No Child Left Behind is not improving education in this country while at the same time draining badly needed funds from schools that must pay to meet the requirements.

But at least the law is good for someone.

A company headed by President Bush’s brother and partly owned by his parents is benefiting from Republican connections and federal dollars targeted for economically disadvantaged students under the No Child Left Behind Act.

At least 13 U.S. school districts have used federal funds available through the president’s signature education reform, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, to buy Ignite’s portable learning centers at $3,800 apiece.

So far, they’ve sold more than 1700 of the systems at that price. However, that’s not the best part.

But Ignite does not offer reading instruction, and its math program will not be available until next year.

Brother Bush, of course, says that Ignite has “demonstrated success” (at what he didn’t say) and that political influence played no part in obtaining the contracts.

Politics aside, the bottom line is, does the system actually improve student learning?

Few independent studies have been done to assess the effectiveness of Ignite’s teaching strategies. Neil Bush said the company had gotten “great feedback” from educators and planned to conduct a “major scientifically valid study” to assess the COW’s impact. The results should be in by next summer, he said.

I guess that would be a no.

Read the whole article. But I don’t advise it while you’re eating.

nclb, corruption, bush