On Tuesday, a federal court overturned Arizona’s law that outlawed abortions after 20 weeks. One of the big problems of the bill was that it started the clock not from the moment of conception but from the woman’s last menstrual period. If you’re scoring at home (or even if you’re alone) you’ve already figured out that this meant under the law, women were considered pregnant before having sex. Arizona Republicans really believe in immaculate conception!

On Monday I got to debate Erica Grieder about her book, Big, Hot, Cheap and Right: What America Can Learn from the Strange Genius of Texas, which is both marvelously readable and sadly wrongheaded. Here’s the video of the debate that our friend Dave Shaw moderated. Tell me what you think.

Congratulations to Alan Butkovitz whom my company, Stanford Caskey, helped win re-election as Philadelphia’s Comptroller on Tuesday. Also a winner is Bill Peduto, who won a narrow race for the Democratic nomination for Pittsburgh mayor.

Update: Our client Mitch O’Farrell won his runoff against a better-funded opponent in his race for the Los Angeles city council, 53%-47%. Now I really do have to buy the finest muffins and bagels in all the land for the staff this morning. And tonight, we drink from the keg of glory. 

We need to balance national security with freedom of the press, and right now that’s way out of balance under Barack Obama’s Department of Justice. That was my take last night on KTBC.

]]> http://jasonstanford.org/2013/05/the-week-in-nottheonion-6/feed/ 0 http://jasonstanford.org/2013/05/want-to-hear-me-argue-about-texas/ http://jasonstanford.org/2013/05/want-to-hear-me-argue-about-texas/#comments Sun, 19 May 2013 16:41:17 +0000 Jason Stanford http://jasonstanford.org/?p=4103

Tomorrow I’ll be debating Erica Grieder about her readable, enjoyable and maddening book about Texas, Big, Hot, Cheap and Right. It’s in the 10th floor atrium at the LBJ presidential library at 6:30. Register for the event here.

Erica and I have gone round and round on her book before here Behind Frenemy Lines. Two months ago we wasted an entire morning doing a Q & A on her book on this blog without managing to firmly establish my obvious rightness. It was a frustrating, yet enjoyable experience.

If you want to read some of my favorite excerpts from her book, click here. (I really do like the book despite disagreeing with her premise.)

Atlanta wasn’t an isolated incident. Neither was El Paso, or Washington, DC, or Columbus. A new General Accounting Office report demonstrates that cheating by school officials on standardized tests has become commonplace despite the use of security measures the report recommends. The only solution is one that Education Secretary Arne Duncan has so far refused—removing the high stakes attached to standardized testing.

The latest embarrassment is in Columbus, where this month Ohio State Auditor Dave Yost seized records at 20 high schools. This is part of a two-year-old investigation into “scrubbing” 2.8 million attendance records of students who failed tests. Yost has recently widened his investigation to look into whether school administrators also changed grades to boost graduation rates.

A GOA report released May 16 recommends adopting “leading practices to prevent test irregularities.” However, the report reveals that while all states and the District of Columbia use at least some of the recommended best practices, 33 states had confirmed instances of test cheating in the last two school years. And states where the worst offenses are occurring already have adopted most of the practices identified in the report, making it unlikely that greater security will improve test integrity.

Ohio employs five of the nine security plans recommended by the GOA report. Atlanta, where the superintendent and 34 other educators were recently indicted for changing test answers, has adopted eight of nine security practices, as has Texas, where the former El Paso superintendant is now in federal prison for a scheme to encourage low-performing students to drop out. And Washington, D.C., where 191 teachers at 70 schools were implicated in a rash of wrong-to-right erasure marks on tests, uses every single security measure.

The Department of Education responded to the GAO’s findings by holding a symposium on test integrity and issuing a follow-up report on best practices and policies. But the federal government convening a meeting and issuing yet another report might be even less effective at stopping cheating than increased security.

The report also noted that linking awards and recognition to improving test scores and threatening the jobs of principals for low test scores “could provide incentives to cheat.” But at a conference of education writers in  April, Sec. Arne Duncan denied that linking test scores to career outcomes could drive educators to criminally manipulate the system.

“I reject the idea that the system forces people to cheat,” he said.

Maybe so, but cheating now seems inherent in the system, and our Education Secretary seems incurious as to why. It’s even hard to get him to admit there is an epidemic of test cheating. Asked about the Ohio investigation, Duncan said, “I almost don’t know of another situation like this.”

The tragedy of testing scandals is that they typically occur in schools that serve working-class, minority children, and these were exactly the kids who suffered, in the well-meaning words of George W. Bush, the “soft bigotry of low expectations.”

By making test scores the sole measure of their success and rewarding educators for ludicrous increases in scores, the system is leaving behind the very children it was set up to help. As long as cheating remains a part of our country’s education policy, “decisions based on test results may be faulty, and lead to damaging results, including failing to identify and provide resources for underperforming schools and students most in need of academic support,” reported the GAO.

At the education writers’ conference, Sec. Duncan declined to endorse the only solution that would solve this problem. When asked whether he would support a moratorium on using the tests for accountability, Sec. Duncan professed confusion.

“We’re trying a lot of things, but, a moratorium to what, for what? We’re talking to a lot of people … but that’s the best I can tell you right now,” he said.

Removing the high stakes from standardized tests would take away the incentives to cheat and return testing to its original, intended purposes—to diagnose where schools and students need improvement. Sec. Duncan can do better than holding a meeting, issuing a report, and calling it a day, but until he addresses the root causes—to paraphrase the Japanese submarine commander’s famous phrase—the cheating will continue until morale improves.

On May 21, 2013, The Houston Chronicle’s Texas on the Potomac blog cross-posted this column. On May 23, 2013, The Huffington Post blog also cross-posted it.

Worried that the torch & pitchfork crowd will run off CSCOPE and leave your schools without curricula aligned with state requirements? Worried that rolling back high-stakes testing in Texas will cut into Pearson’s bottom line? Who could blame you if you were. But fear not, citizens of Texas, for here comes Pearson Education, leaping into the breach that CSCOPE’s controversy might be creating.

Pearson is contacting school districts in Texas with an incredible opportunity! This is from an email forwarded from a friend.

Pearson has gathered its resources together so you can have one point person to facilitate your needs. I am able to assist with all Pearson resources, including:

• TX Adoption Curriculum including upcoming Math and Science
• Print/Digital Core & Supplemental Curriculum
• Instructional Technology
• 1:1 Initiatives
• Professional Development
• STARR (sic.) & EOC Prep
• AP Curriculum
• ELL Resources

I would love to learn more about your district needs and vision so I may be an excellent support and consultant to you with relevant resources and ideas. Please feel free to contact me any time and I look forward to working together.

Sincerely,

Mandi O’Donnell

Account Executive

Pearson Curriculum K-12

888-977-7900 ext. 6384

mandi.odonnell@pearson.com

Forget that a Pearson account executive misspelled the acronym of the test that her own company supplies to the state of Texas. (It’s STAAR, by the way.) Forget that the second to last sentence reads like a professional come-on from an eager immigrant. (How, for example, can one “be an excellent support”?) Forget that the last sentence has two independent clauses that should be separated by a comma. Forget that Pearson designs the reading and writing tests that my kids take.

At least we can rest easy that a private company will be supplying curricula to our public schools, releasing us from the worry that Texas school teachers are indoctrinating our children with Obama’s socialist/Marxist agenda.

The politicization of the Internal Revenue Service is the worst kind of scandal for a president. The accusation is so simple you can tweet it, but to defend it you need a lawyer. And it comes with the post of IRS Commissioner vacant, leaving an unpopular federal agency less able to handle a widening crisis.

Most consider the vacancy in the IRS’ top job a problem—after all, Obama has no one to fire—but having the IRS Commissioner’s job open is a gift. Obama needs to fill it with someone credible both as a critic of his administration, the IRS and the federal government. If Obama wants to do something radically different to get through this scandal, he could appoint former Rep. Ron Paul to head the IRS. It’s a crazy idea that just might work.

No facts can explain away the IRS targeting groups just because they say they want to make “America a better place to live.” It does not matter that Obama agrees with his critics that what the IRS did was “outrageous”. Neither does it help Obama that his own Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation. It’s still his IRS.

Regardless of intention, the practical effect was that Obama’s IRS targeted the president’s critics, demanding they answer 55 invasive questions about their donors, Facebook posts and staff members’ political backgrounds, confirming the paranoid assumptions of tea party groups.

Said one Texas tea party official, “Let me tell you, the tea party is all about educating people about what’s really going on in the political process, because if they knew they would be outraged. This is a huge step in bringing that home. That’s what makes me so happy. This shows we’re not just some wacko conspiracy theorists. They really did target us. Everybody, every single American should be freaking out.”

As anyone who has ever been audited knows, life goes on during a crisis. The IRS can’t stop everything to deal with congressional subpoenas, media requests and a criminal investigation. The IRS still has to collect taxes. The IRS needs a commissioner more than ever, but Obama hasn’t appointed anyone to this position since Donald Shulman, a George W. Bush holdover, quit in November.

Anyone Obama names as IRS Commissioner now will be assumed guilty of being an apologist for a dysfunctional federal government, an intrusive agency, and a newly floundering presidency—unless Obama boldly appoints a high-profile critic, making Paul, who distrusted the federal government before it was cool, the perfect choice.

Critic of the IRS? Check. Paul wants to abolish the IRS and get rid of the income tax. He had a sign on his desk in Congress that read, “Don’t Steal – the government hates the competition.” Unlike congressional Republicans, who seem like they can’t enjoy a sunny day unless it’s raining on Obama’s picnic, Paul’s criticism of the IRS is bi-partisan. In 1987 he even criticized Ronald Reagan for, among other things, violating the “financial privacy” of citizens.

Paul recently agreed with Obama that the Benghazi hearings are a “sideshow”, but no one would confuse him as the president’s ally. In fact, Paul is most popular with tea party types as the movement’s “intellectual godfather”, according to The Atlantic.

To be sure, giving the anti-establishment Ron Paul this high-profile post is unlikely to improve Obama’s relations with congressional Republicans. But that ship sailed, sank and was plundered for treasure long ago. Nothing short of Obama’s resignation and incarceration would appease his congressional inquisitors at this point.

And given Paul’s comfort level with radical thought and his reputation for actually believing what he says, there is the danger that Paul would intentionally impede the functions of the IRS by preventing the collection of taxes he deemed unconstitutional.

No one should take any of this to mean that I have softened in my antipathy toward Paul. The sight of his ill-fitting suits and the sound of his Porky Pig voice still make me resonate with horror. He played footsie with overt racism to build his audience and then grandstanded for years in Congress. I’ve no use for the man, but he might yet have some for Obama.

Appointing Paul to head a federal agency that he wants to abolish would be an uncharacteristically rash move for the deliberative, pondering Obama. But Paul just being in the commissioner’s chair might convince some of his critics that when it comes to the IRS scandal, Obama “gets it”. No matter how the scandal plays out, the IRS is open for business without a boss watching the store. Putting Paul, a colorful critic, in charge might help the IRS gain the credibility it desperately needs now to continue functioning.