 | It seems that the Education Department has borrowed from the playbook
of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM). Michael J.
Bosse ["The NCTM standards in light of the new math movement: a
warning!," Journal of Mathematical Behavior, Vol. 14 (1995) 171-201]
described how the 1989 standards were produced by less than a dozen
"educators."
In page 196, Bosse wrote:
"As previously mentioned, the NCTM hired a public relations firm to
promote the Standards and to get it into the eye of politicians and
policy makers. Some believed that the marketing strategy employed by
the NCTM is one of the most significant successes of the Standards.
We know that is is important to consider how to get the message
through. We realized that what we did must influence policy
makers, and not teachers alone. We deliberately went out to
influence policy makers. (NCTM4)
At the national level there's plenty of Standards-waiving
going on to promote standards in other curricula. Therefore,
the standards as a deliberate political act is successful.
(NCTM2)
Undeniably, this public relations strategy employed by the NCTM has
been enormously successful in its endeavors. With the promotion of
theStandards by a public relations firm and some influential
congressmen on the federal level, the Standards quickly reached the
attention of the nation. So impressed were some educationally minded
politicians with the NCTM Standards that the lack of standards in other
curricular areas was questioned. This became the impetus for other
fields to generate their own set of standards."
The public relations firm retained by the NCTM is Burson Marsteller,
230 Park Ave South, New York City. Evidently, the NCTM paid this firm
about $250,000.
This campaign has fleeced more than $2 billion from the National
Science Foundation, mostly for the promotion of assorted rubbish.
Dom Rosa
=========================================
http://www.ctnow.com/news/nationworld/hc-2bushaid0108.artjan08,1,2354...
Journalist Got Fee To Boost `No Child'
Education Dept. Defends Payment
By HOWARD KURTZ
Washington Post
January 8 2005
WASHINGTON -- The Education Department paid commentator Armstrong
Williams $241,000 to help promote President Bush's No Child Left
Behind law on the air, an arrangement that Williams acknowledged
Friday involved "bad judgment" on his part.
In taking the money, funneled through the Ketchum Inc. public
relations firm, Williams produced and aired a commercial on his
syndicated television and radio shows featuring Education Secretary
Roderick Paige, touted Bush's education policy and urged other
programs to interview Paige.
He did not disclose the contract when talking about the law during
cable television appearances, or writing about it in his newspaper
column.
Congressional Democrats immediately accused the administration of
trying to bribe journalists. The newspaper syndicate that runs
Williams, Tribune Media Services, which like The Courant is owned by
Tribune Co., canceled his column Friday. And one TV network dropped his
program pending an investigation.
Williams, one of the most prominent black conservatives in the media,
said he understands "why some people think it's unethical." Asked
whether people would be justified in believing that he sold his
opinions to the government for cash, Williams said: "It's fair for
someone to make that assessment."
The Education Department contract, first reported Friday by USA Today,
increased criticism of the administration's aggressive approach to news
management.
The department already has paid Ketchum $700,000 to rate journalists on
how positively or negatively they report on No Child Left Behind, and
to produce a video release on the law that was used by some television
stations as if it were real news. Other government agencies - including
the Census Bureau and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -
also have distributed such pre-packaged videos, a practice that
congressional auditors have described as illegal in some cases.
Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., ranking Democrat on the House education
committee, said the Williams contract "is propaganda, it's unethical,
it's dangerous and it's illegal. ... This is worthy of Pravda."
Committee Chairman John Boehner, R-Ohio, agreed to join Miller in
requesting an inspector general's investigation, a spokesman said.
Miller cited two Government Accountability Office opinions that the
administration violated federal law with video news releases.
In May, the GAO criticized the Health and Human Services Department
for using the technique to promote Medicare's new prescription drug
benefit. This week, it criticized the Office of National Drug Control
Policy for distributing similar reports with a contractor posing as a
journalist.
Miller, joined by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and
other Democrats, asked Bush in a letter to put an end to "covert
propaganda."
In a separate letter, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and
Sens. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., and Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., asked the
president to recover the money paid to Williams. "We believe that the
act of bribing journalists to bias their news in favor of government
policies undermines the integrity of our democracy," they wrote.
The Education Department defended the contract, which Paige knew about
in advance, as a minority outreach effort through Williams' syndicated
program, "The Right Side."
"Our contract was for advertising," department spokesman John Gibbons
said. "Our intent was to reach out to minority audiences. Armstrong
went out and talked about it - we didn't have anything to do with
that."
But the contract also required Williams to "utilize his long term
working relationship" with black producers to "encourage" them to
"periodically address the No Child Left Behind Act."
"Our objective was to put out basic information to audiences. ... We
certainly had no intention to do it in an underhanded way," Gibbons
added. He said the department stopped putting out video news releases
after the first GAO report and has no other contract involving payments
to journalists. Ketchum executives declined to comment.
Alex Jones, director of Harvard's Shorenstein media center, said he is
"disgusted" by what he called "the worst kind of fakery and flackery"
on Williams's part. "It's propaganda masquerading as news, paid by
government, truly a recipe from hell," he said. "It would make any
thinking person hearing any pundit speak want to say, 'OK, how much did
they pay you to say that?'" The contract also shows that "the Bush
administration neither understands nor respects the idea of an
independent media," Jones said.
As a longtime supporter of No Child Left Behind, Williams said, he was
receptive in the summer of 2003 when Education Department and Ketchum
officials approached him about buying an ad on "The Right Side" to
promote the law. While he "agonized" over the first of two six-month
contracts, he said, the law "is something I believe in."
Williams said he aired the spot twice on each "Right Side" broadcast
and disclosed the contract on that show. He said he successfully urged
another black television personality, Steve Harvey, to twice interview
Paige.
Williams has written several newspaper columns defending
administration education policy. Last January, he wrote that the No
Child Left Behind law "has provided more funds to poor children than
any other education bill in this country's history."
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