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20 YEARS OF NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND
Spellings, Bush (but not ‘W’) talk anniversary, future of education
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By Bethany Erickson
bethany.erickson@peoplenewspapers.com
Touted as the means to hold schools accountable, the No Child Left Behind Act received bipartisan support in 2001.
Twenty years later, and two years into a pandemic that continues to disrupt learning, two people involved in crafting that legislation spoke at the Bush Institute on a chilly February night.
Jeb Bush was governor of Florida when his brother — President George W. Bush — tasked his administration with crafting legislation that would demand accountability and ostensibly standardize education across the country.
Florida, Spellings said, was ‘way ahead of the game’ when it came to what the act was meant to create. Bush, who had joked earlier in the evening that he (like many governors at the time) wasn’t too sure about the federal intrusion, said, “I forgive you now.”
“It’s our anniversary, honey,” Spellings joked back.
Spellings said, by and large, she was happy with what the act accomplished - specifically in the arena of annual testing and data collection. Still, she acknowledged there were missteps and that it wasn’t the perfect bill.
“(There was) too much one-size-fits-all,” she said. “Some misstarts on implementation. But for the most part, I’d do it again.”
Bush marveled at the bipartisan support the bill had.
“You had some of the most liberal members of Congress with John Boehner and … solid, traditional conservatives, led by the president and Margaret and others in a bipartisan fashion passing a bill that was desperately needed, I’d say, in almost all states,” he said.
The bill, Spelling said, was built from the idea that there is a “moral imperative to really see about the needs of every single student.”
Spellings also said that she didn’t think
Members of the Bush White House team that oversaw the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act gathered with Bush Institute executive director Holly Kuzmich, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, and former U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings to celebrate its
20th anniversary. (PHOTOS: COURTESY THE GEORGE W. BUSH PRESIDENTIAL CENTER)
the bill would’ve passed today, given the calls during the pandemic (and even before then) to stop “high-stakes” testing.
“If people actually knew what this was going to mean in their schools and their communities, we probably couldn’t have passed it 87 to 10,” she said. “It clearly exposed these incredible gaps.”
Thanks to the pandemic, students didn’t take the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) test in 2020, and in 2021, accountability ratings were paused for a second year.
“In Texas, we’re going to go two years without any statewide testing and at least four years without school ratings,” Spellings said. “There’s a lot of murkiness around that. But I like to say we need to care enough to find out. “We have to take back the moral high ground and say, ‘Listen, we can’t help your kid if we don’t know where that kid is,’” she added. “How do we get (the horses) back in the barn? We’ve got to rebuild the political imperative.”
Bush said that most people think there should be some way to assess where children are in terms of education — but that there is room for innovation and improvement when it comes to how.
“My biggest frustration is that we’re living in 2022, and the testing is the same as it existed in 1980,” he said. “It drives me nuts.
“I think there’s probably someone that could probably come up with a test where you could determine where a kid stands, get it back in the hands of a teacher and a parent so that there could be not just an awareness of where they are, but a strategy on how to rectify their deficiencies and make this something that is part of the learning experience.”
See more of the conversation about education with Spellings and Bush at peoplenewspapers.com.
Bluffview Man Charged in Oil and Gas Fraud Case
By Bethany Erickson
bethany.erickson@peoplenewspapers.com
A Bluffview man was among four accused of running afoul of securities laws when convincing people to invest in oil and gas interests.
In documents filed in late 2021, the Securities and Exchange Commission alleges that Timothy Burroughs, Jay Holstine, John Griffin, and Michael Oswald Williams raised roughly $3.2 million from 50 investors through the sale of fraudulent and unregistered interests in two oil and gas ventures offered by Petrobridge Energy LLC.
According to court documents, the government alleges that between February 2016 and March 2017, Burroughs falsely promised potential investors inflated returns and did not disclose that he had an extensive history of disciplinary actions for violating state securities laws.
The SEC said Burroughs hired Holstine, who had no oil and gas operations experience, as the “public face” of Petrobridge after a prospective investor shared Burroughs’ disciplinary history on a consumer fraud website.
“Burroughs and Holstine then revised corporate records relating to Petrobridge’s ownership and operation to remove references to Burroughs’s involvement,” the SEC said.
However, Burroughs continued to run the company’s day-to-day operations, preparing offering materials that the SEC said misrepresented aspects of the investment, including overstating acreage under lease and promising returns as high as 59%.
Burroughs and Holstine then recruited Griffin — who lives in Bluffview — and Williams to sell the offerings through nationwide cold-calling campaigns, the SEC said.
“Griffin and Williams, the two primary Petrobridge salespeople, earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales commission,” court documents said. “Neither one was registered as a broker.”
Griffin, 48, was the vice president of Petrobridge. In 2015, the South Carolina Securities Commissioner sanctioned him for omitting details in the sale of securities and acting as an unregistered agent.
Burroughs and Holstine live in Plano, and Williams lives in Williamsburg, Virginia.
Burroughs and Holstine are charged with violating federal antifraud provisions, while Williams and Griffin are accused of acting as unregistered brokers in violation of federal securities laws.
Pending court approval, Holstine, Griffin, and Williams have agreed to settle the SEC’s charges by agreeing to final judgements that forbid them from committing future violations and paying civil penalties and disgorgements. Griffin, who will pay $150,469.84 in disgorgement plus prejudgement interest and a $50,000 civil penalty, agreed (along with Williams) to certain securities industry and penny stock bars.
The case against Burroughs is headed to court, where the SEC is expected to seek permanent injunctions, disgorgements and penalties, and a bar from serving as an officer or director of a publicly-traded company.
During a congressional delegation to Ukraine, U.S. Rep. Collin Allred, D-Dallas, visited the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center on International Holocaust Memorial Day (Jan. 27).
(PHOTO: COURTESY U.S. REP. COLLIN ALLRED)
Allred Visits Ukraine, Returns With COVID
With the world threatened by an ongoing pandemic and the potential for war in Eastern Europe, U.S. Rep. Collin Allred, D-Dallas, visited Ukraine and returned with a mild case of COVID-19.
The Hillcrest High School graduate and member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee joined a bipartisan delegation in meeting with NATO and the EU officials in Brussels, Belgium, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv.
The delegation led by House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Gregory Meeks (D-New York) discussed the buildup of Russian troops along Ukraine’s border and in Belarus.
“The United States, our EU and NATO allies, and Ukraine all stand united in working to deter Russian aggression at the Ukrainian border,” Allred said. “Ukraine is a vital democracy in the region, and I saw firsthand the strong will and determination of its people to protect that democracy.”
The delegation also visited the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center to commemorate International Holocaust Memorial Day.
Allred tested negative for COVID-19 before boarding for the trip and several times during it. The fully vaccinated congressman suffered only mild symptoms and followed CDC and U.S. House quarantine guidelines after testing positive upon returning to the U.S.
“Despite this diagnosis, this was still a vitally important trip, where my colleagues and I heard directly from NATO, EU, and Ukrainian officials about the threat of Russian aggression,” he said. “Our bipartisan delegation traveled thousands of miles and together, showed our strong commitment to the Ukrainian people.”
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