Armstrong Williams Was Against NCLB BEFORE He Was Paid To Be For It [View All]

Armstrong Williams Was Against NCLB BEFORE He Was Paid To Be For It

http://mediamatters.org/items/200501120001I


In 2001, Armstrong Williams criticized aspect of plan he was later paid to promote

In an attempt to defend his decision to accept $240,000 from the Bush administration in return for promoting the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) education law, Armstrong Williams has claimed that he always supported the policy. But in 2001, he strongly criticized the administration's decision to drop private school vouchers from NCLB, even touting this criticism on television and going so far as to write in his nationally syndicated column that by dropping the voucher provision, Bush had "scooped out" the legislation's "soul." And Williams's January 10 column, purporting to explain his arrangement with the Bush administration, focused much more on his support for vouchers than his support for NCLB.

According to a Media Matters search, Williams mentioned No Child Left Behind in only one article prior to accepting the money to promote the law in December 2003 -- and specifically praised NCLB in at least five columns since. In numerous January 7 TV appearances responding to USA Today's report exposing his contract with the Bush administration to promote NCLB, Williams attested to a longstanding belief in NCLB; for example, on CNN's American Morning, Williams said that NCLB was "something that I really believed in as a commentator, something I wrote often about."

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