Betrayals in Public Education by Linda Schrock Taylor: "All children are betrayed when they are not provided with opportunities to develop skills and talents; to use their minds in clear, logical thinking; to gain knowledge to broaden their experience base; to speak with confidence that comes from forming opinions, supporting them with truthful information, then standing for something in which they believe. All lose when powerful agencies manipulate educational choices and policies to assure the success of the dumbing-down agenda by awarding money to districts contingent upon purchases of certain textbooks. For example, the National Science Foundation awards grants-tied-to-limited-choices – new-new ways to get new-new math into classrooms thus insuring that children waste their time 'constructing knowledge' instead of learning and practicing real mathematical concepts and skills that will prepare them for ever higher maths.

The illiterate are betrayed when the propaganda cries out 'Accountability! Reading first! A literate America! Title I grants! No Child Left Behind!' The reality is that districts still choose low-quality instructional materials from fast-talking sales reps; that teachers still graduate from college unable to teach reading. School administrators pick reading curriculums that are billed as 'research based' from companies with no track record at all. Too many claim that their materials are research based simply because the five strategies proven necessary for effective reading instruction are stuck into poorly designed and badly written curriculum. Decision makers fail to demand long-term research data proving effectiveness/ineffectiveness of a product before agreeing to the purchase. Decision makers fail to notice when children become 'word callers' instead of readers. Schools fail to question why, near the end of the school year, children are still reading drawings of boys and girls instead of having learned to actually read such basic words. The rate of illiteracy continues to climb despite the rhetoric and the money thrown at the problem."

(Via Lew Rockwell.)