Friday, December 05, 2003
Bush's Texas Miracle Based On Hoax: Don't Bother To Stop The Presses
Why is Rod Paige still on the job? I mean, excuuuse me, but why hasn't the Secretary of Education been fired?
We now know that the claims for a Texas education miracle under George Bush, most often personified by tough-guy Rod Paige, Superintendent of Schools in Houston, who did for education in that city what conservatives have been telling us for three decades should be done - bring it back to the teaching of the basics, evaluate it with high stakes system-wide tests that not only decide which students will be promoted to the next grade, but also which are the "good," and which, the "bad" schools, was a hoax.
So, why, at the very least, has there been not a mention of congressional hearings into the Secretary's role in this not-just-Enron cooking of the books?
Not to oversimpligy, the answer here is simple: Both houses of congress are controlled by Republicans, who are putting the best interests of a Republican President ahead of those of the American citizenery. Not exactly a man bites dog story. And before anyone pipes up that Democrats behaved the same way when they controlled congress, let me remind one and all that the first congressional hearings into the Whitewater matter were by a Democratic congress, a full week in both the House and the Senate, this despite on-going investigations by the RTC and a Special Prosecutor. Republicans were able to participate fully in the hearings, including getting their own list of subpoenaed witnesses. And what was their response? Endless complaints that the hearings were a farce, because in the House, all Representatives would be limited to one five minute question period at a time, which happens to be the standard in such hearings.
This week the NYTimes had yet more on the miracle that wasn't, with an emphasis on the ways in which teaching to a test has deprived the very children Secretary Paige has proclaimed evidence of his and his Governor's successes in Texas, of the kind of education the parents who bought into the "miracle" thought their children were getting, one that would allow them to succeed in college. Yes, indeed, the soft bigotry of low expectations; apparently, neither the then Governor, nor Secretary Paige defined "success" for these children as being able to do college level work.
Jeanne at Body And Soul says all that needs saying about the Times piece, and Cal Pundit has fun trying to conform to the template of good writing fobbed off on these children - the five paragraph essay, so I'll limit myself to a personal observation.
Some years ago, in order to qualify to participate in a program by which writers could volunteer to help teach writing in public schools, I had to take a state of California standard test required for teaching candidates. Not at all sure, after so many years, that I still remembered how to take a test, I purchased a book that explained specifically how to take this one. What was both fascinating and depressing about the recommended way to approach the essay portion of the test was the way the scoring standard used to evaluate the essay was so clearly designed to evoke a formulaic response - a more sophisticated version of the five paragraph essay. Some of the examples of "bad" or low scoring essays were those that were questioning the eminently questionable terms of the essay subject, and those by students who hadn't been taught the formula, but clearly knew how to think outside the box, and had good instincts, if not yet the actual technique, for how to make an original written argument. And despite being armed with this knowledge of what the test expectations were, I had a tough time time, myself, writing a suitably formulaic essay.
Maybe if we would start listening to the people who actually have to teach children - our public school teachers, instead of to Phyllis Schafily, and James Dobson, and Lynne Cheney, and Fred Barnes, and George Wills, and Bill Bennett, and....fill in your own favorite clueless education expert, as a nation, which was once defined by its committment to public education, we wouldn't be such patsies for the prouncements of the very people whose goal it is to dismantle the nation's public school systems.
And as a first of many small steps in that direction, let me recommend this article by an actual teacher who teaches in Texas, and could have told all of us way back in 2001, what utter rot President Bush's education program was based on. And click here for another first-rate article one that summarizes the whole "no child left behind scandal, " is suitable to keep in your arsenal of handy references, and is also by someone who has been an educator.
We now know that the claims for a Texas education miracle under George Bush, most often personified by tough-guy Rod Paige, Superintendent of Schools in Houston, who did for education in that city what conservatives have been telling us for three decades should be done - bring it back to the teaching of the basics, evaluate it with high stakes system-wide tests that not only decide which students will be promoted to the next grade, but also which are the "good," and which, the "bad" schools, was a hoax.
So, why, at the very least, has there been not a mention of congressional hearings into the Secretary's role in this not-just-Enron cooking of the books?
Not to oversimpligy, the answer here is simple: Both houses of congress are controlled by Republicans, who are putting the best interests of a Republican President ahead of those of the American citizenery. Not exactly a man bites dog story. And before anyone pipes up that Democrats behaved the same way when they controlled congress, let me remind one and all that the first congressional hearings into the Whitewater matter were by a Democratic congress, a full week in both the House and the Senate, this despite on-going investigations by the RTC and a Special Prosecutor. Republicans were able to participate fully in the hearings, including getting their own list of subpoenaed witnesses. And what was their response? Endless complaints that the hearings were a farce, because in the House, all Representatives would be limited to one five minute question period at a time, which happens to be the standard in such hearings.
This week the NYTimes had yet more on the miracle that wasn't, with an emphasis on the ways in which teaching to a test has deprived the very children Secretary Paige has proclaimed evidence of his and his Governor's successes in Texas, of the kind of education the parents who bought into the "miracle" thought their children were getting, one that would allow them to succeed in college. Yes, indeed, the soft bigotry of low expectations; apparently, neither the then Governor, nor Secretary Paige defined "success" for these children as being able to do college level work.
Jeanne at Body And Soul says all that needs saying about the Times piece, and Cal Pundit has fun trying to conform to the template of good writing fobbed off on these children - the five paragraph essay, so I'll limit myself to a personal observation.
Some years ago, in order to qualify to participate in a program by which writers could volunteer to help teach writing in public schools, I had to take a state of California standard test required for teaching candidates. Not at all sure, after so many years, that I still remembered how to take a test, I purchased a book that explained specifically how to take this one. What was both fascinating and depressing about the recommended way to approach the essay portion of the test was the way the scoring standard used to evaluate the essay was so clearly designed to evoke a formulaic response - a more sophisticated version of the five paragraph essay. Some of the examples of "bad" or low scoring essays were those that were questioning the eminently questionable terms of the essay subject, and those by students who hadn't been taught the formula, but clearly knew how to think outside the box, and had good instincts, if not yet the actual technique, for how to make an original written argument. And despite being armed with this knowledge of what the test expectations were, I had a tough time time, myself, writing a suitably formulaic essay.
Maybe if we would start listening to the people who actually have to teach children - our public school teachers, instead of to Phyllis Schafily, and James Dobson, and Lynne Cheney, and Fred Barnes, and George Wills, and Bill Bennett, and....fill in your own favorite clueless education expert, as a nation, which was once defined by its committment to public education, we wouldn't be such patsies for the prouncements of the very people whose goal it is to dismantle the nation's public school systems.
And as a first of many small steps in that direction, let me recommend this article by an actual teacher who teaches in Texas, and could have told all of us way back in 2001, what utter rot President Bush's education program was based on. And click here for another first-rate article one that summarizes the whole "no child left behind scandal, " is suitable to keep in your arsenal of handy references, and is also by someone who has been an educator.
