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This chapter looks at Lindsay's monthly progress report to the Board of Directors, which described that the delay in additional contracts in the reconnaissance field was due to organizational problems in Washington. As the bureaucratic gridlock continued, Itek's Corona team pushed forward on a variety of fronts to improve the effectiveness of the program. Itek proposed taking photographs of a study area both during the day and the night for an extended period. The daytime photographs would provide a map of the actual changes that occurred, for example, in missile deployments. In the meantime, as Itek's scientists and engineers worked on these new proposals, a steady stream of enhancements continued on the camera system itself. Itek's Mural camera system, essentially two cameras mated to provide stereo photography, had been a great leap forward.

The actor-network theory illuminates the interconnectivity of material objects, human actors, and their environments. The actor network emerges when the multiple actions of those attending to school failure flows from one location to many others. No Child Left Behind (NCLB) mandates and directives implied that school failure would be remedied if people acted according to the policy; as seen in this study. Federal and state mandates develop and achieve salience through specific discourses and actions adopted by local entities. NCLB drove the interface between actors and their environments. The supplemental educational service, which was acclaimed by the federal and local educational authorities as a “parent-choice” program, drew mixed responses from parents. This chapter illustrates how actors came to share recognition of various forms of failure and, further, how they developed robust interventions and implemented action steps. They mutually defined the categorical distinctions of failure and continued to interpret the highly visible and consequential signs, like failing test scores and low marks on progress reports.

After being acquitted in a bribery trial, the US Congress believed (but couldn’t prove) that the evidence tapes in his case contained coded references to the bribery. I was asked to determine whether that their recorded language showed evidence of being coded. The speech event took the form of a progress report in which the speakers’ topics were consistent in their schemas about getting some reference letters supporting a mutual friend. However, the way they communicated their topics and responses, including excessive use of pause fillers, checks on confirmation of mutual understanding, missing follow-ups, and unusual anaphoric referencing, were key to the conclusion that the conversations indeed were conducted in a hastily constructed, partially disguised code. Hasting then was impeached and removed from the bench.