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Republicans Vow To Free NCES From Political Meddling

May 26, 1999 1 min read
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In the days before and after the Feb. 10 press conference to announce NAEP reading scores, the Department of Education and Vice President Gore’s office were in touch about his participation. Following are several e-mail excerpts from those interchanges.

From: Jonathan Schnur (associate director of education policy for Mr. Gore) to David Frank (communications director to Secretary Riley), Feb. 9, 12:44 p.m.:

[Regarding Mr. Gore's statement] "We'll definitely add in the 'first time ever.' Can we [say] something like for the first time in XX (30?) years of testing under the National Assessment of Ed Progress, scores in every grade have improved. ..."

From: Mr. Schnur to Mr. Frank, Feb. 9, 9:02 p.m.:

"... it would be great if the attachment immediately after the press release would be the 7-page executive summary of the NAEP report. It is quite good and clear. Other statements (like Pat's [Forgione]) could be further down in a packet."

From: Mr. Schnur to Mr. Frank, Feb. 10:

"I also realize I probably called on you and others too much, too frequently, to pull this off. I am really going to work on making this easier for you and others there as we do VP education events and the announcements (as these will certainly continue, which is good for the VP, for the Department, and for education). ..."

SOURCE: Republicans on the House Education and the Workforce Committee.

A version of this article appeared in the June 02, 1999 edition of Education Week as Republicans Vow To Free NCES From Political Meddling

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