USATODAY.com - Report: Education Dept. funds need monitoring

By Greg Toppo, USA TODAY
One Sunday last October, readers of The Dallas Morning News opened their newspapers to an angry op-ed penned by Marcela Garcini, a self-described "ninja parent" who took the Dallas school system to task for dragging its heels on No Child Left Behind, saying it was "limiting the future and opportunities for our children."
"I am tired of hearing excuses about the lack of funding for schools, particularly under No Child Left Behind," she said.
Garcini wanted readers to know that, thanks to NCLB, students in "failing" schools now had the right to transfer to better-performing schools. "It's time to say 'basta!' (stop!). Our children don't want, nor does any child deserve, to be left behind."
Appearing 23 days before the Nov. 2 election, her piece read like an ad for President Bush's 2002 education reform law, a cornerstone of his domestic policy. But what readers never knew was that, for all practical purposes, it was an ad paid for, in part, by taxpayers, through a grant from the Bush administration."

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