The Three R's at the department of education.

I got some attention with Alberto Gonzales "he who knows and knows not that he knows" so I thought I would try with the head of an other department -- Margaret Spellings

The government's total cost, however, is undoubtedly higher than $278 million because Nelnet did not act alone. Spellings said the agency has no plans to conduct audits to calculate a total. "I don't know if it's a knowable number," she said. "I guess it's knowable by somebody. But my inspector general doesn't know it, to my knowledge. And I don't. We haven't found out."

The number in question is improper payments via an especially absurd student loan guarantee sub-program which guaranteed lenders 9.5% interest rates. Spellings doesn't know if it is knowable, she guesses it is, she doesn't know who could know it and doesn't know if her inspector general knows it. Clearly she is qualified to lead the education of our children.

She also seems to be resistant to 'rithmatic.

This is an improvement over her predecessor Rod Paige who was reluctant to 'rite

Nelnet wrote the department in May 2003 to ask for confirmation that its plan was legal. The department, then led by Rod Paige, did not respond for 13 months. In that time, Nelnet inflated the volume of loans qualifying for the subsidies from $551 million to about $3.66 billion, the inspector general found. In June 2004, the department sent Nelnet a three-paragraph reply that offered no conclusion on whether the plan was legal.

You'd almost think they weren't trying to protect public money from bankers.

Given their weakness on the basics, I guess its best that the department outsourced the explanation that history tends to be in the past tense

Ellis E. Tredway, an executive vice president for Brazos Higher Education Authority, said ...
"I think there is fault with the department," Tredway said. "They came out with a new interpretation of what history had been."

Let's try to make sure they don't interpret what history is to be.