Prophet of Profit: Governor Kasich Tames the Government Beast



Does government corrupt business?
Or does business corrupt government?

Recently we've been hearing a great deal about the great deal in store if Governor Kasich can introduce sound business principles and curb the government beast.

You know the lyrics to this song. Break the education monopoly, privatize prisons, make the firemen and police give up some of their ridiculous perks, like health insurance and those needlessly expensive bullet proof vests.

So lets look down the road and try to see what we have in store. Private prisons? Let's cut pay for guards. So what if a few more prisoners escape.

The solution? The privately-operated prison takes some of its profits to advertise. Simply claim: OUR PRISONS MAKE THE STATE 28% SAFER! Then donate some of your profits to politicians who helped you win the fat contracts to begin. Do what Reebok has been doing. Until recently, the shoe-making giant was touting the benefits of its new "toning" sneakers, 28% better at "toning bottoms."

Sales ballooned into the hundreds of millions.

Ah, but it turns out the shoes didn't work and Reebok is now paying a $25 million settlement for making false claims.

How about free market principles in schools. Tying test scores and teacher pay can't possibly go wrong. Isn't that so?

Okay, sure. There have been those nasty cases of cheating in places like Atlanta and Washington, D. C., as administrators (whose jobs depend on raising scores) push teachers to insure that scores go up, by erasing wrong answers if necessary. Why not let solid business types run the schools? You know, like the guys at Countrywide Financial or Enron. Or we can follow the college football business model, where dollars and diplomas already cross. Let's just ignore graduation rates for athletes and pursue the next billion-dollar TV contract. Better yet, let some fat-cat businessman, like the fellow in Miami, pay to hire prostitutes to entice recruits to come to your institution.

Yep: when you introduce business methods into college sports/education you also get a nice healthy dose of business ethics.

It's kind of a Bernie Madoff model.

So, Governor Kasich, let's get serious about this push for good business methods in government. We all know operating the Department of Motor Vehicles is expensive. Fire the clerks and outsource operations. Let a call center in India handle inquiries.

Press one if you would like to schedule a driver's test.

Press two if you would like to transfer a title.

Press three for replacement license plates...press four, press five, press six...press eighty-nine...

Private enterprise is the ONLY way to go.

In fact, let's take it another step and start advertising in courtrooms and schools and on fire engines and ambulances. It's a perfect fit: "Have you been injured in an accident recently? Let the law firm of Christie, Kasich and Walker represent you."

Let's have more schools run by companies. If they go bankrupt in the middle of the year the government can bail them out. Let's have million-dollar contracts going to testing companies, who hire former legislators as lobbyists

We can trust entreprenuers to put children first. 

Like the corporations that overcharged the military in Iraq. Or the dozens of medical professionals recently busted for Medicare fraud.

One doctor was submitting billing for more than twenty-four hours per day.

See, you lazy unionzed public sector workers! That's the spirit we need: a willingness to put in the long hours to make the business model work.

The possibilites that will open up if we kill the public sector unions are endless. Turn the water works over to companies that sell bottled water (they already admit that they're selling purified tap water anyway). Sell naming rights to public buildings and bridges. Let's celebrate the virtues of capitalism and remember titans of investing and industry. The Brent Spence? Call it the Ken Lay Bridge.

That state park on an island in Lake Erie? British Petroleum State Park.

If we're going to keep taxes low, and bring more jobs to Ohio (even if they are minimum wage and workers don't have any more health insurance), we have no other choice than to turn to private enterprise for solutions. Don't stop at half measures, Governor Kasich. And don't be shy about your roots. Let's have a state government that works with all the precision and profit-making powers of the giant corporations on Wall Street.

Admit it folks: the people at Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs didn't get us into our current economic fix. It was that policeman driving down your street late at night, looking for signs of trouble.

It was that greedy teacher, still sitting at her desk long after all her students have gone home, trying to finish grading a stack of student essays.

They're the enemy; and Governor John Kasich is taming the government beast.

How Low Can You Go? Kasich, Perry, and the Average Worker

To hear Governor Kasich tell it, public sector workers are grossly overpaid and taxpayers are loaded down with economic chains.  He has to rein in pay and benefits.  Unions are evil and greedy and the cause of our present economic malaise.

On the surface, it's a position that has appeal to conservative voters, but you have to wonder:  "How low do Kasich and his allies really want Ohio workers to go?"

Consider the record of Governor Rick Perry, who touts his success with jobs creation in Texas in recent years, as a sort of model for the future.  On the surface, Mr. Perry has a solid record.  Gross Domestic Production rose 2.6% nationally in 2010.  Texas had a rate of 2.8%. 

Unemployment has been lower in Texas, too:  8.5% vs. 9.1% across the country, according to reports out just today. 

So put on your cowboy boots and buckle up your holster, buckaroo, and head to Texas if you want a good ol' job.  Perry for president!  And Michelle Bachmann for VP.  Bachmann once argued that doing away with the minimum wage would cure unemployment. 

The "good old Medieval days."
When the serfs still knew their place.

So would a return to feudalism. 

But I digress.

As always, the full picture is more complicated than politicians like Kasich ever care to admit.  In 2010 almost 1 in 10 Texas workers (9.5%) worked at or below the federal minimum wage (vs. 6.0% nationally).  So you can GO to Texas and find work.

You just might have to be content with minimum wage.

Even better, in 2009, 26% of the workforce in Perry's state went without health care vs. 17% nationwide.  (See New York Times; 8-16-11)

Maybe that's the plan in Ohio, Wisconsin and New Jersey where fiscal hawks like Kasich rule.  Let's cut costs for taxpayers, follow the Texas model, so to speak.  Let's face it, teachers, if you gave up health care entirely, the burden on taxpayers could be dramatically reduced.  And police?  Really, you and your firemen buddies are grossly overpaid.  With your union bargaining rights gone, you really should be willing to do your part and swallow a 25% cut in pay.

If you don't like it pack up that U-Haul and head for Texas.

In the end, that's the question I'd like to hear asked at the next Republican presidential debate:  How LOW do they want the average American worker to go?

Call me a crazy liberal:  but I'd prefer to hear my politicians promise to fight to improve conditions for low-paid workers in this country, who promise to help pull working Americans up, in Ohio and elsewhere, not tear unionized workers down.

Standardized Testing: The Fallacy of Teacher Accountabililty

On this blog, I posted recently about the continuing decline in SAT scores since 2002, at a time when the greatest names in American education reform are promising, cross-their-hearts-and-hope-to-die, that if only we only follow their lead we are going to witness a resurrection in our schools, we are going to see standards raised, by god, and if we don't a few thousand "failing" teachers are going to have to be thrown to the lions by way of warning to all the rest.

I'm a retired teacher.  So I know better than most that good teachers make a difference.  Unlike most leading reformers, however, I actually taught real students, and taught for a long time, and know STUDENTS also determine how they do on any test, standardized or otherwise.

In any case, one former star student responded to my last post, wondering how a slight decline in SAT scores could possibly be significant.

If the general public would look deeply into these matters, the general public would realize that--really--a slight decline is NOT important.  The general public might also realize that rating school and teacher performance based solely on student test scores is a form of insanity.  The general public might easily grasp this reality, but the general public is too busy watching Jersey Shore, ten permutations of CSI and The Real Housewives of New York and so their focus is rarely on education. (Coming soon?  The Real Housewives of Wapakoneta, Ohio.)

SAT scores--rising or falling--are generally a false measure of how schools in this country are doing.  In fact, most of the recent drop can be attributed to a steady rise in test-takers from minority populations, who historically score lower.  And the fact that more minority students are aiming for college is actually a positive trend.

Still, critics of the public schools love to cite such declines as proof of teacher failure and this has been true since at least the 70's, even before I began my career in a seventh grade classroom.

What our leading reformers and education experts (and the reporters who quote them) routinely miss is the fact that STUDENTS also determine how they score on SAT's, on their weekly quizzes in Algebra I or their unit tests on the American Civil War, and the same is true of the standardized tests now so in vogue.

Without intending, an editorial in the New York Times today makes this very point. Talking about the need for better security to insure accurate results on the New York State Regents Test, the Times notes the accelerating push "to make schools accountable for student performance."  The editorial continues:  "In coming years, teachers will also be judged, in part, on how much their students improve on state tests."

As always, the focus is on how TEACHERS perform. 

Until we place a much larger part of the responsibility on students all our talk of "raising standards" is just moving our lips.

If a child misses 22 days of school in an average year (the norm in the Washington, D. C. schools) and ends up two years behind, academically by his or her senior year, maybe we should blame parents, not teachers, for low SAT scores.  Or maybe we should blame America's health care system?  If a kid in the Chicago schools misses 26 days (also the norm) maybe we should hold the kid responsible for slacking off, not fault the teacher who only marks the questions they missed on their eighth grade math final wrong.

Michelle Rhee (who ran the D. C. schools) and  Arne Duncan (who ran the Chicago system) both focus on teachers as the only important variable when they preach about "raising standards" and tell us they know just how to do it.

If only they had taught a little longer (Rhee and Duncan spent three years in the classroom each), they and other reformers (many of whom have never taught a single day) might be a little more realistic.  I'm not going to be modest.  I was a very good teacher in my time and most of my former students would probably tell you that was true.

I certainly realized that if I worked hard I could do a better job;  but I also knew that if my students wanted to be a success, in my history class, or later in life, THEY would have suck it up and bust some serious ass.  I knew they had to work harder, themselves, or nothing I said or did would matter much in the end.

This sole focus on what teachers do--measuring their efforts by how student do on tests--that approach to "raising standards" cannot possibly work.

It can't work.

It can't.

Until we face up to that fact, all efforts at education reform are doomed to failure.



***WAPAKONETA corrected at reader request.

Reformers Puzzled: SAT Scores Decline in 2011

That's my bicycle at the top of Tioga Pass,
coming into Yosemite National Park from the east.
You pedal uphill for twelve miles and gain 3,100 feet in elevation.

I'VE BEEN BUSY BICYCLING ACROSS THE UNITED STATES all summer and haven't had time to post anything on my teaching blog. 

The weeks and months are ticking by; and we're now less than three years removed from a time when reformers promise they can take us to a state of absolute academic nirvana, when every child in America will be proficient in reading and math. 

By now don't you almost have to assume the first sweet fruits of success are ripe for picking?

So how is the "big reform push" going?

I was heading out the door to run a few errands last week--catch up on chores that went untended while I was pedaling--when I passed the TV and heard Andrea Mitchell on CNN mention declining SAT scores. Mitchell went on to say that Michelle Rhee would be on after a commercial break to explain.

God. Not Rhee again. That woman's sour mug can be seen on TV more often than reruns of Law and Order.

I was in a hurry and didn't get to hear Rhee spout. But I'm sure it was fun. Remember her? The woman with the plan to save education? The lady who blames teachers for all the nation's academic failings? The Joan of Arc who was going to save the Washington, D. C. schools with a relentless focus on standardized testing data?

I wish I'd had time to listen to what she said, because SAT scores fell again for U. S. high school seniors in 2011. It's enough to make education reformers weep.

After almost a decade of "reforms" under No Child Left Behind, after all the preaching of geniuses like Rhee and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, here's where we land:  Critical reading scores sagged three points in 2011, to 497, the lowest on record.

Writing scores fell two points to 489.

Math was down one:  to 514.

Since 2002, when the standardized-testing craze swept America's schools and education experts began acting like zombies in an old science fiction movie--all promising improvement if only we followed them, followed them, followed them--we have been in slow decline. 

We are down from 504 in critical reading to 497. 

We are down in math from 516 to 514. 

And in five short years, since the writing test was first instituted, seniors have lost eight points, down from 497.

If we listen to the likes of Rhee, Duncan, Joel I. Klein (former chancellor of the New York City public schools) and Governor John Kasich in Ohio this really can't be happening. We have more charter schools like they wanted, more vouchers and way, way more testing. Experts have written enough shiny new "standards" to keep real teachers busy for the next century. And when students fail to meet "standards" we have fired more and more teachers. In Ohio, where average SAT scores are a hundred points higher than nationally, the governor has decided that the best way to insure improved scores is to break teachers' unions and take away tenure.

SO WHAT COULD POSSIBLY BE WRONG? We've listened to these kinds of people for ten years and we're going nowhere. 

Here's the first problem:  We allow school reform to be driven by people like Rhee and governors like Kasich, Scott Walker (Wisconsin) and Chris Christie (New Jersey), who either went to private schools, send their children to private schools, or both. 

These are people who want to fix the schools they didn't even care to attend. 

Secondly, we listen to people like Rhee and Duncan who have only the briefest classroom experience, or like Klein, none at all, and lack true insight.  It's an odd trend, really.  If you placed the top ten names in education reform today and all U. S. Secretaries of Education end to end, from the founding of the Department of Education in 1979 until this very moment, their classroom service would not equal one thirty-year veteran in some elementary school in Peoria or Pocatello. 

Perhaps most importantly, we have spent the last decade focusing on teachers and measuring what they do and writing paper standards. 

We haven't demanded anything from students.

This idea that if only we get better teachers into classrooms then every student can be a success is shallow and simplistic. It's like saying, "If only ministers gave better sermons sin would disappear."  It's as if  a bad football team could go undefeated if only the coach drew up better plays, even if players never practiced.

Until we have to courage to ask students to do more all talk of "raising standards" is just pontificating and puffing hot air. 

OUR LEADING POLITICIANS AND REFORMERS don't know this, and don't know they don't know this. So we're going nowhere fast.

Unionized Public Sector Workers vs. Free Market Enterprise

Lee Farkas in cuffs.

We all know what's wrong with our economy: It's those damn deficits, and those damn deficits are the fault of inefficient local, state and federal governments, wasteful of taxpayer dollars and ever ready to give those damn unionized public sector workers everything they demand.

We know if we listen to Governor Kasich or Walker in Wisconsin or Christie in New Jersey or the robots on Fox News that there can only be one solution: introduce business efficiency and free market principles to government operations.

So let's take a sampling of how the free market works in the real world. Let's see what conservatives really want. Here are a few examples, gathered randomly, in recent months:

A) Lee B. Farkas, the chairman (pictured left) of Taylor, Bean & Whitaker, one of the nation's largest mortgate lenders was convicted in April 2011 on 14 counts of securities, bank and wire fraud, a scheme that cost investors and the government $2.9 billion. (Six other company executives pled guilty.) 

Farkas's actions brought about the collapse of Colonial Bank, which was sold worthless mortgages, and when the whole scheme headed south, Farkas tried to convince Colonial to apply for $570 million in Troubled Asset Relief Program funds. 

DAMN OVERPAID COPS.

B) In May we had a federal indictment of George H. Lee and Justin W. Lee, charged with four counts of bribery and one count of conspiracy. The Lees are only two of scores of contractors and military officers who face or have faced criminal charges related to manipulation of lucrative government contracts during the Iraq War. They gave away airline tickets, spa vacations and big bribe money in return for sweet deals to build warehouses for the U. S. military and provide bottled water and blankets to the troops at a healthy markup price.

According to the indictment, the Lees paid Major Gloria D. Davis $225,000 in bribes in return for $14 million in contracts funneled to their company. Davis shot and killed herself in Baghdad in 2006, after admitting her role.

In a related case, Maj. John Cockerham was sentenced to 17 years in prison for taking $9.6 million in bribes from various private contractors interested in doing "business" with the U. S. military in Iraq.  (New York Times, 5-31-11)

THOSE FIREMEN AND THEIR PENSIONS!

C) If the public sector is wasteful of tax dollars call in the business experts! A case in point, involving the New York City Public Schools, proves how much we can learn if we apply sound free market principles to education. Willard Lanham, just the kind of get-it-done fellow to show those unionized bums how it's done, won a contract to serve as a technology consultant to the New York City Public Schools. In the weeks and months ahead, Lanham is accused of stealing $3.6 million dollars, relying in large part on the old-fashioned profit motive to keep others from blowing the whistle on his scheme. 

Lanham hired five consultants, one of them his brother, who worked from home at a rate of $60-70 per hour. Lanham billed a cable subcontractor, Custom Design Communications for the work, but at a rate of $225 per hour. CDC held it's nose and billed Verizon and I.B.M. $250 per hour. Then Verizon and I.B.M. held their noses and closed their eyes and mouths and billed the Education Department $290 hourly, all for the same work.

If you like juicy stories, this one gets better. Lanham and his wife Laura Lanham are deep into an ugly divorce. Laura , 42, blogs about her pursuit of younger men and her "cougar" lifestyle and one story describes her as a hot "yummy mommy." The couple lived a lavish lifestyle before the indictment, with three luxury homes and a fleet of flashy cars: a yellow Corvette, a Porsche, a Lexus, a Mercedes and a Cadillac Escalade.

PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS...THEY'RE OVERPAID...

D) Now we have a story involving Rupert Murdoch and his paper News of the World in England. There is no bigger champion of free market principles than Murdoch and you don't have to listen to the folks at Fox News to hear them touting the absolute virtues of private enterprise and scaring up a little terror among viewers about evil unionized public sector workers. Unfortunately, the free enterprise system has no morality, except profit, and Murdoch has a bank book for a soul. To insure sales of newspapers editors at News agreed to bribe police to gain access to sensitive information, hacked the phones of celebrities and politicians illegally, and in the most egregious cases tapped the phones of murder victims, like Milly Dowling, 13. Murdoch employees deleted frantic messages left on Milly's phone by her parents when her in-box filled, so that new messages could be received and hacked, giving the family false hope that she was still alive and deleting the calls herself.

CRAPPY SOCIAL WORKERS...AND THEIR SICK PAY PACKAGES...

E) If you're an NFL fan (and what model of business efficiency out there can possibly be more impressive) you might have noticed that John Mackey died this week after a decade-long battle with dementia. Mackey, a Hall of Fame tight end, was 69, but showed the first signs of football-related brain damage in 2000. That same year, Jerry Jones, the Cowboys owner insisted there was no evidence that repeated concussions put players at risk.

A committee of doctors appointed by the league agreed. You know: no sense having the medical people stamping all over the golden eggs the league had laid.

By 2007, Mr. Mackey was using a spoon to drink his coffee, confusing coffee with a bowl of soup. On another occasion, when security agents at the airport asked him to remove his Super Bowl and Hall of Fame rings before going through the scanner, he exploded and broke for the gate. When wrestled to the ground by armed guards he kept mumbling, "I got in the end zone."

Finally, with evidence piling up so high, not even a rich tycoon like Jones could ignore it, the NFL began making rules changes in 2010. Meanwhile, cities keep pouring tax dollars into new stadiums for billionaires, and much of the bill for the dozens of former players suffering from similar ill effects will probably have to be borne by government-financed health plans in the end.

THOSE CITY WORKERS...BUILDING THE ROADS TO THE STADIUMS...THEY DON'T NEED ANY BARGAINING RIGHTS.

F) Finally, if you haven't been paying attention, it has just been reported that Phillippe Dauman, top executive at Viacom made $84.5 million dollars last year and median pay for top executives at U. S. companies rose 23% last year. 

Leslie Moonves of CBS was second in pay, earning $56.9 million.

Put it this way: Dauman was "worth" as much as 1,690 police officers (at $50,000 yearly). Mr. Moonves did greater service to society than 1,625 first year teachers ($35,000) combined.

And last year the leading head fund manager, John Paulson, earned $4.9 billion for his efforts, equal to what the sweat of 184,000 average American workers could make in the same time. (You figure, maybe Paulson put in a few long weekends and a lot of overtime.)

But it gets better yet. Since Paulson makes money in a convoluted fashion, the tax code allows him to claim almost every penny he makes as "capital gains" and so he pays a much lower rate in income taxes than say your average state social worker or city prison guard. 

Yep, the man pays 15% federal income tax.

It's just killing him. It's killing his ability to create jobs. No way, no way, should we raise that poor man's taxes. 

YEAH, ECONOMIC PROBLEMS IN AMERICA TODAY ARE ALL THE FAULT OF GREEDY PUBLIC SECTOR WORKERS.

Confessions of a Unionized Thug: Why are Supporters of SB 5 so Angry?

Trust me, you don't want to get supporters of Senate Bill 5 mad.  If you do, and they run out of logical points to make, they start calling you names.

Recently, I posted a blog entry titled "Casey Anthony and the Hollow Promise of "School Reform."  I was trying to make a simple point:  that those who vilify public school teachers (and other public sector workers) overlook many important issues.

Todd Marion, apparently a fan of SB5, saw the title of my post (I don't think he read it) and responded on Facebook:  "Leave it to a lib to 'cash in' on a trajedy."

That wasn't quite what he wanted to get off his chest, so he posted again:  "Some nut goes on a shooting spree...ban guns. A devestating hurricane....global warming. An oil spill...stop drilling. Now this. What a scum bag!!!!"

A scum bag!  Ouch.

I don't think Todd quite got my point.  So let me try again.  My point is that A LOT of problems we see in schools relate to terrible parents, and the pipe dream belief that we can "test" our way out of the mess we're in is kind of...well...stupid.  Yes, I'm sorry to say this, Todd, but I think Kasich's plan to "fix" education in this state is stupid.

I think SB 5 is stupid.

Todd was still mad, and wasn't done.  It might be me, but it seems a lot of conservatives spend a lot of time stewing and angry, and spend a lot of the time when they're angry venting about public sector workers.  I mentioned to Todd that as a teacher I had probably done more to help real kids than he ever would.  That made an angry man angrier.  He responded: "Comparing the parent of a failing child to a murderer is absolutely ridiculous. However, I'm never surprised by how low you union thugs will go. Typical liberal rhetoric.....never let a good trajedy go to waste. You should be ashamed of yourself."

But I wasn't ashamed of myself.  I was only mystified by Todd's unreasoning fury.  So I looked up "thug" in my dictionary.  The first defnition was:  "a vicious or brutal gangster or ruffian."  The second choice was:  "a member of a religious organization of robbers and assassins in India."

I wondered:  was Todd, the fan of SB 5, insulting my religious views?  Or did he know something the cops (also unionized thugs) didn't know?  I don't think my teacher friends or I have brutally attacked anyone.  All I've seen happening is peaceful protests up in Columbus and some industrious gathering of 1.3 million signatures to overturn this foolish law.  I wondered again.  Was Todd against freedom of speech?  Was he against the right to assemble?  Did he want to take away the right of workers to petition?  Why was Todd so ANGRY?

Todd's next post was brief:  an apology for mis-typing "tragedy."  I let it go.  Typing isn't my forte, either.  Todd and I share that bond.

Michael -----, a second supporter of SB 5, jumped into the discussion and explained that he was halfway through my post.  From what he had read to that point he responded, "I'm reading this article now, and not to far into it, it says we need to get rid of the bad teachers as fast as we can........With SB5 in place, it will be a reality, not a pipe dream..........;)"

Now it was my turn to respond.  Todd seems to be stewing in bile, which seems true of a lot of people who attack unionized workers; but I would try.  I don't FEEL like a unionized thug.  I feel like a guy who's a good father.  I feel like a guy who was a dedicated teacher.  I feel like many of the right-wing attacks on working Americans are fueled by illogic. 

I told Todd that I believed standardized testing (a linch-pin of SB 5) was NEVER going to help kids who need help in our schools most:  kids whose parents are sick psychopaths, kids like Casey Anthony's daughter, who live with evil at home.  I told him I wanted to know how more vouchers were going to solve our biggest problems when Hamilton County, alone, had 8500 cases of child abuse and neglect in one year.  I wanted some angry conservative, Michael or Todd or Governor Kasich himself, to tell me how vouchers would help when the PARENTS don't really care.  I wanted someone to tell me how taking bargaining rights away from teachers would solve problems in Scioto County, where reports indicate that one out of ten babies born now has illegal prescription drugs in his or her blood.

I guess I just don't see how attacking public sector workers is going to help education or Ohio children.

So:  let me wish Todd and supporters of SB 5 well.  I hope they can get over some of that angry, because it's not good for the health.

Meanwhile, I'll be leaving Cincinnati on July 20 to bicycle my way to California.  Yep, this unionized thug is taking it on the road in an effort to raise money for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

I did a similar ride back in 2007; and with the help of great students and the Loveland, Ohio community, where I used to teach, we raised $13,500.

Now, I'm riding for the cause again and it makes me feel good about myself and my liberal views and my life-long commitment (similar to almost every teacher I ever met) to helping real kids.

Maybe Todd will donate.  It might make him feel better.

I started my ride at Acadia National Park and rode 1200 miles in June, back to Cincinnati.

Another 2800 miles to go and my ride will take me through Yosemite National Park
and down to the Pacific coast.

If you would like to donate to help find a cure for type-1 diabetes please click HERE! 

(This single click takes you to my fund-raising page.  There, click again on "donate to this event."  Then click "Biking and Painting for Diabetes."

Casey Anthony and the Hollow Promise of "School Reform"

I've been tinkering with this post today because one of my former students, whose judgment I tend to respect, said he thought it didn't make any sense.

Meanwhile, a supporter of Senate Bill 5 saw the title and weighed in with his opinion on Facebook.  I don't think he actually read the post, but he was mad enough to call me a "union thug."

Actuallly, I'm just a harmless blogger who often sees current events through the lens of a former public school teacher.  That was true again this week with the acquittal of Casey Anthony on charges she murdered her daughter, Caylee,.  For those who followed the trial closely on television, the jury's decision sparked an explosion of outrage.  For those who did not, let's just say that Casey left the family home in Florida on June 16, 2008, with Caylee, then nearly three, in tow and did not return for 31 days.

When she did Caylee was nowhere to be found and mom claimed the toddler had been abducted by a nanny; but it soon turned out that the "nanny" did not exist. 

It was the start of a bizarre case and bizarre trial and at the end all we know for sure is that a little girl is dead, her body found several months later with duct tape covering the mouth, decomposing in a trash bag by the side of a road, with a Winnie the Pooh blanket she loved nearby.

As a writer interested primarily in education--in finding ways to help all kids--in no way do I mean to trivialize the death of this young child.  It's a tragedy that stands alone.  And yet, from a retired teacher's point of view, this kind of tragedy comes as no surprise. 

For years we've been hearing about the failure of America's public schools, about the failure of public school teachers--as if bad teachers are the biggest, or even the only problem, in our schools.  So what we get are all kinds of experts talking about standardized tests, as if we can TEST our way to some perfect world, where all parents care and all kids get a wonderful educaton.  You don't have to be a public school teacher to know this:  but if you are you know there are a lot of terrible parents out there and they send us almost all the kids who struggle in the public schools.

These days, the most vociferous critics love to trot out this old quote from George Bernard Shaw:

“He who can, does. He who cannot teaches.”

Unfortunately, no one ever seems to remember this quote, also from Shaw, whose father was a raging alcoholic:

“Parentage is a very important profession; but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the interest of children.”

You can find shocking examples like the Anthony case any time you want.  When I was bicycling recently across Maine, the local papers were filled with details of the murder of Amy Lake and her two young kids.  The triggerman was Amy's estranged husband, the youngster's crazy dad. 

Maybe what Shaw should have said is, "He who can, produces sperm." 

That's the real problem.  That's the problem we need to consider:  that the worst members of the human race still produce sperm and eggs.  What's the "school reform" plan in the news today designed to addresses that fact?

Sure, there are bad teachers out there.  And we need to get rid of as many as we can, and do it as fast as we can.

The problem, though, when reformers talk about "fixing" schools, when Congress passes a law that promises every child will be proficient in reading and math by 2014, when Secretary of Education Arne Duncan says "it's all about the talent," meaning that education reform all boils down to the man or woman at the front of the class,  is that we refuse to look the Casey Anthony's of the world squarely in the face.

We don't pay enough attention to their kids until it's already a month or more too late.  We ignore the children who suffer, day in, day out, in homes with awful moms and dads.  Had Caylee lived long enough to enter kindergarten her problems would have gone far beyond crayons and glue and standardized testing would not have been the cure..

Casey Anthony is not the aberration many we might care to imagine.  Hundreds of American parents kill their children every year.  Many hundreds of thousands more abuse their sons and daughters regularly.  I spoke to a Hamilton County child welfare worker not long ago and asked how many cases of child abuse and neglect his agency handled in a typical year.

Eight thousand, five hundred cases in one Ohio county in one twelve-month stretch.

As someone who tried to help every child I ever taught or met, I keep wondering when we're going to have a "school reform" plan designed to really help these kids.  Tying teacher pay to test scores won't do it.  Certainly, increasing the number of vouchers the State of Ohio will grant won't do the trick.  What do schools do--what do we as a society do--when PARENTS don't really care?  That's the "school reform" questions that bothers me.

And it bothers me every day.

For far too many children problems start long before they enter kindergarten.  In far too many cases problems begin while the child is still "safe" in the womb.  In April a series of articles in the New York Times highlighted growing prescription drug abuse nationwide.  One story focused on Portsmouth, Ohio and Scioto County, where some of the highest rates of overdoses in the state can be found.  There nearly 1 in 10 babies born last year tested positive for drugs.

As the Times explained, "The pattern playing out here bears an eerie resemblence to some blighted cities of the 1980s; a generation of young people who were raised by their grandparents because their parents were addicts, and now they are addicts themselves." 

Nina Mannering was one.  At age 29, she was having trouble raising her 8-year-old daughter.  She tried to kick her habit and entered a counseling program but was told to leave after her boyfriend brought her pills.  In January 2010, while living with an older man, a 65-year-old veteran who had access to the kind of prescriptions she craved, both were murdered by another addict who broke into the home looking for their stash of pills.

At some point, our leaders have to wake up and realize that nothing they're now proscribing to fix the problems "in" our schools is ever going to make much difference, not until someone comes up with a standardized test to administer to moms and dads.

You could wave your magic wand today, and if you could make all the bad teachers in the world go away, tomorrow you'd still have 80% of the worst problems we see now in our schools.