You're simply jealous of all my unprotected Thai sex! You are a doctor of nothing but shame!"

Pretend the bad students don't exist, and watch the test scores rise. Voila! No child left behind, except those that don't matter anyway or are black or some other mud race.

Analogcabin @ 5:09 PM
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