The Way of the Whigs! Republican Party Reaches Nadir in Popular Opinion

Call it official. Americans now hate the Republican Party.

In the long history of Gallup polling the GOP this week touched new lows. Today only 28% of Americans have a favorable opinion of the GOP. Worse, if you are the preternaturally-tanned John Boehner, the Gallup poll numbers look like your party jumped off a cliff. The “favorable opinion” line on the graph points straight down.

This is the kind of political nadir no one living in America today has ever seen.

Even worse, the Grand Old Party has an unfavorable rating of 62%, also the highest ever recorded, the kind of rating not seen since the demise of the Whig Party.

It’s so bad even 27% of those who identify themselves as “Republicans” don’t like the Republican Party. Only half of moderate Republicans say they “mostly vote” for Republicans during elections, another bad sign for the nutty right.

How do we account for this decline in the popularity of the Republican Party? How have they earned their high “unfavorable ratings?” The racists, bullies and imbeciles who speak for and lead the party have had to work hard. The Frankenstein monster the GOP created, the Tea Party wing, have played a major role.

Let us count the ways Republicans have managed to drive down their own ratings:

Shutting down the government certainly didn't help (with 62% of Americans placing blame on Republicans for the debacle and 70% expressing disapproval of GOP tactics). A few of the “lowlights” on the path to the lowest "favorable" ratings ever:

1. Planning to shut down the government all along and then denying any blame for the pain that might result. According to Michael A. Needham of the conservative Heritage Action group this shutdown has been in the planning since right-wingers gathered last January and decided to use the power of the purse to defund Obamacare. “At least at Heritage Action, we felt very strongly from the start that this was a fight that we were going to pick.” So they picked it, like spoiled punks, with the Koch brothers investing $200 million in support of the cause.

2. Denying death benefits to families of four U.S. military service members killed last weekend in Afghanistan. This was so unpopular even Tea Party stalwarts quickly voted to pass a special funding measure to rectify the situation.

3. Closing down the National Park system, canceling plans for at least six weddings in Yosemite! Great idea! And turning away tens of thousands of visitors daily, because the GOP apparently hates Nature. “We’re all kind of pissed off,” was how Karen Najaran, 60, put it when she was turned away at the gates to Yosemite.

4. Killing the economy, even in bright red states like Utah. One hotel owner outside of Zion National Park admits losing $19,000 in canceled reservations. (This has forced Republican governors to offer to pay the tab to reopen the parks!)

5. Furloughing hundreds of thousands of government workers, cutting GDP by $1.6 billion per week, and putting a dent in consumer spending. Nothing makes you more unpopular than taking money out of workers pockets—kind of a conservative specialty!

(Ironically, Congress still gets paid. That's how the popularity of the Republican Party goes down!!)

Throwing repeated hissy fits. (This includes blaming ACORN for loss of the 2008 election. Next, you warn that providing government health care to those without health insurance will lead to unplugging Granny, who already has government health care. Then you threaten to secede after another well-deserved electoral defeat in 2012. And now you claim Obama should be impeached because he won’t negotiate about the Affordable Healthcare Act. Why is he so stubborn? Because both houses of Congress passed it, he signed it, and the U. S. Supreme Court upheld it).

Republicans eating their own! With the Tea Party attacking anyone not deemed conservative enough, and by that, apparently this would mean anyone not willing to return to the good old days of burning witches and executing Sodomites, moderate GOP voices have been silenced. That's how the popularity of the Republican Party goes down!!!

Ted Cruz! Even most Republican lawmakers don’t like the arrogant junior U. S. Senator from Texas. Mike Lee, a Cruz ally, whined about a recent meeting of Republican senators. “It was an all-out attack against Ted Cruz and me. It was unflattering. It was unfair. It was demeaning. It was demeaning to Sen. Cruz and me, but more than anything, it was demeaning to those who engaged in the attack.”

Having Ted Cruz, kind of a weasel, as the face of the shutdown and the conscience (such as it is) of your party.

Driving down the popularity of your own party by having ultra-conservative Colorado members of the U. S. House of Representatives vote against money to help areas devastated by Hurricane Sandy. Then turning around and asking for federal disaster relief in the wake of recent flooding in Boulder, Colorado. Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, a member of the Republican Party, himself, put it succinctly: “They’re hypocrites. That’s what they are.”

Having Glenn Beck as the nutty voice of your party. (This past March he claimed that a shape-shifting lizard-human might be working for the Secret Service.)

Also helping make the GOP unpopular: Rush Limbaugh, hater of women, hater of gays, and pretty much hater of everyone except Rush Limbaugh, and possibly Sarah Palin.

Making women cringe with calls for vaginal probes and an end to abortions in cases of rape and incest. Because God wants you to get pregnant! And refusing to support the Equal Pay Act and a thousand other insults to females in general.

Wanting to bomb Syria, or even puts “boots on the ground” as GOP Senator James Inhofe suggested in May. Then blaming President Obama for drawing a red line and threatening to bomb Syria, but not doing so. Not to mention, earning bonus “unpopularity points” by claiming that President Obama is trampling the U. S. Constitution, and guilty of treason, when he asks Congress to give him authority to take action in Syria (by a 62-30% margin, Americans opposed U. S. military action).

Blocking attempts to raise the minimum wage (favored by Americans 71-27%, by young people, 18-29, 78-20%, and even narrowly by Republicans, 50-48%). Also: attacking unionized workers, because union workers ask for higher wages.

Ignoring the needs of middle class families, while demanding lower taxes for giant corporations because…well, these corporations are racking up the highest profits in history.

Promising to focus on “jobs, jobs, jobs,” during every election and then spending the last three years voting 42 times to kill the Affordable Healthcare Act.

Rick Perry! He's helping lower Republican ratings by traveling to Maryland and other states to convince businesses to move to Texas. There you can pay lower taxes, avoid being bothered by government regulations, including safety measures, blow up a town now and then, and provide subpar wages.

And that's how the popularity of the Republican Party goes down!!!

Blocking immigration reform and routinely insulting Hispanic voters! Who can forget Congressman Steven King’s comments about more immigrant children serving as drug mules than can hope to become high school valedictorians? (By a 64-30% margin Hispanic voters born in the United States favor the Democratic Party).

Hating on gay people (with the tide turning, too, in part, because fair-minded people notice the gross ignorance of leaders on the right. This would include Michele Bachmann, who once insisted that gay people did have the right to marry, just like anyone else. Just so long as a gay man married a woman and a gay woman married a man, which kind of defeated the purpose. If a national referendum were held today gay marriage would be legalized by a 52-47% margin, with voters, ages 18 to 34, supporting the idea 69-27%.)

Watching people who have a favorable opinion of your party (really old people) die off with each passing day. Three-fourths of younger voters, for instance, associate climate deniers (a cottage industry on the right) with words like “ignorant,” “out of touch,” or “crazy.”

That's how the popularity of your party goes down--and straight into the grave.

Last but not least, you clinch your ranking as the most unpopular political party ever by screaming “tyranny” every time anyone mentions any gun control measure. Bonus points for saying that the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre was staged by the Obama administration! (By an 83-17% margin Americans told Gallup last April that they would support background checks on all gun purchases.)

Keep up the good work, GOP leaders.

If you force the federal government to default on October 17, even though you insist (like a vaginal probe) it won’t hurt, the popularity of the Republican Party can drop even farther.

Even scientists hate the GOP.

Lesson One: A Tea Partier's Guide to Teaching in America



Abby, my oldest daughter,
was a very strong student.
So what is the key variable in schools?


I've been trying to pump up my blog traffic recently; and several of my conservative friends have been kind enough to log on and read a post or two.  I'm pretty much a flaming liberal, as most of them know--out of the closet, politically, I suppose you'd say.  I still have my Kerry/Edwards bumper sticker on my car from '04 and my Obama '08, too.  So, yeah, I'm coming from a different direction than the typical Tea Party supporter.

I probably ought  to scrape off Edwards' name, I admit...that cheating scumbag.

Then again...Newt...really???  But I digress.

That still doesn't mean a friend who lives across the street can't come out a couple of weeks ago and lend me his leaf-blower when he sees me using an old-fashioned rake.  He's a wonderful neighbor and a Tea Party supporter, himself; but when it comes to education issues he's probably a bit conflicted.  His daughter is a teacher in the public schools.  (I think he might even have cast his vote against Issue 2, here in Ohio.)

As far as I can tell, conservatives believe that American education is in precipitous decline, that our system sucks tax dollars out of citizens' pockets and leaves them with nothing but heartbreak, that teachers' unions exist only to protect the incompetent, that members of those unions are "thugs" and "parasites," and liberals are the minions of the devil. 

And so, only private schools and charter schools and vouchers and business control in education can save us in the end.

Another conservative gentleman I know, and a good man by every measure I can think of, told me recently he couldn't understand where I was coming from in a recent post, "U. S. Education by the Numbers."

So:  let me try to explain how teachers really feel to the Tea Party folks.  Imagine, my conservative friends, that your favorite football team (let's say the Bengals) is finally playing well.  At the end of three quarters, Andy Dalton has the boys in stripes leading 21-10.  Then the referees wave the Cincinnati players off the gridiron and the Ravens are allowed to keep throwing passes down an empty field and they score six touchdowns and the fans in the stands start booing the defenders and crying in their $8 beers.

That doesn't make a bit of sense.  Yet, it's exactly the kind of comparison critics make when denigrating American public schools, and praising, for example, the "superior" Japanese education system. Here's how a teacher in this country sees the situation:  Japanese children attend school  240 days a year.  U. S. students go to class for 180 days. 

Four quarters of football vs. three.

Or:  consider the South Korean education system--also held up as model of success, and then used to shine a glaring light on America's failing schools.  In a recent international comparison, South Korean kids finished #1 in reading, #1 in math and #3 in science, out of 65 nations.  American students were #12 in reading, #17 in science and #25 in math.

If you're a Tea Party American, at this point, you probably gnash your teeth and start to grumble about the evil unions.  But if you're a Teacher American (even a Teacher American/Union Member American) the number that grabs your attention is "14." 

That's how many hours the average South Korean student spends every day in school, completing homework, and attending after-hours tutoring sessions, a kind of mania in that nation.

If you're a public school teacher in the U. S. you think, "If I asked students to shoulder that kind of load parents would be apoplextic.  They'd be calling my principal and demanding that she lop off my head and they'd want her to spike it on the front lawn of the school to serve as a warning. 

So, you dream of saying to a conservative friend:  "Both of us are going to get paint brushes and buckets and ladders and we are going to start painting this house today, at 8 a.m.  The winner, the person who covers the most surface, before they run out of paint, is going to receive $100,000 and the loser will get nothing but a lump of coal in their stocking on payday." 

Then you add this caveat:  "I will use these fourteen buckets of paint.  You can have nine."

Your conservative friend is going to question the fairness of such a contest, but that's how teachers see it when they hear South Korean schools are better--or schools in Finland or Liechtenstein or Glennbeckistan--and the reason for the difference is that America's teachers are unionized crooks and fools.  If an American kid spends nine hours on academics, which is close to the average, you figure that five hours extra every day, multiplied over the years, might give South Korean kids a slight advantage, academically speaking.

I suppose, in one respect, I think like a Tea Partier, myself.  I don't believe that U. S. education can ever be fixed by pouring in more money.  In fact, my experiences in life (I was a lazy student once) and in the classroom seem to prove that if you give me 35 students, ready to work, and I am willing to work hard, too, and parents will back me up if I'm truly, truly demanding, then I can teach effectively in a barn, with all my students seated on bales of hay.

That doesn't mean that the conservative perscription for fixing the public schools is correct.  That's just my spiel for today.

Rick Perry Was...Um...Uh..Right: Get Rid of the U. S. Department of Education

IF YOU SAW RICK PERRY'S MOST RECENT DEBATE PERFORMANCE you know it was... um...not marked by...uh...Let me think. Give me a second. Oops.

I think the word I'm looking for is "coherence."

At the time, Mr. Perry was outlining the steps he'd take if elected president and trying to list three federal departments he'd eliminate. One was Commerce. Another was Education. The third was... uh...well... maybe Baking?

Still, the Governor was onto something. I'm a retired teacher and the chances I'd vote for Perry are as slim as a New York City fashion model. That doesn't mean I wouldn't be thrilled to see President Perry, if he should win, close down the U. S. Department of Education. I doubt many teachers would mourn its passing, or notice, unless someone announced it over the PA system at their school and gave them the news. 

Like I say:  I can't see a scenario where I end up voting for the Texas Hair Model. But if he does get to the Oval Office I hope one of his first acts is to issue an executive order that sends Arne Duncan, that insufferable ass, right back into the classroom in the lowest performing school in the US of A. 

I'd like to see Arne do a little teaching. 

Really, what does the Department of Education do?  (Its budget for 2011 was estimated to be $71 billion and employees numbered  more than 5,000.) I'm going to say this for sure:  I taught 33 years, and never saw a hint of evidence that what the Department was doing was helping teachers or in any way helping students.

So let's see if we can't cut a few dollars from the federal deficit. On this Tea Party folks and Real Teachers can unite. According to Friday's New York Times, even the Department of Agriculture is cutting back these days. Dozens of reports are being scrapped this year. So we're not going to have the annual goat census (it was 3,000,000 in 2010). 

The catfish census (177,000,000) is out and we're going to have to do without a report that calculates the value of honey sales by North Dakota bee keepers ($70 million). 

We won't know any more which state is #1 in sales of mink pelts (Wisconsin) and we won't have a clue which state (Texas!) shipped the most flats of pansies.



Maybe we don't need the Department of Education.
Maybe we need to get all bureaucrats and education refomers into the classroom.
Then let them work their magic!

Young teachers might not recall:  but the U. S. Department of Education was created in 1979, under President Jimmy Carter, and then turned over to control of Shirley Hufstedler, who you might guess had an extensive background in education.

No! If you guessed that, you'd be a total doofus! That would have made sense. Ms. Hufstedler was a former federal judge.

It was the start of a tradition, where seven out of nine people who ran (or run) the Department never taught a day in their and another taught only phys. ed., and so routinely failed to understand the challenges in a real classroom. So what did we gain? Well, the people at Education churned out all kinds of reports. They tabulated and measured. They put together cool charts and graphs, issued all sorts of regulations, and multiplied the paperwork speech therapists and special education teachers and just about everyone else had to complete.

(If Secretary Duncan and leading reformers have their way teachers are soon going to have to fill out a whole lot more forms and we're going to bury U. S. education in useless statistics.)

Then in 2002, the Big Wigs at the Department of Education began focusing on implementation of No Child Left Behind. They talked a great game:  helping states write new standards, then national standards when state standards yielded less-than-zero results. Mr. Duncan almost guaranteed success and called for a "Race to the Top" program, a bold new plan to improve America's public schools.

If you think it's a mess now, wait until the avalanche of "value added" charts and graphs hits schools and bureaucrats set about trying to measure everything every teacher does, has done, or ever might think about doing, from the first grade art teacher (number of brush strokes per child), on up to the middle school speech therapist (correct syllables spoken), to the high school band director (notes played per minute).

It's going to be the I.R.S. model for education.

WE'VE SPENT BILLIONS OF DOLLARS on this effort--and about all we've got to show for it is more frustration for the good teachers, who are always swamped trying to do their jobs.

Don't get me wrong:  We need to do more to weed out bad teachers. And once we do I say we fill those empty spots at the front of the classroom with the likes of Duncan and Michelle Rhee, with Wendy Kopp of Teach for America (let that lady TEACH!), Joel I. Klein, self-appointed saviour of the New York City Schools, Mayor Michael Bloomberg (who says the key is grading schools), Steven Brill (who wrote a book fixing schools) and Davis Guggenheim (producer of Waiting for "Superman") to name just a few.

We don't need to wait for Superman. We've got Rhee and Kopp and Brill, sitting on the bench, telling real teachers what to do, just waiting for the chance to get in the game and save the day.

So...yeah....um...I say we do without the goat census and close down the Department of Education. And for god sakes, make these experts TEACH.

Tea Party vs. Occupy Wall Street

Back in the day, when I was still teaching American history, I tried to be sure my seventh grade students learned to look for all sides in complex arguments. There are times when I wonder if the Tea Party guys aren't partly right and the Occupy Wall Street folks too.

Colonists protest:
Hanging a dummy
of a British tax collector.

In fact, if you tune in cable news today, the coverage is so biased and ridiculous, it's almost pointless to listen.

I'm a liberal, for example. I'm a union guy, too. So I loathe Fox News, which has been chastizing unions for months.

Now I see a story in the New York Times today about the Long Island Railroad and the corruption of their union. I know Fox will cover this story in great detail and vilify unions in general, as if all are corrupt.

In fact, Gretchen Carlson is going to be so upset she'll probably wet her pants.

So here's the basic story: eleven people have been arrested, including a former union president and two doctors, and a variety of people who are receiving pension and disability benefits. Gregory Noone, 62, for instance, collects $105,000 in retirement and disability payments every year after doctors "found" he suffered from severe pain when bending, crouching or gripping objects.

You have to feel for the guy: especially when he's playing golf or tennis, which is often since his tragic retirement. Investigators have evidence that he plays tennis several times a week and "suffered" through 140 rounds of golf during one recent nine-month period.

You have to admire that man's courage in gripping the golf club, despite the pain.

Total losses to the pension and disability funds are expected to run more than $121 million, possibly much higher.

Can big public sector workers unions be a problem, in other words? Of course, they can. And here we want the government--that is the FBI--to step in and arrest the crooks.

But how does anyone imagine that means we can run to the arms of Big Business for safety? This week the New York Times also reported on drug-maker Amgen's agreement to pay $780 million to settle a variety of state and federal lawsuits, accusing it of illegal sales and marketing tactics.

According to one whistle-blower the company overfilled bottles of Aranesp, an anemia drug. This allowed doctors to use the excess dosage to treat patients, charge Medicare and Medicaid extra, and pump up the bottom line. And it certainly helped convince doctors they should be prescribing Aranesp and not some cheaper generic drug.

Meanwhile, over at Clear Channel News, the very soul of conservative talk radio, the company is  making deep cuts in local programming and going with more nationally syndicated shows, which are cheaper to produce. Several hundred employees, including local DJ's like Tony Lynn and Myles Copeland at KBQI in Albuquerque, are out on their fannies and probably wishing they had union protection or even government-backed health insurance.

Robert W. Pittman, just named this month as Clear Channel's chief executive, insists the move is necessary, for the company to run it's business "like it's 2011, not 1970." 

This will allow Clear Channel talk radio hosts to offer a more coordinated message: bashing unions and blaming them for killing jobs and ruining the economy. On WLW in Cincinnati, for example, I recently heard Doc Thompson going on and on about the filthy Occupy Wall Street protestors, "mutants" as he called them again and again.

It reminded me of a Nazi officer who referred to the Jews as "vermin." There was a time when I wouldn't have let one of my seventh graders get by using such language. Nor would I have allowed them to employ such simplistic logic without challenge.

After all, Bernie Madoff and Ken Lay and all the crooks at Lehman Brothers showered regularly and wore $2,000 suits.

This morning, you wonder if a few of those new unemployed DJ's might not be waking up and thinking about joining the Occupy Wall Street protestors.

Its a complex world and we Americans, liberal, conservative and in the middle, are going to have to think seriously about what we really need to do.

The Yellow Brick Road to Nowhere: Teachers and the Tea Party Movement

I’VE BEEN HAVING AN ONLINE DEBATE with a Tea Party supporter, focused on the effect on schools of standardized testing. I think it’s going to be the ruin of American education. He seems like a fair-minded man but doesn’t understand my fear.

On one subject, however, we do agree. We both believe you could close down the U. S. Department of Education and no one directly involved with work in America’s classrooms would notice.

What scares me most is the fear that we’re heading down this path of standardized tests and we’re going to get so deep into the woods that we’ll never be able to find our way back. Secretary Duncan believes in testing—thinks this is the way to go—and likes to imagine he’s leading a “Race to the Top.” According to Mr. Duncan this is the opposite of the “race to the bottom” which resulted when the push for “higher standards” (which begot the era of more and more tests) began under No Child Left Behind.

It’s not the “Race to the Top” at all. It’s more like the “"Yellow Brick Road to Nowhere.”

It is a nearly perfect recipe for disaster.

If you love standardized testing, consider the list below, provided in the State of Ohio’s eighth grade curriculum, which all Ohio social studies teachers were ordered to follow in regard to the American Civil War (at least between 2004 and 2009. These are the sum totals of standards and benchmarks and indicators we were ordered to cover.

This was “learning” in the Era of the Testing Fix:

BENCHMARK G: Analyze the consequences of the American Civil War

INDICATOR 10: Explain the course and consequences of the Civil War with emphasis on:

Contributions of key individuals, including Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant

The Emancipation Proclamation

The Battle of Gettysburg


If you value broad-based knowledge, you might notice that this is a sparse and pathetic offering. But what we discovered as classroom teachers, every year, when the Ohio Achievement Test (OAT) was given, was that unless a person was named or a document noted or a term highlighted in the curriculum it could not be turned into a question on the standardized test.

So, if I'm teaching in Ohio, should I mention William Tecumseh Sherman? Not really. He can’t end up on the test.

His comment: “War is hell?” No longer relevant.

Stonewall Jackson? Nope. Not on the test.

What about insuring that students know what the Confederate flag looked like? They might see this symbol in real life. No, no, no, doesn’t matter.

Not going to be on the test.

THERE WAS A TIME, OF COURSE, WHEN TEACHERS had the flexibility to set their own standards. And then, I would always say it does matter if students recognize the symbol; and I tried to be sure my black students, in particular, knew what that red flag with the blue X and white stars meant, both in 1861, and what it can mean today.

The existential dilemma I faced in my last years in a classroom, and the problem all young teachers face today, is that learning no longer counted unless it could be measured—and this idea of the flag?

It wasn’t going to be measured in any way.

With an increasingly narrow focus on testing, and with merit pay tied to test results thrown in for good measure, I believe we need to understand that true learning must inevitably suffer. When I was still in the classroom, and before bureaucrats gained control, I was able to convince students to read books like Gone With the Wind, Cold Mountain and Killer Angels, all great Civil War novels. Another popular choice was Co. Aytch, a memoir written by Sam Watkins, a Confederate soldier.

Now I knew that nothing in these novels and nothing Sam Watkins could say about warfare could ever end up on the OAT. In other words, time devoted to reading great literature wouldn’t count as learning because it couldn’t be measured.[1]

Frankly, that struck me as nuts.

If you’ve never heard of Watkins, I admit I hadn’t either, till halfway through my teaching career. Sam was a Tennessee infantryman who enlisted with great enthusiasm in 1861 and had to survive four bloody years of war. I had never read the book until Ken Burns quoted heavily from Watkins’ story in his acclaimed Civil War series in 1990.

I picked up a copy soon after, read it with immense pleasure, and knew immediately that if I created a summary of Sam’s tale I could get students interested in this part of our nation’s history. So, in my class we went far beyond “basics” and students read an eight-page selection detailing Watkins’ experiences.

Again, keep this clearly in mind: none of what Watkins says can end up on any standardized test.

WE USED TO DO SKITS IN MY CLASS, like plays without dialogue, with my students at center stage. Whenever it came time to wrap up my Civil War unit, I found it easy to get volunteers to play the roles of soldiers from both sides. You could have two Yankees and two Confederates talk about their experiences, maybe even throw a girlfriend or a wife to get a woman’s perspective. And it was easy to find kids who could keep the discussion going the entire period.

(I don’t know what the bureaucrats would say—but I believe that’s learning of the highest and most important form.)

Like any good teacher, I knew you should never tell a student, “No, I don’t believe you can do it.” And only once did I come close.

Brad was a pleasant young man in my seventh bell. On the surface he was unimpressive, clothes rumpled, hair uncombed, afflicted with a terrible stutter. Despite his handicap he was a pleasure in class. He loved history and could add astute comment to any discussion. If you called on him, though, you had to have time. Words came slowly, painfully, and you had to listen closely in order to follow his logic. Sometimes, if I was in a hurry, I pretended not to see his hand raised in order to wrap up a lesson.

One day, I was sitting at my desk while students started the Watkins reading. I reminded everyone who still had a project to do (each student had multiple options for projects and had to do four every year—damn—again with the non-standardized learning) that this would be a good time to come back and explain their ideas. Brad quietly approached. For obvious reasons he had never volunteered to get up in front of class before. Now he said he would like to do a skit on the life of a Civil War soldier, a subject that clearly intrigued him. I held my doubt in check, asking only, “Who will be working with you?” Stumbling over every syllable, he replied that he would go it alone. “I…I…I wa…wa…wan…wan…want to bu…bu…be a Rebel sol…jer,” he stammered.

It was in my blood and bones to have faith in my kids, to assume that each young man and young woman could do more than either they or I knew. For once, I wanted to say: “No. You can’t.” I could only imagine how awful Brad’s experience might be, exposed in front of an entire class, trying to talk for forty-five minutes. The tip of my tongue touched my palette to form the word “no.” I didn’t want this kind-hearted young man to be cut up by the verbal knives of peers. But I couldn’t bring myself to tell him to lose faith.

I caught myself and gave approval.

A week later Brad stood at the front of the room dressed in gray jacket and battered, gray slouch hat. For all intents and purposes he was naked emotionally, risking at age 14 being stripped of his dignity should he fail.

It was quickly apparent he had studied long and hard. Brad wove details from Watkins’ story and half-a-dozen other sources into a cohesive narrative. What surprised us all was the clarity with which he spoke. Perhaps because he was focused only on what he had to tell, his stuttering was less profound. He still stuttered, but we all realized we were witnessing something different and great. Brad told us about battles in which he played a role—talked sadly of seeing friends die—and mentioned love letters his girl back home sent to him. When asked what his girlfriend looked like he said she was “b..b..beautiful, with d..dark hair and d..dark eyes.” He handled every question we asked, stumbled over syllables, but never faltered in his tale, and held center stage the full period.

When he finished, his class did something I’d never seen before. They rose and gave him a standing ovation.

I almost started to cry.

TODAY, OF COURSE, SINCE NONE OF WHAT BRAD DID COULD BE MEASURED, none of this would count as real education.

Like I said before, that’s nuts.[2]

---

[1] Technically, if my students read more this might help them on the reading section of the OAT. Sadly, I would be rewarded or penalized only for scores on the social studies section of the same test. (The test was total crap, by the way.)

[2] Call it double nuts when you realize that the State of Ohio dumped its own social studies test in 2009 and—not one iota wiser—started all over, designing a new and improved standardized test.

The owner of this farm, just off I-71, north of Cincinnati, 
used to hold KKK rallies on his property.
Should students know what this symbol sometimes means?
(There's also a burned cross standing in his orchard.)

Arne Duncan: The Armor of Achilles

Sunday, under the heading:  NEWS THAT WAS INEVITABLE, the New York Times reported that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and the Obama administration want to offer states "relief"  before schools all over the nation begin running afoul of penalties written into the No Child Left Behind Law (NCLB) in 2002.

The problem is so simple even a caveman could have predicted it.  Nine years ago, with bi-partisan support and great fanfare, Congress passed a law which promised that ALL children would be proficient in reading and math by 2014.  Penalties were included if states failed to keep make "adequate yearly progress" toward this noble goal. 

The problem from the start was that noble goals aren't necessarily realistic.  It was kind of like calling World War I "the war to end all wars."  No matter how ringing the phrase, perfection has a tendency to be well beyond humanity's straining reach.

What exactly went wrong?  First, most states spent six years lowering standards and then gradually raising them again, to insure they showed "progress" in testing numbers, no matter how bogus, to avoid the initial round of penalties under NCLB.  From 2002 to 2008, almost no real gains were made.  In the 2008 elections many of the original backers of the law were kicked out of office; and President Obama and Arne Duncan took over shortly after and began talking about new and improved standards.  Duncan would end the "race to the bottom" which began when states began scuffling to avoid penalties and launch a true "Race to the Top."

One set of standards had failed.  What we needed, Duncan insisted, were BETTER standards.  It's kind of like when one diet plan fails. What the poor dieter tells himself is this:  "It's not my fault.  What I need is a BETTER diet plan." 

Today, nine years into the Age of the Testing Fix, an era when we are repeatedly told that we can test our way to success, states like Arkansas and Kansas are clamoring for relief.  They can't reach the noble goals set under NCLB by 2014, and can't promise that every child will be proficient in reading and math in 2 1/2 years.  They say it isn't fair to hold them accountable for testing targets set under the Bush-era law...when they're working hard to write new standards and draw up new tests to align with these standards, to comply (this time) with rules under the "Race to the Top" initiative being pushed by the Obama administration.

If you're an ordinary, brown-bag educator, the type who sits at a real classroom desk and grades real papers from real students for half your lunch every day, and eating your bologna sandwich is your idea of a relaxing break, you knew in 2002 this was coming. 

I dare anyone to read the first hundred stories you come across about "raising standards" in U. S. education today.  I doubt you will find a single sentence that includes these words:  "students," "must work harder," because in the last two years, I haven't seen those words yet.  The theorists and bureaucrats keep talking about writing new standards, about "bench-marking" U. S. standards to match with standards in countries like Finland and Japan and South Korea. 

We keep talking about testing and standards and miss the essential point.  It's like putting on the armor of Achilles.  Just because you WEAR the armor of Achilles, that doesn't make you Achilles.

Let's say, as a society, we were really committed to excellence in education.  Let's say we didn't have one extra dollar to spend.  Could we still raise standards?  Of course we could.  And we wouldn't need Arne Duncan to tell us how.

Let's say every teacher in American set their head and hand to working harder every day.  That would certainly help;  but let's be honest about the problems we face in American education and admit that we have to expect students to work harder, too.  Let's admit that parents have to stop whining if teachers are demanding.  Let's admit that if we want true higher standards, our children will need to spend more time on academics when they get home.

At some point, the diet PLAN isn't the critical factor.  The dieter has to be committed.  No plan will work unless the dieter is willing to push away the plate. 

We don't need the Department of Education to tell us what to do and how to do it--and if they really want to help, let the experts come into the classrooms and show us how it's really done.  We don't need to rewrite standards.  As a society, we have to be committed to education. 

Standards on paper don't make the Japanese schools better.  Japanese students are simply willing to work harder than American students, generally, and Japanese parents are more likely than American parents to approve of a heavy workload when educators require it.

Ever hear that America's schools are failing when compared to Japanese schools?

In the spring of 2009, the number of U. S. students taking the SAT’s climbed to a record 1.55 million. 

Those who took four years of English and three years of math had better scores, averaging 151 points higher than those who didn’t.  Go figure.  They worked harder and it showed.

Since No Child Left Behind went into full effect in 2006, however, the average score for white students had dropped 2 points. 

The average for African Americans and Puerto Ricans was down 14 points.

The average for Asian Americans was up 36.  It's not the standards the government puts on paper that matter.  It's the standards people set for themselves.

The armor of Achilles isn't the key to any battle.