The minotaur, bastard freak child of Pasiphae, shame of Minos, dark secret down-bringer of Crete, somehow the image has always stayed with me; and considering the crisis in our public schools I wonder if there isn’t a correlation between this myth and the manufactured education crisis.

So, here I am, walking the labyrinthine halls of this urban middle school to which I am confined, wondering how long all this absurdity will continue to play out. I think of the year so far, year two of teaching from a canned curriculum designed to raise test scores at all costs. I recall various episodes since the beginning of the year: a veteran teacher weeping openly when the vice principle handed an award to three first-years whose sixth graders were the only ones to show significant gains in all areas. Later, at the monthly staff meeting, the clearly chagrined principal tried to assuage his ever-silent staff saying “I heard there were tears, but please don’t worry, we’re just trying to celebrate our successes because I know how you all work so hard!”

Last night I realized one of my dreams, to see and hear Jonathan Kozol. It was a warm fall evening in the historic LoDo district of Denver. As the last light of day fell on the old brick warehouses, across from Union Station upwards of 200 people gathered at the Tattered Cover Bookstore to listen to the man who is perhaps America's best known advocate for the educational rights of children. Kozol, despite being visibly gaunt from his partial fast, did not disappoint. It was an evening to remember and hopefully a touchstone for greater awareness and activism on the part of Colorado teachers. [Crossposted at www.educatorroundtable.org and dailykos.]

In Part 22, found here http://www.diatribune.com/... and here http://www.dailykos.com/... , entities as disparate as the National Council of Churches, the Forum for Education and Democracy, Fairfax County (Virginia) Superintendent Jack Dale and others weighed in on NCLB, none approvingly, and we

In Part 20 we found evidence that the foundation laid by former White House senior education advisor Sandy Kress for his No Child Left Behind may be crumbling under the weight of corruption and its own twin rackets, testing-and-assessment and supplemental educational services. Through those rackets, corporate elites close to the administration and family of George W.

In Part 18 we returned our attention to former White House senior educator advisor Sandy Kress, whose rewrite of Lyndon Johnson’s Elementary and Secondary Education Act turned that statute into an automatic teller machine for the corporate elite cozening to the administration and family of George W. Bush.

In Part 17 we dissected and disproved Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings’s denial of culpability in the corruption of Reading First, the presumed intellectual cornerstone of Sandy Kress’s No Child Left Behind.

In Part 16 we reviewed the Inspector General’s straightforward recommendations to eliminate corruption found in administration of the Reading First program, the presumed intellectual cornerstone of Sandy Kress’s No Child Left Behind.

In Part 15 we watched as an Inspector General’s report peeled back layer after layer of corruption, cronyism and federal law-skirting – even law-breaking?

In Part 14 we reviewed the first half of the Inspector General’s final report of its investigation of Reading First, the presumed intellectual cornerstone of No Child Left Behind. Rather than finding that children were learning to read, however, the Inspector General found that Reading First administrators were learning to break and replace federal law with their own preferences.

In Part 13 we reviewed part of the Rod Paige-Margaret Spellings effort to fertilize the "supplemental educational services" racket found within former White House senior education advisor Sandy Kress’s No Child Left Behind, the statute that Kress authored on behalf of George W. Bush and which now provides his bread-and-butter as a corporate lobbyist.