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Other Bush turns COWs to cash

By SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN
Published April 1, 2007

Now that former Gov. Jeb Bush is just Citizen Bush, I got to wondering about another member of the family who's largely out of the public eye: younger brother Neil.

As you might recall, Neil was a director of Silverado, the Denver savings and loan whose 1988 collapse cost U.S. taxpayers an estimated $1-billion. Federal regulators said Bush engaged in numerous conflicts of interest but, in what one critic called a "velvet slap on the hand," ruled that he could continue to work in the banking industry under certain restrictions.

Nonetheless, the 52-year-old Bush moved on to other business ventures that have taken him around the world, most recently to Saudi Arabia and the Jeddah Economic Forum last month.

Bush told the Arab News he was "bringing a delegation that talks of water-desalination technology - very amazing technology." It's also amazingly lucrative. The Saudis, whose per capita water consumption is among the world's highest, will spend billions of dollars over the next 20 years to build more desalination plants for their bone-dry country.

Given the kingdom's shortage of technical expertise, Saudi desalination projects present "ample opportunities" for U. S. companies, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce Web site.

The Arab News didn't ask, and Bush didn't say, if he had any financial ties to delegation members hoping to cash in on the desal bonanza. But he was up front about his own plans for another potentially rich Saudi market - schoolkids.

Bush is founder and chairman of Ignite Learning, an educational software company that developed Curriculum on Wheels, or COWs. Teachers use the COW - a machine that loosely resembles a small purple bovine - to show lively, preloaded videos on science and social studies topics.

With 37 percent of people in Saudi Arabia and other fast-growing Arab nations under age 15, Ignite Learning plans to recruit "skilled developers" to create an Arabic version of the curriculum, Bush said.

"We are starting to build these local ventures outside of the United States," he told the Arab News, though "we probably won't be penetrating this market thoroughly for the next two or three years."

While his oldest brother, the current U.S. president, is highly unpopular in the Middle East, Bush noted that their father is "admired a lot" for having liberated Kuwait from Iraq while he occupied the White House. One possible sign of gratitude? Among several wealthy foreigners who have invested in Ignite Learning is Mohammed Al Saddah, head of a Kuwaiti company.

Barbara Bush has also been an enthusiastic backer of her son's business. In 2004, the former first lady was guest of honor at an Oklahoma fundraiser with proceeds earmarked for purchase of COWs, the Los Angeles Times reported. And in 2005, Mrs. Bush donated an undisclosed sum to a Hurricane Katrina fund with the proviso it be used to buy COWs for Houston schools flooded with Katrina evacuees.

Since then, other schools have purchased COWs out of their own budgets. "We found our teachers and principals really like it - they like how easy it is to use and how the kids get it," Terry Abbott, spokesman for the Houston Independent School District, told me.

Some educators, though, find COWs gimmicky and question the cost, $3,800 a year to lease or $6,800 to own.

"You can't even get basics like paper and scissors and we went out and bought them," one middle-school teacher, Jon Dansby, told the Los Angeles Times. "I just see red."

Ignite Learning still does most of its business in Texas, where Neil Bush and his parents live, but has expanded to 20 other states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia. It has a full-time sales representative in Florida, where 31 COWs are now in use, including two in Tampa and the rest in Orange, Duval, Palm, Duval and Sarasota counties.

Though evidence remains anecdotal, marketing is based partly on the pitch that COWs can help boost scores on standardized tests like the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, or FCAT, one of Jeb Bush's pet projects as governor.

Ignite Learning could also cash in on one of President Bush's favorite initiatives, No Child Left Behind, which penalizes schools unless they can show by standardized tests that students have mastered certain skills. The controversial act could turn into a true cash cow for Neil Bush and his COWs.

As Business Week Online said in an item titled "No Bush Left Behind:"

"Across the country, some teachers complain President George W. Bush's makeover of public education promotes 'teaching to the test.' The president's younger brother Neil takes a different tack - he's SELLING to the test."

Susan Taylor Martin can be contacted at susan@sptimes.com.

[Last modified March 31, 2007, 21:38:09]