Neil Bush: Ignite's Formula - Bait, Switch, Deposit Tax Dollars, Repeat

The truth about the curriculum that is sold by Ignite is obfuscated by the lack of review of the product's content and the persistence of misconceptions about the quality and attributes of the course-ware as well as a complete misunderstanding of the worth of a machine that has no internet connectivity.

After all what school system would be dumb enough to spend $4K+ on a fancy slide projector instead of investing in, say, 10-15 laptops/COW expenditure?

Some schools do and the this is somewhat understandable. In July 1999 Ignite, Inc. purchased a University of Texas incubator business, Adaptive Learning Technology, a company dedicated to individualized learning courseware.

Adaptive Learning founder Mary Schenck-Ross said the software's interactive lessons allowed teachers "to get away from the mass-treatment approach" to education. When a student typed in a response to a question, the software was designed to react and provide a customized learning path. "The original concept was to avoid 'one size fits all.' That was the point," said Catherine Malloy, who worked on the software development.

"It breaks my heart what they have done. The concept was totally perverted," Schenck-Ross said.

Mary Schenk-Ross left Ignite! in September of 2001 and the remarks are worth paying attention to not for their hyperbole but for their factual basis.

Neil Bush's proclamation that, "Ignite! is designed to make learning fun for "hunter-warrior" kids who don't like reading." could make any person concerned about education wince. And recent studies that question the educational effectiveness of presentation style slide shows like Microsoft's PowerPoint only serve to legitimize the concern.

Coupled with quality of content and methodology concerns is the bottom line cost of buying/pushing such a product into cash strapped school districts.

At a standard price of $3,800-$4,200 per unit, the COW is a very expensive device with limited use. A recent New York Times article about the use of the COW in Spotsylvania, Virginia, put the cost into perspective: each school in the district receives $1,000 "to cover all the lab supplies, equipment and other expenses connected with science for an entire year." Adding to the initial expense, schools must pay an annual $1,000 licensing, upkeep and upgrade fee in order to retain the COW for more than one year.

My guess is that the $1K/year cited in actuality is $1K per subject per COW per year expense.

But here is an actual lesson that should make every American alarmed. The subliminal message of this one is that the loss of a republic to an emperor is no big deal - in fact, things are good for centuries.

This unit on American and Canadian Art manages to completely avoid actually taking about any artists, attributing abstract expressionism to Canadians, and talking more about arts funding than art.

Viewing the YouTube vault of sample lessons shows us exactly why critics are alarmed. By basing an entire curriculum on lessons such as this, reading is minimized and middle school learning material is reduced to near moronic levels of understanding. This is bullet-point information that may reflect the testing industry's idea of high expectations but clearly this represents a dumbing down of American children, teachers, and society.

Numerous videos in this series celebrate war, war spending, and the suspension of human rights simple as that. Media Mindfulness expresses concern about the Habeas Corpus video, "...view the sample lesson from their COW (Curriculum on Wheels) system in the above video. It’s on the history of “Habeas Corpus”; you may agree the lesson is in dire need of some media literacy. It’s curious how it repeatedly justifies the suspension of the law."

The subliminal perversions do not stop there. The content and delivery intended to educate Jr. High school students is more appropriate for an elementary grade student struggling with reading or having a learning disability. But to treat entire Jr High school social studies, science, and math classes to a steady, unrelenting battery of this stuff is to believe these kids are all morons or worse. Neil Bush's dream of developing graduating classes of "hunter-warriors" who "hate reading" may be fulfilled in Houston before too long.

Another aspect of Ignite's presentation that I find disturbing is the implicit racism of the characters who narrate the information. Instead of intelligent, well-dressed teachers presenting the information children are treated to sugar-coated, hip-hop, jive-talking and singing characters who not only distort the content into labored jingoisms but promote an idea that minorities in America cannot be viewed by white America as anything more than modern-day caricatures of persistent, racist stereotypes.

The Adaptive Learning Technology courseware was dedicated to individualized learning, adaptive learning, multiple intelligences, and so on. That continues to be the marketing rhetoric despite the bleaching out of any such high-minded educational development ideals. By September of 2001, Ignite!'s business model first pursued selling itself as an aide to the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) and more recently as a political NCLB compliance testing inoculation.

One Size Fits All is Back!

Individualization and self-pacing are gone except as cosmically co-incidental mishaps. Ignite's agenda is NCLB's agenda. And that agenda is best summarized by Gene Hickock, the under-secretary of education, "One of the virtues of NCLB is leverage, leverage at the state. . . at the local level . . . We don’t mind being the bad guys... I am very concerned that we will . . . underestimate the potential that we have to redefine everything."

And "redefine everything" means writing laws compliant to the testing and educational lobbyist's desire. Education is no longer driven by the needs of children or the desire of taxpayers to provide a cost-effective public education.

As Bill Gates discovered at Microsoft, he who writes the specifications can near monopolize the procurement of product by consumers who must comply. The perfect storm of corrupt politics and more corrupt corporate interests is creating a manufactured market for ineffective but highly profitable testing monopolies and accessories.

That the Bush family has a hand in that multi-billion dollar tax swindle is no surprise.

next - soon

Previous: Neil Bush and the Origin of Ignite!

Neil Bush and the Origin of Ignite!, Inc.

Barbara Bush has long milked the posture of a doting, innocent granny goodness character when campaigning for her sons and husband. She understands her audience.

Neil Bush needed a legitimizing reason for starting an education company in 1999. The resulting heart-wrenching tale of young Neil's difficulty in middle-school would be attributed to being diagnosed with dyslexia. And soon, Neil's story became decorated with tales of momma Bush's struggle to help Neil become a reader. The fact that Barbara Bush failed in making either Neil or brother George Jr a reader is a fact that never enters the conversation.

From my reading of the public record, aside from a smoky anecdotal diagnosis, no evidence or documentation seems to exist to prove that Neil, in fact, is dyslexic. What is clear is that the political meme that Neil was/is dyslexic was so compelling an explanation for George W.'s shocking public speaking gaffs that both brothers were suspected of having learning disabilities with W. having to insist he needed no disability to function as he had.

All of which raises the suspicion that Neil's diagnosis may be wrong. The Bush's may simply have raised at least two sons who were not the sharpest tools in the family shed. And the dyslexia meme, real or imagined conveniently serves a marketing purpose that sells well. And I bring up this topic because the dyslexia meme later becomes a smokescreen for the Ignite product.

The 1999 Assault on America

One can choose to believe that Neil Bush's heartfelt compassion for the children of America suffering from learning disabilities was his motivation for starting Ignite, Inc. And Neil's commitment to improving the lives of these poor afflicted children was so myopic that luring investors - any investor no matter what their background became his calling.

And in the activity by Neil's investors we find a pattern of investment that seemingly contradicts and transcends Neil's pithy dyslexia story.

In 1999, Bill Bennett's educational venture K12, Inc. received $4M of taxpayer NCLB funding. The controversy is documented here:

Bennett, former U.S. Secretary of Education, drug czar, and conservative author and pundit, founded K12 in 1999 as an option to traditional brick-and-mortar schools.

Furthermore...

The publication also reported that ED awarded the grants despite the fact that the Arkansas project scored lower on a series of independent reviews than at least one other program that wasn't funded--a highly unusual occurrence, ED insiders said, and one that raises the question of whether the program received preferential treatment as a result of the political ties among Bennett, Arkansas state officials, and Bush administration officials.

The key to our discussion is the 1999 timeframe. This is the year that the American election is stolen in Florida with Gore and the Democrats not knowing what hit them.

Yet, neo-conservative forces like Bennett and Bush's brother are being heavily financed to profit from the education industry (variously reported to be a multi-billion dollar market) a priori of the election results.

And who financed Bennett?

Bill teamed with a Virginia company backed by the education firm Knowledge Universe that is Michael Milikin's(sic) money to start up k12.com his home / cyber learning for profit school which is also commodisizing educational products.

Millkin, of junk bond fame, re-appears in 2006 as an investor in Ignite! whose original investors include Neil's parents and "Neil Bush had raised about $23 million from more than a dozen outside investors, including Mohammed Al Saddah, the head of a Kuwaiti company, and Winston Wong, the head of a Chinese computer firm."

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.

This perfect storm of foreign investment did not happen overnight. The assault on the American public education system started much earlier and its history is as seedy as anything this series will cover. All such evidence is in the public record.

What is important is that by 1999, a coup of American education is being poised to take control. Not only does it shock and awe progressive educational initiatives, it violates the rhetoric of conservatism that is enlisted to empower this takeover.

And even in 1999, like a bad Austin Powers movie script, the scope of ambition in controlling the education of students everywhere with a uniform and politically correct curriculum of compliance and servitude is obvious to international observers.

In a paper by Angela C. Siqueira presented to the Annual Conference of the Comparative and International Education Society called "The World Bank New Discourse and the 1999 Education Strategy", secret documentation is examined that already describes global education policies that will be applied to education initiatives around the world that eerily predict the form and deployment of NCLB in America.

Based on the 1999 education sector strategy and World Bank documents... -snip- ...it seems that the main target is to create intellectual dependence and impose a one-sided solution and view of the world, by eliminating the possibility for the emergence of alternative perspectives.

In summary, the Knowledge Management Bank and its Education Knowledge Management System seem to be an attempt to foster the commodification, sterilization, and standardization of knowledge. Therefore, it constitutes a serious peril to democracy, which presupposes diversity and not homogeneity.

Ignite!, Inc. is created from the seeds of a long-simmering desire on the part of globally controlled media conglomerates and mideast players with politically incestuous ties to the Bush clan and the neo-con factions of the Republican party to prototype in America a closed, tightly controlled public school curriculum that would uniformly classify its graduates according to the needs of these international power brokers.

They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. In the end, Neil Bush emerges as little more than an errand boy. The Bush presidency little more than a well-compensated political ratchet with which to implement a brilliant swindle that brings America's education system to its intellectual knees and under the jackboot of right-wing dogmatists.


Previous: Neil Bush: Igniting an Investigation
next: Neil Bush: Bait, Switch, Deposit Tax Dollars, Repeat

Neil Bush: Igniting an Investigation

Prologue:

To understand why Neil Bush's educational firm is under investigation is only a provincial part of the story of the alleged misuse of NCLB funds.

The larger scope of scandal is not so much global as a surgical subversion of the American system of education by foreign interests who may be seeking to institutionalize a curriculum to undermine democracy in this country. If 9/11 demonstrated the kind of physical threat a hostile outside agent could muster then imagine the potential to disrupt this country's ability to instill trust in law, government, and to revitalize its workforce in maintaining a strong, free-thinking society.

And, like 9/11, by tricking the existing system into financing and implementing the scheme is the well-known irony of the original tragedy.

An outside enemy need not be particularly ingenious to imagine just such a scheme. From afar, the purchase of curriculum materials is often dictated by the buying decisions of the largest state consumers, say, Texas. That same outside agent would need to simply control Texas' most influential political agent. Conveniently that agent might also wholly control the nation's education laws, practice, and funding.

Own Texas' local power broker and in time that outside agent can PWN the curriculum of the planet's strongest democracy.

What would it take to accomplish a speculative feat as just described. The foreign interest might have no interest in the American dollar as that interest might see the currency as worthless wallpaper. So "investing" in a certain American's provincial special interests would be one way of achieving a degree of control.

Another might be to compromise the integrity of that local agent assuming that integrity existed in the first place.

Let's put this narrative aside to look at actual facts to see if any of this might be a concern.

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In early November of 2007, a watchdog consumer group called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington asked John P. Higgins Jr., the inspector general of the Department of education to investigate whether or not $1M of No Child Left Behind Funding was inappropriately used to purchase Ignite, Inc's product suite. The issue being that NCLB funding requires stringent compliance to certain educational criteria that this group believes is not being met.

A New York Times report by Marilyn Thompson documents the event:

The citizens' group obtained documents through a Freedom of Information Act request showing that the Katy Independent School District west of Houston used $250,000 in state and federal Hurricane Katrina relief money last year to buy the Curriculum on Wheels.

The district's director of special education, Fred Shafer, supported the purchases, telling other officials that "all the kids love the Cow, and it really meets the needs of the students with disabilities," according to an internal e-mail message obtained by the citizens' group. Mr. Shafer did not return calls for comment.

Neil Bush has assertively marketed the Cow and, according to the company, the product has been placed in 22 states. This summer, Ignite announced plans to expand into China.

The citizens' group says it has documented only a small part of the federal money spent on Ignite products. Ignite has had strong support from districts in Texas, President Bush's home state. This week, the Houston Independent School District is set to consider whether to authorize schools to spend an additional $300,000 from various financing sources on the Curriculum on Wheels.

Jay Spuck, a former curriculum director for the district, has criticized spending on the Ignite product, saying: "It's not helping kids at all. It's not helping teachers. The only way Neil has gotten in is by his name."

Much of the product's success in Texas dates from a March 2006 donation by Barbara Bush, who gave eight units to schools attended by large numbers of hurricane evacuees.

Neil Bush followed up with an e-mail message telling the district that "in order for the schools to keep the Cows in subsequent years they will have to pay an annual fee of $1,000," according to documents obtained by the citizens group.

Melanie Sloan, executive director of the group, referring to No Child Left Behind, said: "A constant principle of N.C.L.B. is that children must be taught using scientifically proven methods. Ignite's Cows simply don't meet N.C.L.B. standards. This suggests that the real reason N.C.L.B. funds are expended on Ignite is because the founder and C.E.O. is the president's brother."

The cost for each COW unit is approximately $4,200 and a simple calculation of Barbara Bush's "donation" (see below) comes out to $33,600. This means that the Texas school district spent an additional $226,400 on additional units.

The accusation that the units were sold on influence peddling by Neil and Barbara Bush is an obvious suspicion and it is repeated in both liberal and conservative publications reporting on this event. The Bush's largely attribute such criticism to jealousy and celebrity sniping on the part of critics. The fact that their family is self-insulated from oversight or accountability is an unspoken subtext.

The content of a Walter F. Roche, Jr. article in the LA Times has become mysteriously inaccessible on the LA Times site. However this important documentation was found preserved here.

In Houston, where Neil Bush and his parents live, the district has used various funding sources to acquire $400,000 in Ignite products. An
additional $240,000 in purchases has been authorized in the last six months.

Correspondence obtained by The Times shows that Neil Bush met with top Houston officials, sent e-mails and left voice mail messages urging bigger and faster allocations. An e-mail from a school procurement official to colleagues said Bush had made it clear that he had a "good working relationship" with a school board member.
Another Ignite official asked a Texas state education official to endorse the company. In an e-mail, Neil Bush's partner Ken Leonard asked Michelle Ungurait, state director of social studies programs, to tell Houston officials her "positive impressions of our content, system and approach."

Ungurait, identified in another Leonard e-mail as "our good friend" at the state office, told her superiors in response to The Times' inquiry that she never acted on Leonard's request. Leonard said he did not ask Ungurait to do anything that would be improper.

Houston school officials gave Ignite's products "high" ratings in eight categories and recommended approval.

Some in Houston's schools question the expenditures, however. Jon Dansby was teaching at Houston's Fleming Middle School when Ignite products arrived. "You can't even get basics like paper and scissors, and we went out and bought them. I just see red," he said.

In Las Vegas, the schools have approved more than $300,000 in Ignite purchases. Records show the board recommended spending $150,000 in No Child funding on Ignite products.

Sources familiar with the Las Vegas purchases said pressure to buy Ignite products came from Sig Rogich, an influential local figure and prominent Republican whose fundraising of more than $200,000 for President Bush's 2004 reelection campaign qualified him as a "Bush Ranger."

Rogich, who chairs a foundation that supports local schools, said he applied no pressure but became interested in COWs after Neil Bush contacted him. Rogich donated $6,000 to purchase two COWs for a middle school named after him.

Christy Falba, the former Clark County school official who oversaw the contracts, said she and her husband attended a dinner with Neil Bush to discuss the products. She said Rogich encouraged the district "to look at the Ignite program" but applied no pressure.

You'll notice that Houston alone has spent at least $640,000 on the devices and that coverage of the expense for this product is repeatedly under-reported as a result of the piecemeal purchasing audit trail.

You'll also notice that unquestionably NCLB funds (your tax dollars) are being funneled into Bush coffers. The question of whether or not the practice is legal is the contention.

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"Donation" Money

As you read previously most of the media both left and right described Barbara Bush's donation as a private act of charity.

Amy Goodman's interview of Joe DeRose sets up the context of the donation;

AMY GOODMAN: Joe DeRose, on a side note, I remember when the President’s mother, the former First Lady, Barbara Bush, went to visit the Katrina survivors in the Houston Astrodome, and she promised to make a contribution to charity. I’m looking at the Houston Chronicle, the piece that wrote about that and said, “Katrina funds earmarked to pay for Neil Bush’s software program. 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.” That was in Houston. Do you know more about that? At the time, we didn’t know that she was saying that her charitable contribution would go to pay for her son’s educational software.

JOE DeROSE: No, I don’t know anything about that. But I think the point is that that really needs to be looked at very hard, is that a lot of money has been allocated, maybe not enough, but certainly billons of dollars have already been allocated by the federal government, and I think it’s pretty important to look at where that money is being spent.

But Barbara Bush's earmarked donation is the tip of an iceburg. The diversion of charitable donations toward the Bush's product includes this 2006 tidbit from the Houston Chronicle:

Two years ago, the school district raised eyebrows when it expanded the program by relying heavily on private donations.

In February 2004, the Houston school board unanimously agreed to accept $115,000 in charitable donations from businesses and individuals who insisted the money be spent on Ignite. The money covered half the bill for the software, which cost $10,000 per school.

The deal raised conflict of interest concerns because Neil Bush and company officials helped solicit the donations for the HISD Foundation, a philanthropic group that raises money for the district.

Quid pro quo tax-deductible political contributions in the form of charitable donations? As the Borat character might say, "NICE!"

Previous: Neil Bush, The UnTold Story - Preface

Next - Neil Bush and the Origin of Ignite!, Inc.

The UnTold Neil Bush Story: Preface

A few months ago I had bookmarked an Alternet article that repeated a question about Neil Bush's education company, Ignite, Inc. who distribute something called Curriculum on Wheels (COW). I was doing some house-cleaning of my bookmarks a few days ago and reread the article and decided to update it with my observations.

I never expected what looked to be yet another run-of-the-mill Bush family scam to be so vile or so mysteriously obfuscated by both the journalists on the right and the left. Like a greased pig, the untold story continues to slip its way into oblivion.

This education story involves concubines, cover-ups, threats to national security, international intrigue, a press corp more interested in smoke than fire, a bait-and-switch product, non-existent oversight, the subliminal subversion of the Constitution, and the central character is qualified to be little more than a whistling hollywood second-banana in a buddy western.

Because of the volume of research this story requires, this post as well as follow-up postings will be re-edited over the next few days. Unlike most journalists who have tried to connect the dots, I am not following the money. I am following the slime trail.

Instead of spending a lot of time admonishing you about the excesses of the Bush family or Neil in particular, I just want to examine the public record and asked some unasked questions that I believe weave a quite different story than you will find anywhere else.

Neil's Divorce

The first unusual fact that everyone who examines Neil's public record will discover involves the unusual behavior his former wife testified to in relation to the divorce proceeding. Neil's household behavior had become so bizarre that his wife ripped some hair off his head to be tested for drugs. A second time she pocketed a wisp of hair from a stylist's studio for the same reason.

Neil Bush's lawyer claimed the former wife was practicing "voodoo". Let's assume Bush's wife of twenty plus years, a former schoolteacher and mother of his children was not walking around with a little Neil voodoo doll with pins in it.

Let's assume, she really did want to have the hair tested because of the behavior she was witnessing. If the drug were alcohol abuse, a hair sample would be unnecessary because according to this and many other sites here's what she was worried about:

What type of drugs can be detected in a standard hair test?

Cocaine (Cocaine & Benzoylecgonine), Marijuana, Opiates (Codeine, Morphine & 6-Monacteyl Morphine), Methamphetamine (Methamphetamine/Amphetamine & Ecstasy), and Phencyclidine (PCP). These five drug classes are mandated for testing by the Federal Government.

Oh. That's an interesting concern, don't you think? Maybe she knows something the rest of us should know.

But let's assume Neil is innocent of illegal drug use. What could explain the behavior? Another disturbing clue is found in the divorce public record.

Neil Bush's trips to the Arab Republic, Asia, and the Pacific might hardly be considered a series of boring hotel stays. That means that he would be writing home about the stinking mint that was left on his pillow.

But that's not at all Neil's experience. No, Neil testified that on at least two occasions, a woman knocked on his door and asked to have sex. And , not wanting to offend the locals, Neil obliged.

Now, everyone who covered this part of the story leaves it at that and wags a finger. But my concern -cough- goes a little deeper. How does an unidentified woman walk past the Secret Service and knock on Neil's door for a nooner unless the woman is pre-screened as a concubine assigned to the administration?

I mean, if Clinton sharing a cigar with Monica Lewinski was a security threat, what the hell would you call this? And how -pardon the pun- widespread is this practice? Is it limited to the Bush Bros? Chaney? Does a Unik visit Condolezza as an ice breaker while visiting?

But let's finish the lap. If Elliot Spitzer's infidelity is all over the internet, has the administration been compromised? And which one? Does Osama Bin Laden relax on Friday nights by having a beer party featuring stag films of the American government officials who preach but practice abroad?

And finally, was Bush's erratic behavior the results of willfully taking drugs or being drugged? And what are those conversations like in the Gulf and China - small talk or state secrets?

Postscript to the preface:

Oh, actually there is one more detail that no one talks about. Only the Bush administration and their hosts know who these visitors were, male or female, child or adult, predisposed to the exotic or missionaries.

The origin of Ignite, Inc. was consummated in this stew of inbred, power broking hubris.

Next: Neil Bush - Igniting Investigation