Posted on 03/22/2008 1:50:05 PM PDT by Clintonfatigued
McGraw-Hill Cos. spent $960,000 lobbying the government in 2007 on a range of issues including education and oversight of credit-rating agencies.
According to a disclosure form posted Feb. 14 by the Senate's public records office, McGraw-Hill spent $440,000 in the first half of 2007 and $520,000 in the second half on lobbying.
McGraw-Hill, which publishes textbooks and rates credit quality, lobbied on issues including the protection of intellectual property, No Child Left Behind and legislation affecting oversight of credit-rating agencies.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.moneycentral.msn.com ...
The role that campaign contributions play in the government schools’ choice of who will publish what textbooks is a topic that has not been covered. But it needs to be. Those of us who attended public schools can testify to how badly written and monumentally boring the schoolbooks are. All too often, whose books and their contents are decided for the students on the basis of campaign contributions, not academic merit.
ping
We would all be surprised to know how lucrative ‘big textbook’ has become. Think about how many public schools, community colleges, and other types of learning institutions there are. What is their slice of the economy? What does the NEA know and how are they tied together? And why do new textbooks come out every year with only minor changes, negating older editions for required courses? Hmmmm...???
The solution to the problem is NOT to focus on lobbying. Lobbying is, afterall, protected under the First Amendment.
The core problem is that government is so heavily involved in education in the first place.
Part of the reason textbook costs are high is each state adopts different education standards. The teachers resist national standards because then they can't game the system and hide poor results like they do today. They rely upon there being apple vs. orange results.
I do believe you skipped over the greed part.
Or, students could but "A Patriot's History of the United States" and a) have a better book, b) have the truth, and c) make LS rich!!
Many CEOs work to grow their companies out of vanity and the fun of competing and winning. They are not driven by greed as much as you think.
My back yard is well over a hundred acres, I envy no one!
I accept you don't envy Terry McGraw. I envy you in a nice way for having a hundred acres to do with as you please.
When I read, “McGraw-Hill textbook publisher lobbying,” I thought: Oh, no, lobbying for what?
I buy and give many books published by McGraw-Hill to our (homeschooled) children. It has appeared to me that McGraw-Hill has been monopolizing the market, but I have no complaints because their books are so inexpensive, and we’ve found them reliable. So far, I haven’t found any offensive information in the books I’ve bought from this company.
If Terry McGraw is conservative, I’m glad to hear it. As per the article, McGraw-Hill lobbied “on” No Child Left Behind. I’m not sure what that means. Did they lobby for or against it? Well, I searched and, as per their website, they appear to be in favor of it.
States can and do lose federal money frequently for failing to achieve improvements in results so NCLB is having some effect in improving education. Its biggest flaw is that states have too much autonomy in choosing their own goals. This might encourage innovation but more so it encourages gaming the system, trying to get that federal money without delivering real results. McGraw-Hill has some lost business for refusing to give fake test results to states while their competitors are more willing to give them any numbers they want.
NCLB is built on the leftest concept of equal outcome rather than equal opportunity. It encourages schools to channel extra money not to the gifted but to the left side of the bell curve where that money will not achieve much return on investment. For that I'm against it. But really gifted students shouldn't even be in public school. I don't care all that much what the public schools do as I see it as a lost cause continuing to get worse.
Interesting. Thanks for the info. That does explain why McGraw-Hill supports NCLB.
For the record, though I’ll talk amicably about public school education, I really oppose the whole idea. A child’s parents should be responsible for educating the child or paying for the child’s education. State-funded education should be kept at a bare minimum, and it should be entirely optional. I don’t care if a child is considered “gifted”. When we bring children into the world, we alone should be held responsible to see that they are well-educated. I don’t expect other people to pay our education bills, and I shouldn’t haven’t to pay theirs, either.
The reason I support NCLB is that it forces public schools to show good results in order to receive federal funds. But, your point about its flaw in allowing states to set their own standards is a good one; teachers here have made the same point.
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