Common Core: The Paranoid Right’s Latest Existential Threat to the Republic
Posted: May 6, 2013 Filed under: Education Leave a comment »
The Tennessean this morning devoted vast dead tree real estate to the Common Core standards that are reshaping public school curricula in Tennessee and 44 other states. Although these standards have been around for a while as states have been adopting them one by one (Tennessee did so three years ago), new testing coming in 2014 has put Common Core on the front burner, especially for opponents and skeptics. Last week hundreds of conservatives gathered at a Franklin hotel to hear speakers rail against Common Core. Indeed, many on the right have reached full-tilt froth mode at the looming horrors they see in Common Core, although figuring out the substance of their objections turns out to be a bit of shell game.
It should be acknowledged up front that Common Core is encountering some backlash from the left as well: Progressives are unhappy with new exams polluting an already toxic educational culture of standardized testing mania, and many teachers (and their unions) are worried that the implementation cart is being put ahead of the teacher-training horse.
But while liberals may be worried that the product is being rushed to market, so to speak, conservatives seem to think the product is itself an affront to civilization and human decency. So just what is the conservative beef with Common Core?
The Tennessean piece last week reporting on the Franklin gathering is unenlightening, offering only two sentences on the substance of opponents’ critique:
Opponents of Common Core accuse the Obama administration of dangling billions of dollars in Race to the Top funds to get states to sign on to its notion of what children should be learning. The opponents say that, rather than raise student achievement and accountability, it dumbs down academics and leads to data-mining of student information.
The first sentence is partially true: To be eligible to apply for Race to the Top funding, a state had to show “its commitment to adopting a common set of high quality standards,” and the way to do so is through “participation in a consortium of states…working toward jointly developing and adopting a common set of K-12 standards…that are supported by evidence that they are internationally benchmarked and build toward college and career readiness by the time of high school graduation” (source: Federal Register, 4/14/10, p. 19503). The Common Core, an outgrowth of an interstate consortium, is essentially the sort of thing being described here, although Race to the Top (quoting from its FAQ) “does not endorse any particular consortium or set of standards.”
The second sentence is outlandish. Whatever one thinks of the existence of national standards (a pretty good idea that happens to work out nicely in most advanced countries), you can’t look at the actual substance of Common Core and see in it a dumbing down of anything. I challenge anyone to review the Common Core standards document covering English, Social Studies, and Science and explain where this dilutes down anyone’s education. It is precisely because states including Tennessee were assessing student achievement so leniently that this whole thing emerged.
For more insight on what opponents are thinking I paid a visit to the Tennessee Against Common Core website, the home page of which blends a confusing attack on Bill Gates (who apparently “can buy whatever he wants, even our children’s minds”) with a curiously unhinged analogy between Common Core and Adolph Hitler’s ordering all children into government schools in 1937. Deeper on the site we encounter a 16-page PDF (cribbed with permission from Utah’s anti-Common Core group) telling us that Common Core is “the nationalizing and even globalizing of education.” Opponents see it as illegally establishing a national curriculum, even though anyone who bothers to actually look at the Common Core standards documents can see quite plainly that it isn’t a curriculum, and in any event no state is compelled to have anything to do with it.
It is true that federal law constrains the U.S. Department of Education’s ability to mandate curricula and assessments, but there is nothing mandatory here. Although the whole Common Core initiative is a voluntary thing among states, conservatives object to standards as a condition for Race-to-the Top funding — these “incentives have clouded the picture,” in the words of Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley and several of his GOP colleagues. This objection is nonsense. Federal money to states is routinely conditioned on policy expectations, and states are perfectly free to opt out and not apply.
At the end of the day the conservative backlash against Common Core feels like yet another case of right-wing anti-intellectual paranoia. As one commenter on the Stop Common Core in Tennessee Facebook page declares, “This is about federal take over and the state, teachers and parents giving up their rights to the feds. Federal government control = mind control.” Another: “If I wanted to live in a socialist/communist society I would have moved elsewhere…what happened to our Democracy!?”
Common Core may not be the magic bullet that will fix K-12 education in the country, but calling it out as a dire existential threat to the republic will accomplish even less — except perhaps demonstrate that opponents haven’t bothered to read the thing.
A version of this post appears on the Nashville Scene‘s Pith in the Wind blog.
In Stylish Colors for Boys and Girls
Posted: April 26, 2013 Filed under: Disgust Leave a comment »
Backpacks too!
Actually we’re not likely to see mandatory bulletproof school uniforms anytime soon because it turns out they are a wee bit on the pricey side. But it is lovely to know that if you’ve got a thousand dollars to spare you can buy junior a kids ballistic puffer vest, which not only provides NIJ Level II ballistic protection (whatever the hell that means), but also comes in six “stylish colors for boys and girls” including fuchsia! There’s also a kids ballistic t-shirt for a cool $755 (white only, alas).
The head of the company that makes and sells this stuff, one AJ Zabadne, is quoted in the Guardian story describing his products as nothing more than a routine precaution: “It’s like you find life jackets on ships or planes in case they go down. It’s no different to having a seatbelt in a car.”
Yes, quite right, small children wearing thousand-dollar body armor garments to elementary school … the moral equivalent of a seat belt. Good lord.
A version of this post appears on the Nashville Scene‘s Pith in the Wind blog.
Quasi-Organizing at Walmart
Posted: April 23, 2013 Filed under: Corporations Leave a comment »
Workers in dozens of Walmart stores around the country are planning actions Wednesday that will confront their local managers with demands for changes to the firm’s system for scheduling employee shifts. As The Nation‘s Josh Eidelson reports, Walmart employees have been collectively upset with with erratic work schedules that limit hours and complicate personal lives, all while keeping aggregate wages at poverty levels.
If organizers’ estimates hold, Wednesday’s coordinated worker delegations will represent the largest mobilization of OUR Walmart members since last November’s Black Friday strikes, in which organizers say 400-some workers walked off the job. In some stores, workers will go together to talk to management before or after their shifts; in others, workers will do so during the work day….While the delegations’ shared date and message may amplify attention, their greatest significance will be as the latest test of rank-and-file OUR Walmart leaders’ ability to mobilize co-workers amid fear of retaliation.
It’s also a interesting and important show of the power of organizing even where workers aren’t already organized in the formal labor union sense — using labor law’s statutory protections covering “concerted activity” to advance employee interests.
Atlas Vounteers a Shrug
Posted: April 11, 2013 Filed under: Disgust Leave a comment »
How’s this for buzz(kill) in the national press?
If you’re worried about where America is heading, look no further than Tennessee. Its lush mountains and verdant rolling countryside belie a mean-spirited public policy that only makes sense if you believe deeply in the anti-collectivist, anti-altruist philosophy of Ayn Rand. It’s what you get when you combine hatred for government with disgust for poor people.
That’s the lede of a piece by Les Leopold at Alternet (and picked up by Salon) titled “The Southern State Fast Becoming Ayn Rand’s Vision of Paradise.” Leopold runs the numbers:
Tennessee starves what little government it has, ranking dead last in per capita tax revenue. To fund its minimalist public sector, it makes sure that low-income residents pay as much as possible through heavily regressive sales taxes, which rank 10th highest among all states as a percent of total tax revenues….As you would expect, this translates into hard times for its public school systems, which rank 48th in school revenues per student and 45th in teacher salaries. The failure to invest in education also corresponds with poverty: the state has the 40th worst poverty rate (15%) and the 13th highest state percentage of poor children (26%). Employment opportunities also are extremely poor for the poor. Only 25% have full-time jobs, 45% are employed part-time, and a whopping 30% have no jobs at all.
Pointing to legislation making welfare contingent on school attendance and performance and other reactionary measures all too familiar to Pith readers, Leopold spins a Randian explantion: those running our state believe that public policy should reward “creators” for their ingenuity and general fabulousness, and lay the blame where it belongs — on the poor and “the collectivist government liberals who cater to them.”
Leopold’s larger argument is about the overall approach to poverty adopted by movement conservatives across the country, with Tennessee offered up as a bleeding edge example. It’s nice to lead in something I suppose.
A version of this post appears on the Nashville Scene‘s Pith in the Wind blog.
A Very Broad Reading of the First Amendment
Posted: April 9, 2013 Filed under: Free Speech, Media Leave a comment »
The Tennnessean runs a curious editorial this morning arguing that a noise ordinance citation slapped by the city of Franklin on street preacher John McGlone amounts to an infringement of First Amendment rights. McGlone was ticketed last April for doing his preaching with a mic and amplifier in violation of Franklin’s noise ordinance (contained in a municipal code section charmingly titled “Offenses Against the Peace and Quiet”).
The editorial is curious because it seems so patently misguided on the law. I’m as much of a free speech fan as the next person, but it is well-settled First Amendment law that government can regulate the time, place, and manner of expressive activity on public property. Laws or regulations that do restrict speech have to advance an important governmental interest, and must do so in a narrowly drawn way that allows alternative means of communication. It is well understood that limiting sound amplification qualifies (see, for instance, the 1989 Supreme Court case Ward v. Rock Against Racism), as long as the rules aren’t written in such a way as to penalize a particular viewpoint or stifle more expression than necessary.
In the Franklin case, McGlone was doing his thing during Franklin’s Main Street Festival near the Public Square. The noise ordinance says that “when a special event permit has been obtained from the City of Franklin, no other amplification of sound will be permitted within the area of the special event except that which has been applied for and authorized by the city pursuant to the permit application.” So when a festival vendor complained about McGlone’s amplified activity, the preacher was issued a ticket for an ordinance violation.
It is perfectly reasonable, practically and constitutionally, for municipalities to regulate with a permit process the use of amplified sound in public spaces. Cities can run afoul of constitutionality if they make the obstacles for obtaining a permit onerous, or are too restrictive in framing the circumstances in which amplified speech is permit-eligible. Franklin’s ordinance doesn’t arouse concern on either of these dimensions, even if there are other elements of the law that seem bizarrely specific (for instance, the actions “declared to be loud, disturbing and unnecessary” include “the blowing of any locomotive steam whistle or steam whistle attached to any stationary boiler except to give notice of the time to begin or stop work or as a warning of fire or danger”).
Bottom line: A rule saying that the authorized amplified sound within a permitted special event is the only amplification allowed within the area of that event offends neither common sense nor the First Amendment. As long as the Main Street Festival permit didn’t cover (and therefore restrict expressive activity within) an unjustifiably large area of the city center, it’s hard to see how McGlone has a case, nor how The Tennessean fathoms a free speech infringement. And even if the permit did reach too broadly in defining the festival’s footprint, there is still the city’s legitimate ability to regulate sound amplification on public sidewalks.
A version of this post appears on the Nashville Scene‘s Pith in the Wind blog.
Feeling Better About Tennessee’s Unhinged State GOP
Posted: March 29, 2013 Filed under: Disgust Leave a comment »
It’s pretty depressing this time of year looking in on the Tennessee legislature’s weekly wing-nut chronicle — those persistent reminders of just how far our GOP-led state can stray from sanity. Fortunately, for those of us dispirited by the right-wing mayhem that sucks all the rational air out of the room in Tennessee, scientific psychology offers an easy remedy: social comparison theory. In simple terms, we can shore up our self-worth by comparing ourselves with others. The good news is it turns out Tennessee lacks a monopoly on unhinged conservatism. So let’s take a quick look and feel better about ourselves.
Exhibit A: Michigan Republican National Committeeman Dave Agema, who put up on his Facebook page a post that (as quoted in the Detroit Free Press) “depicts gays as sexually promiscuous, rife with sexually transmitted diseases and responsible for ‘half the murders in large cities.’ ” Asked to clarify his views on homosexuality, Agema told a Slate writer that “this is not about hate but a lifestyle that is against 230 years of American history and filled with medical, psychological, legal and costs reasons to oppose it.” See? We aren’t the only state with GOP crazy-bigot juice in the water supply. On the other hand, a group of more than 20 Republicans in Michigan did sign a statement calling Agema’s actions “deplorable” and calling for his resignation, so apparently theirs is a tad more dilute.
Exhibit B: In Idaho, a public school science teacher finds himself under fire for using the word “vagina” during a biology class on human reproduction. You probably don’t need me to point out that the school is located in an area that has the state’s highest teen pregnancy rate.
Exhibit C: And then there is Ben Carson, the Maryland-based celebrity right-wing pediatric neurosurgeon who has been getting conservative buzz as a possible 2016 presidential hopeful. Turns out that in a recent appearance on Fox News the good doctor likened support for marriage equality to pedophilia and bestiality: “Marriage is between a man and a woman. It’s a well-established fundamental pillar of society and no group, be they gays, be they NAMBLA, be they people who believe in bestiality, it doesn’t matter what they are, they don’t get to change the definition.”
There … now don’t we all you feel better?
A version of this post appears on the Nashville Scene‘s Pith in the Wind blog.
Euphemism of the Month: Fairness in Ticketing
Posted: March 19, 2013 Filed under: Policy 1 Comment »
While there are some positive aspects of the so-called Fairness in Ticketing Act working its way through the Tennessee state legislature, it is disappointing to see Tennessee Performing Arts Center CEO Kathleen O’Brien embrace the bill so wholeheartedly in a Tennessean op-ed this morning. Railing against a ticket “resale market rife with bad actors” who “make lots of money at the expense of real fans,” O’Brien wants us to see TPAC as part of a coalition working to give consumers “transparency and protection and the opportunity to buy the best tickets at face value prices.” These are lovely goals, but ones that the bill will do very little to accomplish.
The legislation (SB609/HB1000) does have some salutary features. Requirements that the resellers (be they ticket brokers or online marketplaces such as StubHub) disclose on their websites the face value and exact location of seats offered for sale, and say whether or not tickets are actually in their position and ready for delivery, strike me as eminently reasonable. Regulating the industry by having brokers register with the state may also be an improvement, although the requirement that a registered broker “maintain a permanent office or place of business in this state” seems a tad twentieth century.
As originally introduced it was a terrible bill, but the bill may be shedding some of its worst parts. A Senate committee last week approved an amended version that omits absurd provisions in the original bill eliminating ticket holders’ property rights and giving venues and original ticket issuers (such as Ticketbastard) unbridled power to monopolistic control over the resale market. A House committee takes up the measure later this week.
Even with the worst parts amended out, the bill still does nothing to meet the promise by TPAC’s O’Brien that it will help fans obtain the best tickets at face value prices. As news reports have amply documented, event promoters and ticket issuers not only don’t object to scalping, they are at times in cahoots with scalpers. The industry trumpets paperless ticketing as the answer to scalper bots that scarf up all the good seats when a show goes on sale, but most fans see paperless ticketing as an enormous inconvenience that makes it very cumbersome to do what you want with the ticket you buy. Lobbyists for the secondary ticket industry (StubHub and brethren) point out that that if Ticketmaster really wants to lessen the impact of bots on ticket buying, as they righteously claim, then they could easily inform authorities and request prosecution under an existing Tennessee law — but they never do.
On both sides of this issue we find well-funded corporate interests pretending that this is really about consumer protection, when it’s actually about the protection of each side’s business model. As usual, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. The legislation as amended in the state Senate would inject some consumer-friendly transparency into the secondary ticket market, but does nothing to dilute the excesses of event promoters and original ticket issuers whose claims to be looking out for fan interests ring hollow. A horrible bill is apparently being amended into a weak bill. Even if it passes, you still won’t get those highly sought tickets you want at face value unless you happen to be very very lucky on some given Saturday morning at 10:01 am.
A version of this post appears on the Nashville Scene‘s Pith in the Wind blog.
