George E. Lowe & The Secret War To Save American Public Education, Pt. 1
Bruce Wilson printable version print page     Bookmark and Share
Fri Jun 13, 2008 at 02:06:33 PM EST
As George Lowe describes it, "A Nation At Risk" was created and then rushed out, under the noses of the Christian movement conservatives in Reagan's administration, in a surprise bureaucratic gambit that committed Reagan to strong support for public education and so blocked the plans of the Reagan conservatives to defund and destroy America's public schools.
George E. Lowe served as Ronald Reagan's first Secretary of Education T. H. Bell's "non-political" speechwriter ('nonpolitical' in this case meant that Lowe wasn't a schedule "c", Republican appointee). In fact, Lowe was secretly a Democrat who had been registered as an independent. A friend of Lowe's a moderate Republican from the Nixon Administration vouched for Lowe. In this 20 minute video interview I did with George Lowe this May, Lowe described his role in helping create the landmark Reagan Administration report on public education, "A Nation at Risk". Many journalists and political observers have wondered about how the report possibly came into existence given that Reagan had run on a platform, hostile to public education, that included shutting down the federal Department of Education and instituting voucher programs.


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George E. Lowe & The Secret War To Save American Public Education, Pt. 1 | 3 comments (3 topical, 0 hidden)
Bruce, I'd very much appreciate it (none / 0)
If you would provide regular html links to multimedia presentations like this, rather than requiring us to use flash. If you must use flash, please follow accessibility guidelines so that blind visitors to talk2action can hear the interview. The way you have it now, none of the buttons are labelled.

by Dave on Fri Jun 13, 2008 at 08:45:20 PM EST
Dave, can you refer me to a page with a quick... (none / 0)
Explanation of how to do that ? I'd be glad to oblige. Best, Bruce

by Bruce Wilson on Tue Jun 24, 2008 at 10:23:54 PM EST
Parent
Thanks Bruce. (none / 0)
I know very little about the technical aspects of web design, but I'll help how ever I can, including checking pages with a screen reader to see if they're accessible. I think the easiest way would be to provide normal links to the content and skip the flash altogether. You could leave the flash there for others who like to use it. Just provide regular links as an alternative. The regular links on Talk2Action are labeled and usable.
If you want to try to implement accessible flash, go to:
http://access.adobe.com
and check out "best practices for accessible flash design". There is also a practical book on accessible web design by O'Reilly publishing called: "Design Accessible Web Sites - Thirty-six Keys to Creating Content for All Audiences and Platforms". Finally, let me give you a site with accessible flash.
www.speakeasy.net/speedtest
When I read your flash buttons, I just get meaningless numbers. When I read theirs, I hear the city and state for each server. Again, I don't know how their design differs from yours, but maybe you can figure it out looking at the site.
Thanks again.


by Dave on Sat Jun 28, 2008 at 05:04:15 PM EST
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George E. Lowe & The Secret War To Save American Public Education, Pt. 1 | 3 comments (3 topical, 0 hidden)

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