Monthly Archives: October 2012

There has been plenty of hand-wringing over the current emphasis (okay, infatuation) with high-stakes testing. Teachers have complained that they feel forced to “teach to the test.” Educators have pointed out that subjects not being tested–art, music, civics–get short shrift, despite their undeniable value.

Less often noted is the incentive to “game the system”–the temptation of school administrators faced with less than satisfactory test results to fudge the numbers. To cheat.

This week, the Superintendent of Schools in El Paso, Texas, was sentenced for just such behavior.  According to news reports,

One charge stems from García directing six unindicted co-conspirators and others to fraudulently inflate student test scores so struggling schools would appear to meet federal accountability standards, which are based on 10th-grade state standardized exams.

The scheme involved school district employees changing grades from passing to failing to keep some students in ninth grade, holding Mexican transfer students in ninth grade regardless of their transcripts and implementing credit-recovery programs so intentionally retained students could catch up to their appropriate grade and graduate on time.

García received $54,000 in bonuses that were stipulated in his contract if the district did well on state and federal accountability standards.

 Most school officials, of course, don’t engage in such blatant law-breaking. Instead, they spin results. They play games calculated to make their performance look better. Here in Marion County, Dr. White’s administration has been particularly generous with so-called “waivers” that allow students to graduate without passing the mandatory tests; the administration has also seen a mysterious increase in students purportedly leaving the system to be “home schooled,” and thus not counted as drop-outs.

If we really are intent upon reforming the nation’s public schools, we need to revisit some foundational questions. What are the skills and attitudes we want our schools to provide? What can be measured by testing and what can’t? How should test results be used in assessing teacher performance? What safeguards do we need to put in place to insure that Superintendents and others aren’t gaming the system? How do we create rewards for good performance and honest reporting, and avoid providing perverse incentives that encourage cheating?

And perhaps the hardest question of all: how do we shift our resources and emphasis back to the all-important classroom and hardworking, dedicated teachers, and away from the bureaucrats concerned mainly with protecting their turf?

In an ideal world, non-teacher school system employees would see themselves as support staff, there to provide classroom teachers with resources and services they need in order to do the important job of actual instruction. Superintendents would not see themselves as important executives entitled to big bonuses when those teachers do well, but as ombudsmen of a sort, encouraging and enabling classroom success.

Someone needs to remind these guys they aren’t bankers.

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I have friends who insist that Mitt Romney is a competent, pragmatic businessman. I have a personal acquaintance who is running for Congress whom I know to be an intelligent, middle-of-the-road problem-solver who would take her responsibilities seriously. I’m sure that–among the hundreds of other Republicans running for office–there are many who, in ordinary times, would be excellent public servants.

These aren’t ordinary times.

I feel sorry for Republican candidates this cycle, and I’m not being snarky. They are in an impossible situation.

One friend who actually knows Mitt Romney says he doesn’t recognize him. My own acquaintance has—in the course of her campaign for Congress– morphed into someone very different from the moderate, measured individual I’ve known for years.

It’s a political truism that Republican and Democratic candidates alike must pander to the partisan extremes during the primaries. But today’s Republican candidates can no longer shake up the Etch-A-Sketch and turn toward the middle in the general election, because the GOP’s rabid base won’t allow it. And in our media-saturated environment, any effort to moderate a campaign position is immediately transmitted to the self-appointed guardians of partisan purity, who respond by smacking down the errant candidate and bringing him (or her) to heel.

Since it is widely believed that the national election, at least, will be a “base” election—an election where turnout will determine the victor—otherwise sane candidates have no choice but to parrot the inanities of the least-knowledgeable, most anti-intellectual elements of their party, in hopes that enthusiasm of the true believers will trump the distaste they are generating with everyone else.

Those of us who follow politics understand what is happening. We recognize the uncomfortable position so many candidates occupy, somewhere between that partisan rock and that electoral hard place. My problem is with an aspect of this dilemma that is less often discussed or acknowledged.

There has been a lot written about the influence of money on campaigns and politics, especially after the decision in Citizens United. Pundits and bloggers have raised the obvious concern: if a plutocrat’s cash means that candidate X wins,  candidate X is going to owe that plutocrat. At the least, he’ll take the plutocrat’s calls; at the worst, he will simply do the plutocrat’s bidding. Fewer have noted the corollary: if the crazy core of the GOP base turns out, and manages to push otherwise losing candidates—Romney, Mourdock—over the edge, they too will be owed. Big time.

A few years ago, I told my husband I’d given up on voting for a candidate. Furthermore, I was no longer going to vote for the lesser of two evils. Instead, I was going to vote for the candidate who was pandering to the people who seemed least dangerous.

Whatever “real” personae are hiding beneath the shellacked exteriors of today’s Republican candidates is ultimately irrelevant. If elected, they will owe the party base, and that base will exact obedience. And make no mistake about it: the denizens of the GOP base pose a very real danger–to science, to reason, to the environment, to social stability, and to the American future.

Reason enough to vote for the other guys.

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