One of the issues that propelled George W Bush to the Presidency was the so-called “Texas miracle,” an education policy that focused on the performance of students on a statewide standardized test. The results of that testing made it appear as though Texas was making incredible strides in improving the skills of its children, and the nationwide “No Child Left Behind” program enacted under Bush is modeled on the Texas program. Now it looks as though Bush and his education secretary, Rod Paige, the former superintendent of Houston’s schools, cooked the books like their friends who worked at Enron in downtown Houston. While Texas students have improved their scores on the Texas test to a remarkable degree, improvement on nationwide standardized tests is in keeping with the national trend, and in some cases, student performance has actually declined. These days, it’s looking as though the “Texas miracle” was just a fraud designed to catapult Bush to higher office, and that all those critics who complained about the program producing schools that “teach to the test” were justified.