This research is being funded by people with a socially malignant agenda, and happily utilized by people whose own social aims are variously correspondent. Make of that what you will.

The No Child Left Behind act was so fundamentally flawed from it's conception, it's startling to me that anyone with actual socially progressive inclinations could be beguiled into pretending it was an improvement. My own state (reddest of the red) fought it tooth and nail, from the perspective of Republican philosophies related to federalism, and state freedom to pursue social agendas in the ways they best see fit. My take is that they (my state) was not interested in the more covert agenda the act seems most suited to promote.

I suppose we could have some conversation about the various ways in which the combination of political extremism and political compromise fosters unusual groups of allies and various forms of collusion, but that's rather beside the point, I think. It does strike me that, in the case of dubious social agendas, following the money can be informative. Don't know that you'd agree, but there it is.