@lain Really bad set of examples to highlight. Don't know about the last one, but:
Lowest performing schools means low IQ students. We've known for decades and decades pouring more money into them does nothing (although returning to old fashioned discipline and phonics would; once upon a time the "talented tenth" of negroes were able to teach enough of their own children useful levels of stuff, and for that matter my own school system did half a century ago, we just insisted on "white behavior" from them and rewarded or punished based on that).
These things are purely performative besides being gifts to teachers unions, like how Head Start started in 1965 can't be touched, despite all gains to students being lost in a few years.
I seem to recall a regime change in Afghanistan that changed prospects for women in general, and again in general this was fighting some of a society's basic principles. See also @CaptainComfy theory the money could have been skimmed by the usual suspects.
"One Laptop Per Child" was massively botched when it came to execution of the software, plus the exclusive focus on the Third World was a marketing and sales killer, "Thus stuff isn't good enough for your own children??." It might have been a good idea, but anyone familiar with Negroponte wasn't surprised. Some great visions, but management, not so much.
