More Toys Won't Turn Things Around

Handing kids more learning gadgets is no substitute for having them hit the books, harness a little discipline and master the fundamentals, yet educrats continue to believe that expensive new toys will somehow turn things around. Today's kids already are surrounded by such toys, so whatever novelty there is in a new iPad won't last long, and all the other school gadgets we gave them, from pocket calculators to laptops, haven't produced results. This is just another way for adults to excuse failure by fixating on a supposed shortfall in technology.

In Defense of the "D"

I may be a little biased on the subject, having "earned" a few "D"s back in the day, but I can't help suspect that the push to banish the "D" from school report cards represents yet another attempt to water-down standards, all in the name of inflating GPAs and boosting student self-esteem. The fact that it's under consideration in the warm-and-fuzzy Boulder Valley only deepens my suspicions.

The "D" isn't the meaningless grade critics claim it is, in my opinion. Just as there needs to be an interim step between excellent (A) and average (C), it's necessary to have a way station between average (C) and abysmal (E or F). A "D" reminds a student that he or she is flirting with failure, while preventing the complete parental meltdown that accompanies an "F" or an "E." Thus, the "D" has probably helped motivate some students to do better, while preventing child abuse in households -- like the one in which I grew up -- where an "E" would call down more fire and brimstone.

It's the yellow light of the academic world, which you blow through at great risk; a sort of intellectual Purgatory, where redemption is still possible. And given the contemporary educator's reluctance to flunk students, for fear of shattering their fragile self-esteem, doing away with the "D" most likely will push borderline cases into the "C" category, so "average" will also lose its meaning. More grade inflation would seem the inevitable result.

The educrat's fondness for tinkering with the tried and true, and eagerness to embrace new fads, is symptomatic of a "system" in disarray and decay, which, instead of raising the bar high and insisting that students make the grade, keeps searching for gimmicky new ways to fake progress and evade accountability.

The Imperial Educrat

Does a U.S. Secretary of Education really need a siren-wailing motorcade to clear away the rabble as he rushes to a media interview in Washington, D.C.? That's the first of many indicators in this New York Times profile that the man in charge at the department, Obama basketball buddy Arne Duncan, might be a little out of control, a little too intoxicated with a sense of power and self-importance. And that, as the story indicates, means he poses an unprecedented threat to the independence of local schools.

"Mr. Duncan is a man in a hurry. He has far more money to dole out than any previous secretary of education, and he is using it in ways that extend the federal government’s reach into virtually every area of education, from pre-kindergarten to college.

“This is the most assertive secretary of education we’ve ever had,” said Carl Kaestle, an education historian at Brown University who has studied the federal role in 20th-century American schooling.

Mr. Duncan has run a $4 billion school-improvement competition that led many states to change education laws to reflect his prescriptions. This month, the department is distributing $3.5 billion for the overhaul of thousands of failing schools. Mr. Duncan has been shuttling frequently to Capitol Hill to outline plans for a rewriting of the main federal law on public schools.

In March, Congress terminated a huge, bank-based college loan program, replacing it with one run out of the Education Department, and redirecting $36 billion in bank subsidies into Pell grants for low-income students.

Now the administration has begun writing rules to ensure that students will not assume burdensome tuition debt for career training that is unlikely to land them well-paying jobs.

“This administration’s education vision is a very activist, expansive role for the federal government,” said Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president at the American Council on Education, who has watched education policies evolve in Washington for nearly 30 years. “We’re never going to be like France, where the education minister can look at his watch and tell you what every fourth grader is doing. But inevitably, with more federal education initiatives, more federal money, comes more strings, more federal control.”

Not everything Duncan has done as Ed-Sec is bad; in fact, on many issues, he convincingly mouths the rhetoric of a reformer. And federal encroachment into the formerly-off limits realm of local public schools really got a boost from Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, with No Child Left Behind. But even a self-styled reformer is something to be wary of if his goal is total federal hegemony over local schools -- since such powers, once granted, are unlikely ever to be rolled back.

We've heard warnings for years about the rise of the "Imperial President." In Barack Obama, this idea takes on its most tangible form yet. Maybe, in Duncan, we have our first "Imperial Educrat."

For Charter Schools, Failure Is An Option

As a charter school supporter, I've watched with dismay as a once-renowned area charter school network, Cesar Chavez, has spiraled into disorder, scandal and disappointment for parents, students and teachers. It's too early to say exactly what went wrong. I hope some enterprising local journalist takes the time to tell the story in full. It appears there were problems in the network's upper ranks, which have now cast shadows over everyone below.

But the disappointment of parents and students, along with independent efforts to salvage some elements of the network, indicate that the schools still have strong support among customers, despite problems at the top.

The silver lining to every story of a charter school failure is that these schools are allowed to fail -- that they are held accountable for poor performance, unlike most conventional schools, that blithely carry on, in perpetuity, even when they aren't performing up to par. Such failures are rare. But they do occur. And that's okay. For every charter school that flounders and fails, three or four or five are flourishing. On balance, these school are still serving students well, as a mountain of new evidence shows, and despite what some blinkered critics say.

For charter schools, failure is an option. Maybe that's why so many succeed.

The Parental President

Gazette columnist Barry Noreen thinks parents who worry about Barack Obama's address to school kids are all paranoids or ideologues. What's the big deal, asks Barry? Other presidents have tried to manipulate school kids, or have used school kids as props and pawns. Shouldn't this president get his shot at it?

I think Barry is too cavalier in his analysis and conclusions.

What Obama is proposing -- a captive audience with all American school kids -- isn't analogous to the cases he points to, as examples of other presidents reaching out to school kids. School houses have served as backdrops for many presidential photo-ops, as when President George W. Bush went to a Maryland school to tout No Child Left Behind. But that event was aimed not at winning over school kids, or teachers, but at getting his mug on the nightly news and influencing adults. That's not the same as demanding an audience with all school kids, while they are in school.

George W. Bush did ask American school kids to donate a dollar to help Afghan children -- but he didn't do that during some national address to school kids. So once again, Noreen's analogies don't hold up. George Bush senior did hold a "kids symposium" on space, but I'll bet Barry Noreen a 6 pack of cerveza that this was narrowly targeted to a subset of students, or science classes. I would be shocked if he can show me that all American school kids served as a captive
audience for that one.

These aren't analogous situations, in short. And even if some Republican president did do it before Obama did it, so what? That doesn't make it right. Presidents should serve as good role models and govern wisely, acting with the welfare of children in mind. But they shouldn't drag kids into adult policy disputes. That crosses the line. The "Bush did it" argument doesn't fly with most real conservatives or libertarians, who understand that neither Bush was a champion of limited government ideas, and that both men had a hand in drawing the GOP into the statist camp, landing it squarely where it is today.

I think this event does seem unprecedented. And I can understand why some parents would object to it, even on non-ideological grounds. I'm uncomfortable with it not because I disagree with Obama, or because I think one presidential address will turn American school kids into an army of little Obamatons, bent on bringing their skeptical parents into line with his agenda. I also have no problem with kids taking an interest in politics and the president -- I'm delighted when they do.

It just strikes me as arrogant and presumptuous -- smacking of an "imperial presidency" -- for a president to demand a captive audience of all American school kids, while they are at school and when parents can't be there to contextualize what they're told. That's something that Castro or Chavez or Putin could get away with. All self-respecting totalitarians make a play for the kids. But I'm not surprised that it strikes some Americans as creepy or "Orwellian."

What precedent might this set for the future? Presidents (of both parties) will now assume they can talk directly to school kids whenever they please. Obama might just want to give a pep talk about education. Fine. But maybe next he'll want to pass along some important information about health issues: smoking is bad; obesity is bad; don't forget to use a condom; look both ways before crossing.

And what else might future presidents want to lecture kids about? War? Health care? The environment? Energy policy? Social Security (today's school kids will be carrying this ponzi scheme on their backs, after all)? A slippery slope beckons. And this could set the precedent for a lot of mischief, not just with Obama but with presidents that follow.

I know Obama is anxious to finish construction on the American nanny state, but we don't need a parental president. And many American parents may resent seeing him trying to assume that role. This speech almost seems as if it's designed to remove parents from the equation, which there's already far too much of in the education arena.

The timing also raises red flags. Obama's numbers are tanking. The halo he wore inauguration day is in danger of falling off. The media that showered him with roses is now sticking him with thorns. Obama's "good war" in Afghanistan is a bloody mess. With health care not working for it, the White House is just dying for a subject change.

Maybe a presidential pep talk to school kids would help turn things around; you can almost hear the sprockets spinning in Rahm Emanuel's head. Political calculation is written all over this, in other words. It's driven by political cynicism, not sincerity.

Obama should direct this speech to American families, not just students, since we all know that families are the key to educational success. And he should deliver his speech not during the school day, to a largely captive audience, but in the evening, when students and their parents can opt in or out as they choose, without peer pressure or coercion being part of it. Students who want to will be free to listen. Students who don't won't have to sit in the study hall, or stay home from school for a day, or ask for special permission. Parents can be there to help contextualize what's being said.

I don't think most Americans would have a problem with that, whether or not they support Obama.

The Last Respectable Form of Discrimination

Many school districts have begrudgingly made peace with charter schools, if only because their popularity with parents means the concept is here to stay. I say “begrudgingly” because many school districts, resenting the competition, will still find ways to undermine and underfund charters, treating them like the proverbial ugly step child, when they get the chance.

The Denver Rocky Mountain News today quite correctly takes Denver area school districts to task for putting $1.9 billion in bond measures before voters that, in the editorial’s words, offer “charter schools little more than crumbs from the table.” Explains The Rocky:

“According to Jim Griffin, president of the Colorado League of Charters Schools, only about $15 million of the bond proceeds have been allocated to the metro area's 56 charters. That's only about 0.8 percent of the total going to more than 5 percent of the students. (There are approximately 21,000 charter-school students among these school districts and roughly 386,000 students in all.)”

It’s long past time that school districts in Colorado and elsewhere got over the idea that charter schools are somehow different from conventional public schools, and stopped treating the parents and students who attend these schools as second class citizens, even though they are every bit as worthy of full funding, and of respect, and of equal treatment under the law, as any other public school patron.

We don’t tolerate such discrimination in other public policy arenas; why do we tolerate it in regard to charter schools? It's a segregationist mindset, minus the racial component.

Not every Denver-area school district cops this attitude, thankfully. Jefferson County Public Schools, Jim Griffin tells the Rocky, treats its charters like partners, not competitors. “This is how the process was meant to work," concludes The Rocky. “If school districts continue to leave charter schools out in the cold, the legislature should revisit the issue and consider more forceful means of assuring that charters get their fair share."

One Ruling Closer to Judicial Oligarchy

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush called the ruling "heartbreaking," but "infuriating" better describes the Florida Supreme Court's haughty decision to summarily bump three education-related measures from November's ballot, without even deigning to explain itself. "The court did not explain its reasoning," reports The New York Times. "Instead it issued a one-page ruling saying that the amendments could not go on the November ballot and that a full opinion would be issued later."

The ruling is more than just a setback for the cause of school choice in Florida, and a potential death blow to a nascent school voucher program Bush has championed since he was governor there, which Democrats and teachers unions have tried mightily to derail. It marks another alarming lurch in the direction of a judicial oligarchy in the Unites States, in which arrogant judges become the final arbiters in every policy dispute, or, as in this case, preempt the peoples' right to decide for themselves.

The least a court can do, if it's going to deny the people a vote, is explain its reasoning. Declining to do so isn't just insulting, but suggests that the court is acting in a purely reactionary fashion, motivated more by ideology than legal or constitutional principle. But judges could not so rule -- and would not now effectively rule the country -- unless there were interest groups (in this case, teachers' unions) determined to win in the courtroom what they fear they can't win in the court of public opinion. And these groups, as well as the Americans who lend them financial and moral support, are also guilty of subverting our democratic institutions.