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The Forsyth County News
Opinion
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State fails the test
H ow How do you much much think longer? longer the
people of Georgia are going
to accept as status quo state
efforts to improve public
education that time and
again prove to be hopelessly
inept and embarassingly
misdirected?
How many more gover¬
nors, state school superin¬
tendents and state legislators
are going to be elected based
on promises that never mate¬
rialize? How many more
plans for sweeping reform
are going to be proposed,
then ignored, forgotten or
made impotent due to lack
of funding? How much
longer is statewide medioc¬
rity going to be acceptable?
The answer, it seems, is
forever.
The latest fiasco within
the state department of edu¬
cation is its Criterion
Referenced Competency
Tests for testing the knowl¬
edge of middle schoolers in
subjects such as math, read¬
ing and social studies.
This year’s results were
so dismal that social studies
results for sixth- and sev¬
enth-graders were tossed out
after failure rates above 70
percent, and thousands of
eighth-graders found them¬
selves suddenly headed to
summer school after failing
the math portion of the test.
The biggest problem,
state officials said, was that
the material tested didn’t
match up properly with the
curriculum used in the class¬
rooms. In many cases stu¬
dents were tested on materi¬
al to which they had not
even been exposed. This
despite millions and mil¬
lions of dollars spent to
make sure that exact thing
didn’t happen.
Five for the Future?
Sweeping ideas that be for left
By Chris Satullo
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Conservatism’s long heyday in
national politics is grinding to an ugly
halt.
The demise may have been
inevitable; cue in Eric Hoffer’s oft
quoted line that every cause begins as
a movement, turns into a business and
degenerates into a racket.
But the conservative movement
managed to set the terms of national
discourse for nearly three decades
because it did some things very well.
Chief among them, it cultivated
greenhouses for ideas: think tanks such
as the American Enterprise Institute,
flagship journals such as the National
Review.
There, theories, policies and politi¬
cal narratives flowered in profusion.
Politicians needed only to snip the
blossoms and display them on their
lapels.
Liberalism, by contrast, had a thin¬
ner intellectual bench. What it had in
profusion were interest groups with
laundry lists of demands.
Recently, responding to its skein of
deplorable defeats, the left half of the
spectrum has emulated the right in cre¬
ating think tanks such as the Center for
American Progress and journals such
as the American Prospect.
^ Exasperated critics of Baracl^
FORSYTH COUNTY NEWS — Sunday, June 8,2008
But the problem goes far
deeper than just this year’s
inexplicable testing chaos.
The dependence on stan¬
dardized tests as the founda¬
tion for educational achieve¬
ment is absurd, and still
those empowered to develop
strategy for public school
improvement keep racing
down that same tired path
expecting it to take them
somewhere different.
The alphabet soup of
standardized tests given stu¬
dents at virtually every
grade level has become a
joke, except perhaps to those
companies making billions
for developing and scoring
the tests. Guidelines for
classroom instruction have
become inflexible to assure
that teachers “teach the test,”
guaranteeing that any effort
at creative instruction by
competent teachers is
quashed before it ever
becomes a reality.
And students are so
beseiged by high-pressure
tests that must be passed for
promotion that their primary
goal in school is to make
sure they do well on tests,
regardless of * whether . , they ,
learn anything.
We spend years teaching
students that success can be
defined by their ability to
master tests that can be
graded by running a marked
card , through , a machine , . or
with a computer program,
then wonder why they can’t
intelligently perform in the
real world after graduation.
Maybe we need more tests
as a substitute for thinking
skills in the workplace.
The CRCT debacle is just .
the latest of the state’s public
education debacles, and
there’s no reason to believe it
will be the last. How much
longer, indeed?
Obama frequently complain that his
relentless calls for “change you can
believe in” are short on content. His
speeches are vague (though his Web
site offers plenty of specifics).
One way to guess what Obama
might do is to look at what ideas are
brewing along his ideological supply
chain of thinkers and writers. A good
place to start looking is the spring
issue of “Democracy: A Journal of
Ideas.” There, 20 smart writers offer up
their best “big ideas” for a new, pro¬
gressive agenda.
Here are five that struck me as par¬
ticularly interesting:
LA “third-age” initiative. This idea
from Gara LaMarche of Atlantic
Philanthropies responds to a rising
realization. Retirement at 65 in a soci¬
ety where most people who reach that
age will live 20 more years is just stu¬
pid. Boomers won’t want to settle for
the golf cart and the crosswords. But
they will flee the Dilbert cubicles.
They’ll seek work of social meaning,
in schools, hospitals and nonprofits.
LaMarche suggests a tuition-assistance
program to help seniors train for these
“third-age” careers, perhaps using
community colleges as a focal point.
2. A progressive consumption tax.
This one is wild, but it gets you think¬
ing. Robert Frank, an economics pro¬
fessor at Cornell University, has writ¬
ten brilliantly about upper-m^dle-
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South is back in
The South may be about
to rise again. Republicans
can’t take the region for
granted any longer. To keep
Georgia in the GOP fold, the
Republican presidential cam
paign w ‘ 11 have to spend
money in the Peach State for
the first time since 1996.
We can thank Barack
Obama for making us impor¬
tant again. Notice I did not
say he is likely to win the
state. But Obama is going to
make it tough for Republican
J°b n McCain to capture
Georgia and Mississippi.
Here’s why:
— Obama will have
plenty of campaign money,
enough to mount substantial
campaigns in more states
th an McCain. Democrats can
pour cash into Georgia and
Mississippi to help Obama
and Senate and House candi¬
dates.
The African-American
voter bloc has been ener
e' ze d as never before. In the
past, blacks have constituted
more than 25 percent of
the total Georgia vote,
Number crunchers expect
that f j? ure t0 exceed 30 per
In Mississippi, blacks
may account for 40 percent
of the total vote. That means
Obama could win Georgia
and Mississippi carrying
only a minority of white vot
ers. Mississippi has the
lar § est Percentage of voting
age blacks in the nation with
Georgia not far behind.
The Obama thrust in the
South forces McCain to
class discontent inside America’s cul
ture of spiraling consumption. His
idea: tax consumption, not income,
Reward savings, to boost a puny
national savings rate that is putting us
scarily in hock to China. How? His
idea is nearly as simple but a lot more
progressive than that right-wing sacred
cow, the flat tax. All you’d report to
the IRS is how much you earned the
previous year, minus how much you
saved. The more you save, the less
your taxable consumption. Most mid
dle-income Americans would pay less,
Corporate moguls who throw million
dollar birthday parties would pay a lot
more.
3. Medicare for long-term care.
One of the dirty little secrets of
America’s middle class is how it relies
on Medicaid, supposedly an insurer of
the poor, to pay for grandma’s nursing
home care. This clumsy method invites
abuse and will become unsustainable
as the baby boomers age. Jeanne
Lambrew, a fellow at the Center for
American Progress, has a better idea,
Use Medicare as the reinsurance back
stop for long-term-care insurance
plans that the feds would vet and mon
itor. This would make the insurartce
more affordable, understandable and
attractive.
4. Pay-as-you-drive car insurance.
This idea from Jason Bordoff of the
Brookings Institution is startlingly
Bill
Shipp ? j
COLUMNIST
divert money from key
Midwestern and Eastern
states to hold onto the ele¬
phants’ solid South.
Oh, yes, did we mention
Bob Barr? If the Libertarian
presidential candidate could
win 10 percent of the
Georgia vote, he would
become the Ross Perot of
2008.
In 1992 Independent can¬
didate Ross Perot won
enough votes in Georgia and
other states to deny a second
term to Republican George
H. W. Bush. Bill Clinton won
the White House.
A nationally known con¬
sultant explains the anticipat¬
ed Democratic scenario of
2008 like this:
“In a sense the storyline
is akin to the classic, World
War II adventure ‘The Great
Escape,’ in which scores of
Allied POWs planned and
implemented an elaborate
escape. Their missions were
to keep throngs of Germans
tied up chasing escapees all
over Europe as well as to set
free as many POWs as possi¬
ble. The diversionary tactic
worked. Thousands of
Germans were taken off the'
frontlines to find Allied run¬
aways.”
However, only three of
the 76 escapees finally made
it to safety. So the metaphor
simple. The more you drive your car,
the more you’d be charged for insur
ance. This would pool risk as effective
ly as insurers’current Byzantine rating
systems. In an era of an oil crunch and
global warming, it would be a power
ful incentive to curb the number of
miles you drive,
5. Middle-class schools for all.
How can we get children from low
income households to learn?
Liberalism’s past big ideas, from bus
ing to blitzing high-poverty schools
with resources, haven’t worked.
Neither have school vouchers, the
right’s ruling obsession. Richard
Kahlenberg, a fellow at the Century
Foundation, notes that one of the top
predictors of academic failure is
attending a high-poverty school. So
why not make economically integrated
schools your core goal? Wake County,
N.C., is trying this, and it seems to be
working.
Other “big ideas” in this package
deal with items such as gun crime,
diplomacy in the Muslim world, smart
growth and government reform. It’s
worth your time to check it out
www.democracyjoumal.org.
Chris Satullo is a columnist for the
Philadelphia Inquirer. Readers may
write to him at: Philadelphia Inquirer,
P.O. Box 8263, Philadelphia, Pa.
19101, or by e-mail at
csatullo@phillynews. com. J
"In a sense the story¬
line is akin to the
classic World War II
adventure The Great
Escape/in which
scores of Allied
POWs planned and
implemented an
elaborate escape.
Their missions were
to keep throngs of
Germans tied up
chasing escapees all
over Europe as well
as to set free as
many ble. The POWs diversionary as possi¬
tactic worked.
Thousands of
Germans were taken
off the frontlines to
find Allied run¬
aways. n
doesn’t quite work out unless
one is willing to paint
Offama as the sacrificial
lamb who brought the
Democratic donkey back to
life but didn’t survive him¬
self.
Republican talking heads
spend much of their time
deriding Democrats for their
fragmented party.
Have you checked out the
Republicans lately? McCain
is getting trashed regularly
from the right wing.
His going to New Orleans
and highlighting the Katrina
disaster plus global warming
Letter policy
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Letters should be limited
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letters and generally do not
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sumer complaints. Unsigned
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will be withheld.
Mail letters to the Forsyth
County News, P.O. Box 210,
Cumming, GA 30028, hand
deliver to 302 Veterans
Memorial Blvd., fax to (770)
889-6017 or e-mail to edi¬
tor® forsythnews.com.
J. HL
did not exactly endear him to
white conservatives.
Some Republican
activists are talking quietly
about the need of a GOP
blowout defeat, a la
Goldwater in 1964, to
regroup the party and bring it
back stronger than ever.
The economy is messed
up. Gas prices keep climb¬
ing. Real estate is in disaster
mode in much of the country.
President George Bush’s
popularity is at a record low.
Republicans concede that
their party will suffer losses
in the House and Senate.
Such dismal talk may not
translate into more votes for
Obama, but it may signal
lower turnout among dispirit¬
ed white Republicans. ’
The country is embroiled
in so many problems, and the
GOP is so messed up I
am not certain that a majori¬
ty of rational voters will sup¬
port McCain and turn their
back on Obama. But then,
rationality may have nothing
to do with it.
In any event, if you
thought the Democratic pri¬
maries were bruising affairs,
just wait for the general elec¬
tion campaigns. American
politics is always a nasty
affair. You may be about to
witness a new record for
nasty.
Bill Shipp’s column is
publised each Sunday and
Wednesday. You may write to
him at P.O. Box 2520,
Kennesaw, GA 30156, or via
e-mail: shipp 1 @bell
south.net.
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