Diane Ravitch, former assistant secretary of education under George W. Bush, has come out with a new book explaining that the Bush education agenda was flawed.

Of course, this is one in a long line of such books. Cheney seems to be the only one who thinks everything went just fine.

I read an excerpt the book in a recent American Educator. I was shocked (shocked!) to discover that apparently, making tests the only test for whether education is working is a bad idea. It leads to people teaching only to the test, to cheating, and to students knowing how to fill in bubbles while their little minds are unfilled. It leads to an incomplete understanding of whether a teacher is successful or not.

And under George Bush’s plan, it leads to rich schools getting richer and poor schools getting poorer, as schools are punished for low scores. It leads to putting all of the blame on our low-paid and ill-respected educators when the scores don’t turn out right. It leads to a perpetuation of class stereotypes–rich people are just better and smarter and poor people deserve to be poor because they’re lazy and stupid–if they all take one test, surely we can see that (never mind that they are starting off on a teeter-totter rather than a level playing field due to the money coming from property taxes rather than fair allocation).

Wow. Who would have thought that No Child Left Behind would have left children behind? Well, any of us who opposed it from the beginning. Ravitch basically says that everyone in the administration was well meaning, that these were honest mistakes. I will buy that they were well meaning. And some of these mistakes might have been innocent. I mean, all of the consequences were totally forseeable, but not everyone is smart enough to actually think things through. I would guess that some people were fine with letting certain children fall behind–because it defended the class and power status quo, because it might have ultimately led to the dissolution of public education, etc.

Ravitch is good when talking about what went wrong; she is less effective in talking through what needs to be fixed.

Here’s what needs to happen. 1. The ideologues need to look at the reality and to see that this policy is flawed. People on both the right and the left need to make sure that Obama doesn’t keep this policy in place.

2. We need to level the damn playing field–all children have a right to equal education. We will all be stronger if we are all literate.

3. We need to think about the mental infrastructure of this nation. If I want a nation of smart, educated, critical thinkers, which I do, I need to be as supportive of mental infrastructure as I am of the other kinds. Our current economic crisis has meant that banks and car companies and airlines have gotten bailouts, even when those companies have been spending and making money willy-nilly. We have invested a lot of stimulus money in public works–even while the schools in my district (including the university for which I work) are struggling, we have tons of crews working on the roads downtown and the down the street.

Why don’t we consider our schools too big to fail? Wouldn’t giving stimulus money to educators to create smaller class sizes be a good idea that would pay off a thousand times? How many teachers could we hire for what one bank CEO makes? How many decent textbooks could we buy, so that each child has access to one (one of my friends knows a teacher who has 25 books total for six classes of 35 students)?

America is all about investment. Why aren’t we investing in our children? Why aren’t we investing in ourselves?

Let’s get the morbid ones out of the way–Alexander is now the age I was when I had him. I am now the age my father was when he died. Neither of us will be replicating those behaviors, but it’s on my mind.

Had a wonderful birthday–got to see many friends, the btp made me dinner, and even the boy said happy birthday (from a different room than the one I was in . . .). It was especially nice because I’d finished grading the day before and that means that I have a few weeks off now. I get to finish the very last of the unpacking, get that to-do list pared down, and get organized (my desk still has that “end of the quarter” look). Am also going to watch a lot of movies because I simply can.

I’m also going to try to get out and see some shows–I’ve already seen Paula Poundstone (who was very funny–I’ve always admired her ability to work a room and to do the audience engagement stuff that most comics can’t do); I’ve done my own stand-up set at Luna’s; I will see MACHOMER at CalShakes tomorrow; I saw Al on Sunday.

Al was amazing, by the way. He performed for two and a half hours. There were props and costume changes, and he did six songs that I’ve never seen him do live before. I got a starter pack of Al trading cards and now I want more (that’s the whole point, right?). I wish it hadn’t been at the fair, though, because I don’t like fairs (unless they’re Renaissance, cause I’m white & nerdy), and I wish the lady beside me hadn’t taken up half my seat in addition to hers–it meant I left with a neck crick.

In other news, Proposition 8 has been declared unconstitutional because it, um, is. The whole reason we have a bill of rights is so that a biased/prejudiced majority can’t deny rights to a minority. Jefferson wouldn’t sign without that bill because he knew what we were like–he knew what we would do. For example, I would like to deny bigots the right to procreate. They tend to raise children who are accepting of a “bigoted lifestyle.”

The hysterical right keeps bringing up the same old points. That these are special, not equal rights. That this is a threat to marriage. Well, I have to say that I managed to have two failed marriages before I was thirty. That’s because I made bad choices; it’s not because my homosexual friends were having more successful relationships than I’ve ever managed to. And my current desire to not marry nor to cohabitate has nothing to do with gay people, except for the knowledge that if I could turn gay (like the hysterical right thinks I can), I maybe could cohabitate successful with a woman, as Courtney’s presence seems to indicate that it’s the heterosexual roommate pairing that doesn’t work for me (unless the other person is my son, who theoretically has to do what I say).

It’s also nice that California is now once again keeping up with places like Iowa and Argentina–because it was embarrassing when we weren’t.

Many moons ago, I talked about getting to meet Raj Patel, the hot and brilliant, Eddie-Izzard-funny, Colbert-appearing economist (though he hadn’t been on Colbert then). I didn’t quite proclaim him my god, but I proclaimed him. (You can scroll down a bit to see what I said.)

According to this New York Times article, Raj has been declared a god: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/05/us/05sfmetro.html

I sort of called it first.

A few thoughts on the news:

The Supreme Court has just reversed precedent that limited how much corporations can spend on political campaigns. On a theoretical level, I’m torn. I believe in free speech, and the corporations are claiming that money IS free speech.

On a practical level, however, I’m not torn at all. I’m not convinced that money is free speech. If it is, then I don’t really have any access to free speech at all.

If money is free speech, we can’t call it “free” anymore.

The way corporations run everything is already frightening. This decision opens the door to America fully becoming a corpocracy. It’s already absurd that insurance companies get to be “consulted” on health care reform bills (um, they profit when you pay but then they get to deny you the coverage you paid for). Imagine what their “free speech” will be able to accomplish now.

In other news, hearings have shown that one of the major problems that caused the Christmas day Detroit flight near-bombing was a spelling error. That is, the person putting the terrorist’s name into the system spelled it wrong.

Congresspeople yesterday were assured that the government was now using a spell-checker program to prevent this from happening again.

Two things: 1. a spell checker program will not help, because names aren’t in the spell-checker’s dictionary. A spell-checker doesn’t know my last name to know if it’s spelled correctly; it’s not going to know likely bombers’ names, either.

2. To all those people who thought I was crazy for saying that proofreading could sometimes be the difference between life and death . . . I was right.

Finally, Conan’s last show will be on Friday. This is such bullshit. Conan is funnier than Jay has ever been. Jay Leno left The Tonight Show because he wanted more money in prime time. He bombed. And now he’s being rewarded by getting his old job back? Fuck him. If I left my job and my job was filled–with a talented person with a contract–I wouldn’t get my job back after I totally failed at the other job.

In fact, am now boycotting Jay Leno. Yes, he joins Domino’s, Six Flags, Coors, Continental Airlines, and Long John Silvers.

Are you one of those people who bristles when congresspeople and political talking heads tell you about “silly” scientific studies your tax dollars are being used for?

Like one study on truck-drivers’ homosexual encounters at truck stops?  The people who did the study actually had to appear before Congress after some politicos started in on them.  The Congress’s findings?  That the study was furthering our understanding of how AIDS is spread–one of the things it was designed to do.  The study continued.

Now, including winners of the Ignoble awards (those who actually do stupid research), most scientific inquiry looks odd to outsiders, although those outsiders should remember that many scientific discoveries were not even planned.  Viagra and microwaves are just two things discovered while scientists were doing their thing–running studies.

An article in a recent Mental Floss (May/June 2009) hits the point home with “10 Technologies We Stole From the Animal Kingdom.”  Why study shark skin, bat radar, or resurrection plants, to name the first three?  I’m not sure why they were originally studied (other than–cause we want to know!) or how the studies were funded (private or public), but now there’s a new coating to avoid germs in hospitals, canes for the blind that really let you know what’s out there, and how to keep vaccines viable for longer–the better for the vaccines to help children in inhospitable regions.

Science inquiry is cool and it’s time we reclaim it as an American value.

It occurs to me that the life blood of a blogger is bad news–all the better to bitch about.  I even advise my students to write about something that bothers them if they want to be able to write a good quantity of work.

Yet when I’m stressed out and tired, the last thing I want to do is blog.  I don’t want to whine & I don’t (always) want to rant.

So what’s the news that’s keeping me from writing?  Telling myself that I lived on next year’s wages in grad school, and then remembering that in grad school, I had student loans to supplement that income (and a decided lack of student loan payments).

Dealing with the panic of some of my students (you see, one class is worried because if they don’t pass, they get kicked out).  They really should have worried nine weeks ago.  And turned all the papers/homework in.  I mean, if failing a class gets you kicked out, don’t you attempt to do the work?

Finally, people shooting abortion doctors.  I have wanted to write about this because I have a lot to say.  I have not wanted to write about this because I’m afraid that once I get going, I won’t be able to stop.  Here’s a very short version of my thoughts.

They killed abortion doctors where I grew up (in Pensacola, FL).  It didn’t stop girls from getting pregnant and it didn’t stop people from getting abortions.  All it does is make it really difficult for a certain group of people to call themselves pro-life.  Oh, and kill someone, which that Bible thing sometimes says is wrong (not always, though–the people who shoot doctors are reading the Old Testament, but not the parts of the Old Testament where God kills babies, as he is wont to do).

Speaking of nomenclature, I would like to go on record as saying that we pro-choicers are not pro-abortion.

Even if someone is super-callous, they don’t want women having to have procedures that are potentially life-threatening (though not as dangerous as carrying to term) and usually cost more than they can manage.  No one wants more surgery.

I don’t know any super-callous people, though.  I simply know a bunch of people who know that you don’t reduce abortion by shooting doctors or by outlawing it.  Any medical historian can tell you that it was easier to find someone to perform an abortion when it was illegal (you didn’t have to find a doctor–women through the centuries have passed abortitives down with the family recipes (birth control and abortion are not just tools of single women–married women have used them to control their family planning for ages)).

What does reduce abortion?  Making sure that we reduce unintended pregnancy.  Remember that abstinence teaching doesn’t work, as studies show.  But comprehensive sex education does.  And so does providing people with affordable and effective birth control.  And so does making it easier to carry a child to term and to raise it–right now, the financial and social burden of an unwanted child can be galaxies greater than the burden of not carrying a child to term.

I have a PhD and a gifted child, but people still judge me because I had him young and alone.  Amazingly, it’s mostly the pro-life people who think they get to judge me, but only because I made the choice they preferred, carrying with me the evidence.  If I’d made a different decision, they wouldn’t get to have this attitude with me, because the last seventeen years of my life would have been very different.

We all want fewer abortions.  I just think that my way will actually work better than the “don’t have sex, but if you do, don’t use birth control” method currently so popular among “pro-lifers.”

If you actually want to save lives, take the guns away from the crazy fringe people and fight for sex ed and birth control.

Some blogger believes I “forgot” things; not mentioning things in a non-comprehensive list is not to have forgotten them.  His title is also weird–I distinctly mention that there have been lawsuits, so his claim that they’ve not had them in 20 years is off.  The article is here:  http://reporter.blogs.com/thresq/2009/05/the-simpsons-20-years-of-lawsuitfree-funny.html

My touching tribute to Dom DeLuise (via my matchflick column) is here:  http://www.matchflick.com/column/1946

Was watching last night’s Daily Show whilst doing yoga this morning.  Newt Gingrich claimed that socialized medicine (aka universal healthcare) would be bad because bureaucrats would be making your healthcare decisions.  He said the responsibility for your healthcare (and he seemed to imply fiscal as well) should be on you (and your consultations with your doctor).

My doctor and I do make decisions.  But they all have to be approved by bureaucrats at the insurance company.  Those bureaucrats were forced to take me, but if I were a freelance writer, I wouldn’t be able to get health insurance at all.  Let’s not forget that other bureaucrats make my health care decisions at the law level–whether I can have medical marijuana, whether a doctor can use the word “abortion,” etc.

So there are three problems with Mr. Gingrich’s fear of bureaucrats.

1.  He’s fine with a lot of laws about what my doctor can say or do.  That’s government intervention in health care.

2.  Bureaucrats completely run my health care.  And the really bad thing is that they do so for profit, which means that they are not in any way motivated to make decisions based on what’s good for me or what’s medically better.  They are motivated to deny coverage because that’s what happens in a profit-based system.

3.  For all those without healthcare, they would love to have a bureaucrat deciding whether they can have their cancer treatment.  Right now, there is no “decision” available to them.  At least a bureaucrat might say yes.

Am sick of this “bureaucrat” scare tactic.  WTF do they think we have now, if not bureaucrats?  Who’s living in a place where all the decisions are made by you and your doctor?

Oh, wait, those people in countries with universal healthcare tend to have that freedom.

Michael Savage was on Talk of the Nation today because he has apparently been banned from entering the U.K. because of his hate speech. He was offended, of course, and kept talking about the first amendment, which does not apply to the U.K. He also mentioned the Magna Carta, but not in a way that indicated he had read the document.

Talk of the Nation is a call in show, so they took a call from a man who pointed out that if you replace “Christian” or “Jew” in place of “Muslim” when Savage talks, he might not be on the air.

Savage interrupted him and said he wouldn’t stay on the show if he had to listen to people calling from insane asylums in their pajamas. He ended up hanging up on the show.

Yes–our defender of free speech, who makes sure he has all the freedom to speak and all the freedom to not let anyone else do so in his earshot.

The other news: had meeting with the boss about my future (meaning will I be invited to be more permanent in three years). The good news: some of the highest student ratings in the department. The bad news: I thought my “file” was cumulative, meaning that whatever I added each year was added. I had been trying not to submit the same stuff again and again, but apparently that’s what I need to do for the next three years.

Not a problem, of course. I just feel silly.

What we’ve learned today:  students appreciate me, I’m not skilled at selling myself, Dan Savage is so much cooler than Michael Savage (that’s not even Michael’s real name, by the way).

I know, I know, we’ve all been so happy.  But something occured to me this week–I didn’t have to hear much about Rush Limbaugh in the last eight years.  Now I can’t stop hearing about him and the inane, hypocritical things he says.  I’m not going to waste my time going over his talking points and what’s wrong with them.  I will just say–he’s about to rise again.

You see, there wasn’t much for him to do when the Republicans ruled everything.  He (like Ann Coulter) sat around hating anyone who disagreed with the President, but it seemed somehow beyond the point.  Now that he can sit around hating the sitting President (and presumably the majority of the country who voted for him), he’s going to get more followers.  His numbers may even come close to what we saw under Clinton.

The NRA is benefiting, too.  A book came out last year by an ex-NRA insider–the whole point was that having a Democrat in office is very good for their business.  (And anyone who’s watched politics at all knows that nothing much changes in policy, no matter who’s in power.)  Deep down, Rush has to love Obama, maybe not as a man, but as a target and a cash cow.

Want to see what Rush et al are saying lately?

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=219517&title=intro-harold-varmus-is-here

It’s a great day for name calling.  It’s a great day for making fun of war veterans (if they’re John Kerry).  It’s a great day for hate.  It’s a bad day for debate and civility and, if you watched the footage from the Republican meeting this weekend, for bi-partizanship.