When the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was enacted in 2002, it was hailed as a bipartisan victory for education reform, promising student proficiency in math and science by 2014 — but funding issues and controversial measurement systems have hindered its success. According to the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, about 70 percent of schools are making adequate yearly progress, and national math achievement among tested students has improved since 2000. Certain areas, however, have not seen similar progress, such as reading achievement among 8th graders and graduation rates among minority students. The NCLB makes states accountable for holding their schools and students to exacting standards, and schools that fail to meet those standards for two consecutive years must undergo federally-mandated restructuring. While the basic premise of NCLB — to provide quality education to all children — is well accepted, it has suffered, in the view of many, from inadequate funding. In 2006, Democrats criticized the Bush administration for underfunding NCLB by more than $40 billion since 2001, and noted that the FY 2007 budget allocated only half the promised funding to assist disadvantaged students. The Department of Education’s inability to track and allocate funds, moreover, has made it difficult to provide necessary resources to schools most in need of assistance, according to the Government Accountability Office. Budgetary issues aside, stipulations in the law have made it difficult for some to implement the program. States are required to follow strict guidelines and success is measured by standardized tests, but critics say the law doesn’t allow for differing demographics or students’ varying abilities.

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) laissez-faire attitude toward regulation of investment banks is widely believed to have contributed to the depth of the current economic crisis. That the SEC was asleep at the switch was on clear display in March, when its chairman, Christopher Cox, declared he felt “a good deal of comfort” about investment banks’ capital cushions. Just three days later, Bear Stearns collapsed and was bought by JP Morgan Chase in a hastily arranged deal backed by $29 billion in taxpayer funds. The sale of Bear Stearns, one of the first rumbles in the financial earthquake, was presaged by a 2004 SEC decision that loosened capital rules and allowed brokerage units to take on greater debt. Since then, investment firms’ debt-to-assets ratios have risen — in Bear Stearns’ case, to as high as 33 to 1. Simultaneously in 2004, the SEC began outsourcing risk monitoring responsibilities to the banks themselves, while assigning only seven staffers to oversee the five largest investment houses, which controlled more than $4 trillion in assets. Despite the companies’ vanishing cushion against investment losses, the SEC did nothing in the case of Bear Stearns to address the bank’s issues of heightened risk. As an SEC inspector general’s report put it in September, it is “undisputable” that the SEC “failed to carry out its mission” in that case. The public has ended up footing much of the bill.

In a busy Baghdad square, a disturbance between a group of Americans and Iraqis on September 16, 2007 resulted in the shooting death of 17 Iraqi civilians. The Americans involved were not military; they were private security contractors from a company called Blackwater. To date security contractors in Iraq number around 48,000 from various companies. Similarly, jobs such as cooking and cleaning on military bases — positions that in past wars were largely filled by military or government personnel — are increasingly outsourced to private companies. The number of private contractors, as well as the amount of money the government pays them, has risen considerably as the Iraq war has gone on, according to the Center for Public Integrity’s 2007 report, Windfalls of War II. The result has been less coordination in missions involving both military and private groups, such as U.K.-based Erinys, and U.S.-based Blackwater and KBR. The problem was highlighted in 2004, when insurgents ambushed a KBR truck convoy and drivers refused to work until security was improved. Without the deliveries, the military was left without adequate fuel, water, and ammunition. A complicating factor has been the ambiguous legal status of private contractors. In the 2007 Blackwater shooting, the security firm initially maintained that the guards fired in self-defense, but investigations by the Iraqi government and the Federal Bureau of Investigation both conclude that the only shots fired came from Blackwater employees. The Department of Defense holds its contractors liable under laws covering the military, but Blackwater works for the State Department, which does not. Critics say that such large-scale security contracting results in a lack of coordination and accountability which poses a risk to American troops as well as to Iraqis, and that mistakes made by U.S.

High-powered weapons smuggled into Mexico from the United States are arming drug cartels in a bloody war with Mexican authorities that has killed more than 4,000 in 2008 alone, including hundreds of police officers, soldiers, and prosecutors — all while Mexico’s calls for the United States to cut off the flow have had little effect. Mexico’s strict gun laws make buying the weapons difficult, but in the United States, they are sold legally at stores, gun shows, and flea markets — and then smuggled across the border. The Department of Justice’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) found that more than 90 percent of guns seized at the Mexican border were originally sold in the United States, two-thirds of which have been traced back to Texas, Arizona, and California. In a report issued in November, the Brookings Institution estimated that 2,000 guns cross the border into Mexico every day. Only 100 U.S. firearms agents and 35 inspectors are stationed along the border (compared to 16,000 Border Patrol agents).