Quote:I was watching a recent program that pointed out this particular fact that in order to qualify for funds many schools throw overboard the children that they think cannot make the grade so that they can focus all attention upon those who are marginal but possible success.
It's all a numbers game. I can't remember the exact percentages, but each school was allowed a certain percentage of failure in each category of student, so they redistributed kids to dilute the effect of failure and spread it out over all the groups.
In other words, since one child who was identified with special needs constituted a larger percentage in that smaller subset than he or she would in the general school population of non-identified children, the powers that be might suddenly decide that child no longer qualified for or had special needs, so that he or she was put back into the bigger population - where they knew he or she would still fail, but it wouldn't have as big as an impact, percentage wise.
So a lot of kids- mostly those who were detrimental to a school's numbers or chance of success, ie those who struggled- ended up having services and a chance for an education stripped from them- instead of having it enhanced in any way by this program.
Whether or not Bush or his advisors realized this would happen - I don't know. I prefer to think of them as not very bright and/or forward -thinking rather than just plain evil. Maybe that's not very logical of me, after all the evidence to the contrary.