With all due respect, the criticism section as it stands is a total mess. Setting aside the fact that it reads as if the year is 2001, an inordinate amount of text is devoted to a recitation of the Bovard article, which is A) a clear partisan attack piece (it begins with a snide and largely irrelevant attack on then-president Clinton's character), B) a shoddy piece of opinion journalism overwrought with loaded assumptions (witness the dismissive tone about "politically correct noncompetitive recreation"), and C) dated. Did nobody else notice this thing is almost a decade old? Yet it is being used as the backbone for the longest subsection on an organization that is evolving, growing, and changing to this very day. Bovard *does* bring facts to the table but as it stands now they are sitting in a void of time and space. His article does not make it clear how statistically representative the examples of "corruption" were to Americorps as it functioned circa 1993-1999, let alone Americorps as it functions today.

I am not an expert by any means on Wikipedia's guidelines, I have never added or edited an article and it would not be appropriate for me to start here. But given this article's immediate onslaught of criticism, I would have expected an ongoing narrative about whether any stuck (especially with the imminent arrival of a conservative presidency) and how (and why) Americorps changed throughout the Bush years, leading into its present growth. Instead what we are left with is the cluttered product of a single user's anti-government tirade. I am not against noting that libertarians have a death wish for Americorps, but take, for instance, the section about Bovard's "unofficial source," who dismisses the reading program. From the beginning it was a rather questionable inclusion, but it is flatly contradicted by the study cited thereafter. Again, I'm no Wikipedia expert, but it seems to me an empirical measurement of reality should trump the anonymously-sourced attack from a pundit with a clear agenda. Why, then, is this whole exchange even necessary?

Equally embarrassing is the sentence about GED students, who now apparently need to be stigmatized for no reason. The short "Articles suggest..." paragraph is only a little less disastrous; it presupposes that helping people get welfare is a bad thing, a judgment call which I think ought to be left to the reader. And even setting all that aside, why, from a journalistic point of view, does the above paragraph re-introduce the Bovard article? It disrupts the readability of this page, making it all the clearer that the criticism section comes from someone who is more concerned with piling one slanted attack after another than with writing an informative, cogent article. Narrative context is jettisoned in yet another paragraph ("There have been a number of criticisms...") which goes on to raise vague, weaselly arguments sourced by an article that returns a 404. The user above me has a raised a critique that I think is also fair about the last paragraph's apparent opposition to the concept of self-esteem.

If I could make a suggestion (and given my lack of Wiki experience I freely welcome its rejection) this whole section, as well as the one above it, needs to be wiped clean. There is nothing wrong with noting that Americorps had some issues in the '90s, so long as this article leaves one able to discern that we are no longer living in the '90s. As it stands, the specific citations strike me as largely irrelevant cases of excess scrutinizing. The $20k+ cost to the taxpayer per volunteer is a valuable piece of information and should not be omitted from this article. It should also not be mentioned without reference to the benefits that Americorps volunteers provide. Contrary to the what the criticism section implies, it does not seem likely that tens of thousands of volunteers per year are being paid only to paint murals and put on puppet shows. If this means that Wiki editors have to conduct more contemporary research (the last 3-4 years seeming most appropriate) in order to determine just what services Americorps volunteers provide and who they affect, so be it. No doubt it would be even more difficult to assess how Americorps changes the lives and attitudes of its volunteers (and perhaps I am biased supposing from the onset that it creates more generous public services) but this, too, would be a benefit. Cite the cost, describe the benefits as neutrally as possible, and let the reader determine for himself whether the end result is "efficient." And move on. 173.52.83.2  M32