A few thoughts on the VA-07 and Cantor's primary defeat

I meant to cross-post this here when I published it several weeks ago on my education blog and at Blue Virginia. Ooops. Well, for the readers of my much less popular blog, here were my thoughts on the VA-07 and Eric Cantors' primary defeat.

Yesterday, David Brat defeated Eric Cantor in the Republican primary election for the congressional seat in Virginia's 7th district. I live in the 7th district. I happen to also be married to a Randolph-Macon college professor--that is where Dave Brat is a college professor and also where Jack Trammell--the Democratic candidate.

Because I have statistics homework to finish, I don't have time to put my thoughts together in any sort of cohesive manner. So here they are in all of their in-cohesive glory:

• First of all, a bit of an I told you so. Many of our national pundits keep saying that "No one saw this coming." While this is certainly unexpected, I wouldn't say "no one say it coming." Instead I would say that the national media, like Eric Cantor's campaign, did not see it coming. Many locals did see it coming. Even I wrote a post two years ago that summarized Cantor's vulnerability (though I published the post several months later.) And a month ago  local bloggers were still emphasizing Cantor's unpopularity. And so was I:

I have long said that Cantor is not popular in his district, just a Republican. Pass the popcorn, indeed. #VA07 #EricCantor
— Rachel Levy (@RachelAnneLevy) May 11, 2014

• Second, while certainly, Brat's victory is somewhat about immigration (and let's face it, bigotry)--a component of Brat's campaign platform is anti-immigrant, that was not the beginning or the end of why Brat won.

• As I said here, Eric Cantor is notoriously unpopular in his district. He's not accessible to his constituents and he doesn't much care about them. He takes them for granted, treating them like a rich uncle you have to have dinner with occasionally if you want to keep receiving the checks, only in this case it's votes. He's a Republican in a very conservative district which up until now had no challengers. That's all.

• Say what you will about his political and economic views, and I think we all know that I don't agree with the vast majority of them, but Dave Brat is accessible and he hit the pavement during this campaign. He is happy to sit and explain his views to you, no matter who you are, in great detail. He will talk to anyone who will listen--whether at Estes, the Randolph Macon dining hall, at lunch time or on a campaign stop. He met with any group that asked and entertained any question that was asked. And remember, he is a teacher; it's his job to explain.

• Furthermore, driving around the area of the 7th district where I live in recent months, I have seen clusters of Brat supporters waving signs and chanting--I've seen them in Hanover where I live, in the city of Richmond, and in Chesterfield. All of the kids on my sons' soccer team know who David Brat is because they have driven past these clusters and asked their parents, "Who is Dave Brat and why does he want to fire Cantor?" I know I have had this conversation several times with my own children. At this point, they probably know more about this primary than the national media did.

• While Dave Brat actually talked to the constituents he was courting, Eric Cantor's campaign was sending out glossy mailers and putting up posters and lawn signs. That's it: mailers and lawn signs. Otherwise, he kept his distance from the little people. When you actually talk to and listen the people you are hoping to represent, it makes a difference. As political science professor and Associate Dean Lauren Bell said, "to borrow from Roll Call's assessment of Oklahoma Democrat Mike Synar's 1994 loss in the primary, Eric Cantor's loss tonight demonstrates that 'there's a limit to the number of times you can tell your constituents to go screw themselves' "

Quoting Roll Call 1994: Cantor's loss proves "there's a limit to the number of times you can tell your constituents to go screw themselves." — Lauren C. Bell (@rmcpsci) June 11, 2014

• The national media seems to be conducting themselves a lot like, well, the Cantor campaign. They don't do any research or talk to people who actually write about or live or vote in the places their covering. This is a problem that applies not just to this topic but to so many others (ahem, education reform).

• Eric Cantor vastly outspent David Brat. Organizations such as like the Bold Progressives are right to see this as a sign that Big Money is not necessarily destined to win. Leftist and populist progressive Democrats did very well in recent primaries.

#Cantor loss shows big money can be defeated! Now defeat House Repubs in Nov http://t.co/McNbsxVPxb #VA07 #UniteBlue pic.twitter.com/MIv3d8W7nD — BoldProgressives.org (@BoldProgressive) June 11, 2014 

• While David Brat is more accessible, and is anti-elitist, anti-NSA, and anti-Wall Street corruption, he is also anti-government. In other words, he is no Elizabeth Warren. At the root, he is a true believer in the magic of the free market. He was especially against Cantor because Cantor is a crony capitalist and crony capitalism impedes a truly free market.

• Progressives, rather than getting stuck on complaining about how awful the Tea Party is and how depressing it is a candidate to the right of Cantor won, support and give money to the progressive candidate in this election, Jack Trammel.

• How great is it that the race in the VA-07 is between two liberal arts college professors, teachers, who read and write books. Think about that for a minute.

• ONE MORE THOUGHT (added later): I don't have numbers on this but Virginia has open primaries and I know a few Democrats and Independents who voted for Brat simply in protest of Cantor. As I said, no one in the 7th likes Cantor.

Why I Stand with Wisconsin Workers

(This has been cross-posted at my education blog: All Things Education.)

Since Madison, Wisconsin is burning as I blog, I must to take a moment to support teachers unions and unions in general. And I want to explain that support. Despite my own teaching and union/non-union experiences, I don't think I understood and appreciated the role of unions until just recently. These two pieces, one by award-winning Maryland social studies teacher blogger Kenneth Bernstein and the other by California English teacher blogger David Cohen, helped me to understand the importance of unions.

My parents and their parents before them, were not wealthy, but nor were they workers, unionized or otherwise (although my maternal grandfather's father was very active in the railroad telegraphers union in Illinois). My father's parents were the children of Eastern European immigrants and owned a stationary store in Brooklyn, New York. My maternal grandfather worked as a chemist for Montgomery Ward and then as a manager for an automotive parts company in Chicago, Illinois, and my maternal grandmother was a homemaker and worked as at the Hadley School for the Blind.

Besides being born white in America, my parents were lucky to have attended two of the best known public high schools in the country; my mother went to Glenbrook in Northbrook, Illinois, and my father to Stuyvesant in New York City. My mother had college-educated parents and the luck of her zipcode (though not if you ask her as she hated the suburbs) and my father had parents who, though relatively uneducated themselves, greatly valued education. My parents went on to attend outstanding public universities--my mother, the University of Wisconsin and my father, Brooklyn College. They met while they were in graduate school at the University of Michigan.

After finishing, they moved to Washington, DC, where my sister and I grew up and attended public schools, so that my father could take a job as a lawyer with the federal government, where he has spent most of his career--primarily as a civil rights lawyer at the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and then as a litigator and energy efficiency regulation counsel at the Department of Energy. My mother had been a linguist but couldn't find a job in her field (her specialty was semitic languages--she was a generation early on that one).  After learning about my father's work at HEW and watching him in court, she went to law school and became a labor, civil rights and school finance lawyer. I imagine they could have gone to work for any white shoe law firm they wanted to, but they gladly chose civil and public service. While we weren't rich, we lived a comfortable middle class life.

Among other topics they discussed at the dinner table, I definitely recall my parents grumbling about corruption and obstructionism in unions, but they always believed in their importance. When I went to work for DCPS, I was ambivalent about joining the Washington Teachers' Union--I really didn't know much about unions. Despite some of her negative associations, my mother informed me I should join, that it was the right thing to do. Even then, I never developed union pride; for one, I certainly didn't enjoy funding WTU President Barbara Bullock's collection of fur coats and silver candlesticks.

I found my experiences with "management" much more pleasant and reasonable when I taught in public schools in Albemarle County, Virgina, a right-to-work state, but I don't think that had anything to do with not being unionized or not having collective bargaining power. And I did join the Albemarle Education Association chapter of the Virgina Education Association. I can't say they ever did anything directly for me, but nor did I have the need to ask them to. Many other teachers I've spoken to have described the organization as both toothless. I imagine they feel that way since teachers' salaries in Virginia are approximately five thousand dollars below market, being especially low where I live and have taught in Central Virginia. But at the very least, the VEA serves as a good resource for educators and lobbies to improve the working and learning conditions for teachers and students.

I always took for granted my middle class upbringing, which is becoming less and less possible, as middle class wages decrease and expenses increase. With all that's going on in Wisconsin, I have come to appreciate that my parents and I have been able to live a comfortable middle class life because of what labor unions fought for in the first place: fair compensation, safe working conditions, and a decent standard of living in exchange for a job done. Their fight increased wages and other forms of compensation, such as benefits and pensions, and improved working conditions for all of us.

That's why I attended the Rally to Preserve the American Dream in Richmond, Virginia, this past Saturday (pics thanks to Virginia Organizing  here) and that's why I will continue to fight for the working and middle classes and for the poor to get out of poverty. Does that mean I think that unions are uniformly or inherently "good"? No. Does that mean that I think that people who don't do their jobs should be able to keep them? No. But I don't have blind faith in the free market, either. Unions serve as a check on unfettered capitalism, and capitalism has certainly been recently unfettered. Unions are the only bulwark right now between fascist capitalism and regulated capitalism. Without the unions, we will have no middle or working class at all, only a few powerful rich and many, many poor.

The more progressive Democrats can't don't this alone, however. Traditionally more conservative members of the working and middle classes must stop voting against their own economic self-interest. Instead of asking "why should others get decent wages and healthcare insurance when we don't?" they need to fight for such basic themselves, like yes, Obamacare, and stop allowing themselves to be the lackeys of tax-dodging, overseas-job creating corporate interests who are doing nothing to advance working peoples' quality of life. Furthermore, while I have been heartened to see neo-liberals such as Obama, Duncan, and some DFER types speak out in support of the right to collective bargaining, they are in part culpable for the attacks on America's middle and working classes and their unions. Neo-liberals and centrist Democrats, their rich patrons, and their mouthpieces in the media have been busy embracing disastrous and crude education reform policies such as those of Michelle Rhee and thoughtlessly bashing teachers and their unions in the process. In doing so, they have weakened the Democratic party and middle and working classes as a whole, emboldening Republican leaders such as Scott Walker, Chris Christie, and Rick Scott and their oligarch overlords, with their ruthless free market ideology, to make a well-orchestrated and dangerous grab for power.

It's time for neo-liberals to do what's best for children and their families by changing course on their wrong-headed education policies. To do this, they must end their collaboration with corporate-sponsored union busters. You can't do what's best for our nation's children if you're crushing their parents and teachers in the process. If neo-liberals really want our children's futures to be bright, then they must fight for a quality of work and home life that will make that possible. Unions, for all of their imperfections, do that.

The Virgina Legislature Joins in the GOP's War on Women

The Republicans (plus two democrats) in the Virginia Senate have decided to join in the National GOP's war on women. Tomorrow, the VA Senate will vote on SB924, which just passed the House 67-32. The bill would effectively eliminate access for Virginia's women to clinics that perform first trimester abortions by forcing such clinics to adhere to the same regulations as hospitals do. This, of course, is not necessary as such clinics are already sufficiently regulated.

If this effort seems like it's coming out of nowhere, that's because it is. The amendment was slipped in. According to NARAL Pro-choice Virginia:

This bill would require the Board of Health to issue regulations for hospitals, nursing homes, and certified nursing facilities. As originally written, the bill has nothing to do with abortion. Unfortunately, anti-choice Delegate Kathy Byron (R-Campbell County) offered an amendment changing the definition of hospitals to include “facilities in which five or more first trimester abortions per month are performed.” 

If you think the bill is being sent from the GOP-dominated House to the Dem-dominated Senate to die, think again. As reported in the Virginia Politics blog:

Two conservative Democrats who oppose abortion -- Sen. Charles J. Colgan (D-Prince William) and Sen. Phillip P. Puckett (D-Russell) -- said Tuesday they plan to support the measure, in a chamber where Democrats hold a 22 to 18 majority. Their votes would raise the possibility of a 20 to 20 tie. A tie would be broken by Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling (R), who supports regulations.

And then Governor McDonnell will be ready and waiting to sign it into law. Because he and other anti-choicers want to "ensure that all outpatient surgical centers are treated the same, in order to ensure the health and safety of our citizens." I see, they want all outpatient surgical centers to get equal treatment. Or, maybe it's because Virginia Republicans are such big fans of excess regulations. No, no, it's because they want to keep women who get abortions safe. Yes, that's it.

Puh-lease. The Virginia GOP (plus two Democrats) wants to shut down these clinics because they provide first trimester abortions, and probably because they provide contraception, too. Only, they don't have have the balls to admit it.

I am squarely pro-choice, but I can understand why people are against abortion. I would guess that the vast majority of women who choose to have abortions hate abortion. But I agree with Hilary Clinton when she says that abortion should be safe, legal, and rare. Ruth Marcus's piece in response to House Republicans' assault on family planning  applies here: When those clinics are shut down, many Virginia women will not only lose access to the contraception that prevent abortions in the first place, but to general reproductive health care. Furthermore, without access to contraception, rates of pregnancies will increase and so will unsafe abortions. I would have so much more respect for anti-abortion crusaders if they actually worked to prevent abortions from having to happen in the first place, but they don't; they work to promote ineffective sex education programs, to limit access to contraception, to decimate women's healthcare services, and to keep abortion unsafe, frequent, and illegal.

As my uncle always says about American politics, "You have two choices. You can have the Democrats in your wallet or the Republicans in your bedroom. I'd rather have the Democrats in my wallet." So would I, Uncle Roger. So would I. Since Republicans are already raiding our middle and working class wallets to fund tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest Americans, I say to Virginia Senators:

Get the hell out of my bedroom and while you're at it, stay away from my uterus.

Contact your senator now and tell them to oppose SB924.

Publish or Perish

(This has been cross-published at All Things Education.)

I got an essay accepted at truthout. Yay! I wrote about the Obamas' decisions regarding the education of their children and President Obama's statements about that decision in the context of his administration's education policies. (A recent excellent and comprehensive review of Obama's promises on education in contrast to his actual policies can be found here.)

"Mr. President, We Want Your Children's Education, Too" went through many, many drafts and I was very pleased when it was accepted by the first place I sent it. (An aside about the writing/publishing process: Almost all of my publications had been submitted to targeted publications I know well.) I submitted the piece back in November 2010, but the editor I corresponded with warned me it would be probably a while. It happened to come out on January 9, 2010. At first, I was ashamed of its publication date, given it was the day after the shootings in Arizona; it didn't seem to be an appropriate time to be so critical of the Obama administration.

But then I found out that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was butting (yet, again) into D.C. Mayor Gray's DCPS Chancellor selection decision, urging him to permanently appoint Rhee right-hand woman and Interim Chancellor Kaya Henderson, of whom he's "huge fan," and in the process by-pass a 2007 DC law which requires a rigorous review process including consulting a panel of teachers, parents, and students. Duncan also dangled the possibility of taking back Race to the Top money the District was awarded if his wish were not granted.

Besides registering my disgust with Duncan's confirmation that Race to the Top is nothing but a bribery scheme, with his interference in local affairs, and with his spitting in the face of transparent and democratic governance, I'll repeat one of the same questions I asked in the essay: If Duncan and his boss are such "big fans" of the reforms and "progress" in D.C.P.S., why do they not send their own children to them?

To those who tell me to mind my own business: Point taken. I'd be happy to. Just as soon as Obama/Duncan change course on the policies that are undermining the quality of my children's education and just as soon as, of course, they mind their own business.

UPDATE 1/20/11: A reader was puzzled about this sentence from the truthout piece:

My DCPS past, warts and all, has made me a different person than I would have been had I gone to a place like Sidwell, different in a way that seems lesser to my current eye. 

Reading it out of the context of the rest of the piece, I can see that the sentence is confusing and needs a re-write. Given the stance that I took, most readers probably knew what I meant, but I hardly want to assume that readers "probably know what I mean." Rather, I want them to know what I mean because my writing is clear. I can't go back and fix it in truthout (and there was never an interaction with an editor about clarity or wording where this might have come up) but just to be clear, what I meant was that:

My DCPS past, warts and all, has made me a different person than I would have been had I gone to a place like Sidwell. Had I gone to a place like Sidwell I think I would have been different in a way that seems lesser to my current eye.

Readers, if you ever see something that gives you pause or puzzles you or that you think may be factually incorrect, even if it's a simple typo, by all means, let me know. I value your feedback and pushback.

Eric Cantor is a Threat to Democracy

On Monday, October 25th, a Louisa County, Virginia, voter and Democrat named Jon Taylor showed up with some members of his family to a local Louisa coffee shop, Solid Grounds, to attend an Eric Cantor campaign event (see event invite below). Eric Cantor is his congressional representative (VA-07) and he and some friends of his had RSVPed for the event.

They wanted to talk with their congressional representative about his campaign and about his policies. They ordered their coffee and sat down. The police came in once and asked Mr. Taylor to move his car, which was adorned with campaign material of Cantor's Democratic opponent Rick Waugh, from a metered public parking spot. Mr. Taylor produced his receipt. The officers left and returned later, and a combination of the police, the coffee shop owner, and Cantor's advance man asked him to leave. Jon Taylor ended up out on the street being roughly slammed against a car and then to the ground by three policeman as they arrested him and charged him with trespassing, resisting arrest, and disorderly conduct. The officers charged some of the other Dems there similarly.

 There are a few different versions of what happened. There's Jon's account, on the blog Blue Virginia. There's an eyewitness account, also on Blue Virginia, by Lewalta Haney. There's coverage on MSNBC's The Ed Show. There's a sad excuse for a story about it in The Richmond Times-Dispatch. The Daily Kos features a bit from all of these, including the video Jon Taylor's son took of his father's arrest. Eric Cantor's campaign declared that, "this was a clear attempt [by Taylor] to disrupt the meeting. The voters of Virginia are going to reject this thuggery." When I called Cantor's campaign office--he is also my congressional representative--to voice my discontent about this incident, I was essentially told the same thing by the woman I spoke with.

Now, I'm sure these folks weren't there to give Eric Cantor a Progressive Representative of the Year Award, but this is how the democratic process in a representative democracy works. You decide to run for office, you get some signatures to get on the ballot, you debate your opponents, and you go around and talk to the voters that you're going to represent. You talk to them, you answer their questions, and then they decide who to vote for.

At this point, although I don't agree with it, I am not asking Eric Cantor to change his philosophy of government. I accept we have different views. I am asking him to honor the democratic process that he agreed to be a part of when he decided to run for office. Even though he is morally reprehensible and even though he is owned by corporations, until yesterday I still had faith that he believed in at least a tepid democracy and that he would uphold the democratic process. That he would say, even if they don't agree with me, my constituents are allowed to hear what I have to say about where I stand and they are allowed to ask me questions; I work for them. Even Eric Cantor, I thought, has some small amount of respect for the democratic process.

Eric Cantor is supposed to a leader in our democracy but Eric Cantor is a traitor and a threat to American democracy. Eric Cantor is a coward. Eric Cantor is a tyrant. I weep for any citizen who would hand over their voice in our national legislature to someone who would so denigrate democracy's basic tenets. But most of all, I weep for the democracy that Eric Cantor would see destroyed.

It's All About the (Corporate) Benjamins, Baby: Politics & Government

The most commonly recognized type of corporate influence in American democratic institutions is in politics. I recall learning in Mrs. McCarthy's US Government class at DC's Wilson High School that special interest groups or PACs (Political Action Committees) wielded a certain amount of influence. It wasn't until the past couple of years that I realized how many of these are funded by corporations. Furthermore, it has become impossible to successfully run for office without gobs of corporate money. It has oft been said that the media is the fourth branch of government. That idea needs updating: corporations and their lobbyists, including conglomerates with holdings of media companies, now make up the fourth branch of the U.S. government. And it looks like the new branch on the block may increasingly be pulling the strings of the other three branches.

In my post about the death of journalism, I rather pooh-poohed this essay by Naomi Klein entitled "How Corporate Branding is Taking over America" as sensationalist and conspiracy-theory crazed, but I really shouldn't have. I am, I admit, late to the party here (or perhaps now I'm the conspiracy-theory crazed one). Klein was right to point out that while George W. Bush was criticized for incompetence and "acts of destruction," that he was very effective in privatizing many essential functions of government. It's true that Obama marketed and branded his campaign better than many ad campaigns for popular products do. I agree with her that,

"This preference for symbols over substance, and this unwillingness to stick to a morally clear if unpopular course, is where Obama decisively parts ways with the transformative political movements from which he has borrowed so much. . . . Another way of putting it is that Obama played the anti-war, anti-Wall Street party crasher to his grassroots base, which imagined itself leading an insurgency against the two-party ­monopoly through dogged organization and donations gathered from lemonade stands and loose change found in the crevices of the couch. Meanwhile, he took more money from Wall Street than any other presidential candidate, swallowed the Democratic party establishment in one gulp after defeating Hillary Clinton, then pursued 'bipartisanship' with crazed Republicans once in the White House." 

Obama didn't only take money from Wall Street, but, according to Mother Jones,  from corporations such as BP as well. I don't feel as strongly as Klein and Chris Hedges do (an essay by Hedges started me down this path of blog posts about corporate influence in American democratic institutions). For example, I assume, perhaps naively, that Obama preferred not to take money from corporations, but that his m.o. was to get into a position of power first, no matter with whose money, and then fix things from the inside. The only problem is that "fixing things" has become next to impossible. This Vanity Fair article gives some insight into what Obama's presidency grapples with.

If the most recognized type of corporate influence is in government and politics, then corporate money in Congress seems to be the most easily identifiable manifestation of corporate influence in American politics. Members of Congress routinely take enormous sums from corporations to fund their campaigns--just take a look at this Campaign Cash Seating Chart in the September/ October 2010 issue of Mother Jones.

In a 5-4 ruling in the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case, the Supreme Court allows corporate money to flow unchecked into campaigns. Another less publicized case, previous to the Citizens United one, Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life did essentially the same thing. According to The New York Times, the Roberts court is the most conservative and corporate-friendly Supreme Court justice we've had in decades. One of the principal themes of Jeffrey Toobin's recent profile in The New Yorker of Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer is that the Roberts Court is looking to get rid of one of the primary reforms of the Roosevelt era: government regulation of our economy. As New York University Law Professor Barry Friedman and SCOTUS expert Dahlia Lithwick tell it in this recent piece in Slate, what's particularly dangerous about the Roberts Court is how sneaky it is in hiding its conservatism as it chips away at U.S. citizens' fundamental rights.

And that's only what the three "official" branches have been up to.

According to this recent article by Jane Mayer in The New Yorker, prominent members of the unofficial fourth branch of government, Charles and David Koch, who are the almost sole owners of owners of the Wichita-based oil conglomerate Koch industries, have been funding organizations that advocate for lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and less oversight and regulation of industry, as well as funding ones that fight health care reform and economic stimulus programs. They fund Americans for Prosperity Foundation, Tea Party organizations and training sessions, the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, as well as many other conservative and/or pro-corporate organizations. One former Koch adviser cited in Mayer's article was quoted as saying,

"They're smart. This right-wing, redneck stuff works for them. They see this as a way to get things done without getting dirty themselves." 

Just as in the Civil War when mostly poor non-slave-owning men were drafted to fight for the Confederacy, it looks like middle and working class white people are allowing themselves to be the lackeys of the powerful, rich, and corporate, even as they are railing against that kind of influence. Although Mayer shows that billionaires, like George Soros, who fund more liberal causes are more transparent and less likely to fund studies and programs that are only self-serving, she still makes the case for the increasing danger of politics, politicians, policies, and programs being bought and sold by a few wealthy individuals.

Matt Taibbi also wrote about the Tea Party with a focus more on its followers than on funders, but he came to a conclusion similar to Mayer's: "The Tea Party today is being pitched in the media as this great threat to the GOP; in reality, the Tea Party is the GOP. What few elements of the movement aren't yet under the control of the Republican Party soon will be, and even if a few genuine Tea Party candidates sneak through, it's only a matter of time before the uprising as a whole gets castrated, just like every grass-roots movement does in this country. Its leaders will be bought off and sucked into the two-party bureaucracy, where its platform will be whittled down until the only things left are those that the GOP's campaign contributors want anyway: top-bracket tax breaks, free trade and financial deregulation."

Now, what to do about all of this? I agree with Chris Hedges that it's not just the G.O.P. and Tea Partiers who are responsible for the current state of affairs, but the Democratic Party too. Lawrence Lessig, a Berkeley law professor, is one of the leaders in the fight against corporate money in Congress. His organization, Fix Congress First is doing good work. The Fair Elections Now Act could also help get us out of this pickle. Finally, Hedges's giving Ralph Nader a voice in his essay is a nod to the idea of moving beyond our two-party system. I don't think that we were quite ready for it in 2000 and the idea that there was no real difference ideologically between Al Gore and George W. Bush was wrong and ended up causing a great deal of harm. But now members of both parties seem equally beholden to corporate interests, neither party has halted the privatization of government functions or adequately upheld the idea that the government, while flawed, is the best institution we have to maintain our democracy and represent the needs and rights of the American people.

The solution may be to move beyond our two-party system, to divide into neo-liberals, liberals, greens, social democrats, moderates, conservatives, neo-conservatives, right-wingers, and the like.  But would this even work? Is our two-party system also "too big to fail"? Are we too deep in what Taibbi describes as "an entrenched oligarchical system in place that insulates us all from any meaningful political change"?

Unfortunately, this won't happen in time for the upcoming mid-term elections. For now I feel I've been thrown a small bone. In my congressional district, the 7th of Virginia,  Eric Cantor is facing two challengers: a Tea Party candidate named Floyd Bayne and a Democrat, Rich Waugh, a former social worker who has said that he has taken no corporate money. Is this maybe what we could consider a step in the right direction? I hope so.

Rick Waugh, you have my vote.

(photo from Public Citizens photostream on flickr)

It's All About the (Corporate) Benjamins, Baby

People across the political spectrum are talking about getting corporate money out of politics. I've come to realize, though, that corporate influence is ubiquitous throughout American institutions--it's not just in politics. It can seem tricky to figure out who is funding what, but once we get past the misleading maze of independent- and beneficent-sounding organizations, it's pretty simple: the pool of wealthy people and companies have shrunk down to a few mega-conglomerates and uber-rich individuals. What's been more tricky for me to figure out is how my behavior as a voter, as a citizen, and as a consumer can counter this corporate takeover of American institutions.

A facebook friend recently posted this essay by Chris Hedges. Hedges states that, "There are no longer any major institutions in American society, including the press, the educational system, the arts, religious institutions, and our dysfunctional political parties, which can be considered democratic. The intent, design and function of these institutions, controlled by corporate money, are to bolster the hierarchical and anti-democratic power of the corporate state. These institutions, often mouthing liberal values, abet and perpetuate mounting inequality. They operate increasingly in secrecy. They ignore suffering or sacrifice human lives for profit. They control and manipulate all levers of power and mass communication. They have muzzled the voices and concerns of citizens. They use entertainment, celebrity gossip and emotionally laden public-relations lies to seduce us into believing in a Disneyworld fantasy of democracy."

Hysterical and doomsday-toned pieces like this often turn me off because they are dire to the point of making me feel utterly hopeless, i.e., we're all screwed, so why bother? I understand, though, that such a style can often demonstrate the actual direness of a situation and can light a fire beneath readers. No matter the style, I couldn't help but think that Hedges' piece had an enormous grain of truth to it.

Corporate takeover of American democratic institutions and the development of an American ruling oligarchy is one the defining issues of our democracy's time, if not the defining issue. With this as an introduction, I plan to write a series of blog posts about increasing corporate power over American democratic institutions. Let's just hope, although Hedges might claim otherwise, that it's not the final challenge to face our dying democracy.


(photo by flckr user PaDumBumPsh)

I got a politiku published!

One of my oldest friends, Susanna Speier, has a project she blogs about for the Huffington Post called Politiku. She comes up with a topic--usually related to recent news--and then puts out a call for submissions of haikus. The most recent topic was Obama's Nobel Peace Prize and she included one of my submissions! Susanna was by far my most intellectually creative and interesting childhood playmates and I'm thrilled to be back in touch with her (thank you, facebook) and to be a part of one of her publications.

To read my politiku, click the link here.

Obama's Controversial Speech to Schoolchildren that Wasn't

I am all hot and bothered over President Obama's speech to schoolchildren yesterday, September 8, 2009, and it's not because the (actually rather bland) speech turned me on. It's because of all of the dramatics surrounding the speech. I procrastinated writing this post, or producing any other type of writing I should have on my first full day of childcare, by picking debates on the topic with people on facebook.

I think we can all agree that the idea of Obama's addressing the nation's schoolchildren to stress the importance of education is a fine one. That he was going to "indoctrinate" the children or "brainwash" them with his "Socialist" (I wish!) agenda is laughable. And there is absolutely nothing in the content of the speech that is political or harmful. But by giving these right-wing extremist ravings coverage, the media was able to stoke the fires of polarization. Unfortunately many liberals took the bait, obscuring what were valid reasons for school districts to show the speech, but also valid reasons to opt not to.

The speech was a decent one with an admirable focus, but to ask the nation's educators to make time during the first day of school for this speech was asking too much. I know the first day in my classroom was always a very important one, one where I was worked damn hard to establish myself as a challenging teacher my students could trust and to establish my classroom as a safe and stimulating place. The last thing I would need on that day would be for some politician, even if I did vote for him and even if he were a Democrat, to be beamed in on the television pontificating in the same predictable educational-inspirational sloganese students hear all of the time and see plastered on the hallways of public schools: work hard and stay in school and achieve your dreams and don't talk back to your teachers. Then you can get accomplished, rich, and important like me and send your kids to private school so they can avoid being with riffraff such as yourselves (okay, that was cheap, that's his personal life, but wait, one-third of the speech was premised on his personal life, so perhaps the topic is fair game and I have to wonder if he nixed giving the speech in a D.C. public school because he imagined the irony of telling students to stay in a school he wouldn't send hs own daughters to). But back to the topic at hand. I have my own way of telling my students why my class is important and I don't need the President to do it for me. Furthermore, does he have any idea what it means for a principal to stop the school day and air a speech? How disruptive that could be? Obama says the most important thing in any student's education is the quality of the teacher they have, so I am perplexed by his beginning the school year by usurping those teachers' time and supposing that twenty minutes of his words would suffice to snap the nation's schoolchildren into shape.

I am glad that my own first graders weren't plopped down in front of a television the first day of school. They were busy enough keeping their teachers' names straight, avoiding getting lost on the way to the cafeteria, and remembering their bus numbers. Furthermore, I think the speech was fine for secondary students but I'm not sure it was appropriate for younger elementary school students, and I don't know what they would have gotten out of it. Hanover County, Virignia, Public Schools published this statement, which brought on accusations of being politically motivated and "anti-Obama." Maybe the school board is full of Republicans and maybe their statement was coded language for "we are not exposing this arugula-eating socialist to our students because he's going to brainwash them and we have a gubernatorial election coming up and don't want to give the Democratic candidate any kind of advantage," but I don't think so and even if that were the case, I still agreed with the spirit of the statement. (Hey, I wouldn't be above showing the Obama speech if I thought it would help defeat the rabid right-winger McDonnell.) I thought Hanover County's, and other school districts with a similar approach, handling of the situation was perfectly reasonable and appropriate: it may be disruptive on the first day and we don't want to pressure our teachers and principals; we are recording the speech, making instructional materials available, and letting the teachers decide when and how to show it. If teachers can prepare for showing and discussing the speech without having to also prepare for the beginning of school madness, then they can tie it to their curriculum and lesson plans, then actually the students would get more out of the speech than they would otherwise. I wish the Obama administration would have done the same thing and also consulted with educators to see what would be the most meaningful and least intrusive way to give the speech.

I appreciate him asking our nation's schoolchildren to work hard and to contribute to our society, and honestly, I would not have protested had it been aired in my kids' school and I might have shown it to my own students were I teaching right now, but it would have been better to do so in the context of a major historical event or the unveiling of education policy initiatives. How about promising to fix the problems of No Child Left Behind? I had plenty of E.S.O.L. (English for Speakers of other Languages) students who were told to work hard and stay in school and they did so until they figured out they had little chance of passing the standardized tests they needed to to get a high school degree and dropped out (speaking of which, was the speech made available in translation for E.S.O.L. students? In sign language for deaf students?) How about talking about pressuring our colleges and universities to make the college admissions process more equitable and not based on someone's ability to pay for SAT-prep classes? How about promising to de-emphasize high stakes testing and the low quality education that ensues because of it? How about talking about how our students perform and are employed relative to other industrialized countries? Obama doesn't have much new to offer about education policy: as I explained in my March 23, 2009 post, his administration's policies are rather more of the same of what we saw from Bush.

The speech had some inspiring moments and some nice rhetorical flourishes and I'm sure at least some students learned something from it. I liked what he had to say and reading over the speech before writing this blog piece, I liked it even more, but it's hard for me to get past the lofty empty cliches and the speech was nowhere as powerful as his masterful Philadelphia speech on race , his gracious presidential acceptance speech, or his rousing Inaugural speech. I hope his health care speech today is better. To me, the speech and the hoopla surrounding it amounted to much ado about, well, nothing significant, or as a friend of a facebook friend commented, "to quote my daughter, 'Yeah...some guy talked to us on the tv about a bunch of boring stuff.' " With all of the test prep Secretary of Education Arne Duncan wants, aren't our nation's schoolchildren exposed to enough boring stuff already?

What's Wrong with Obama's Approach to Education

In President Obama’s recent education speech, he proposed the creation of national standards, more accountability and merit-based pay for teachers, a longer school day, increased funding for special programs, and expansion of charter schools. He showed that he recognizes the vital role that education plays in a vibrant society and that he is serious about funding our schools. However, his ideas don’t reflect an understanding of the teaching and learning process at its best, or of how to build public institutions that would offer high-quality education.

Merit-based pay as well as the method for designating schools as failing or passing would most likely be based, as it has been since the enactment of No Child Left Behind (N.C.L.B.), on standardized tests. Obama’s policies as stated in his recent speech would continue the misuse of standardized tests that is already under way and reinforced by education “reformers” like Arne Duncan, our current Secretary of Education, and high-profile school chancellors (And, what, by the way, is up with this change in title? What happened to good old “superintendent”? Are we trying to emulate the British university system and its reinforcement of classism?) such as Joel Klein of the New York City Public Schools and Michelle Rhee of the D.C. Public Schools. Jeremy Miller’s account in the September 2008 edition of Harper’s Magazine of his year as a Kaplan coach in New York Public Schools paints a depressing picture of how, under Klein's watch, millions of dollars each year are taken away from New York City Public School classrooms to line the pockets of test-prep companies like Kaplan (not to mention the time taken away from teachers to teach content) while students’ education suffers. Miller's story also caused me to wonder if there might be a connection between Joel Klein’s cultivation and close mentorship of Rhee and The Washington Post’s (which owns Kaplan) incessantly glowing reports of Rhee and decision to remove from their beat Metro desk education reporters too critical of her tenure. Might there be a lucrative contract in the future for Kaplan at D.C.P.S.? Perhaps not, but at the very best, the Post is guilty of lazy and sycophantic journalism, and of the same short-sighted thinking Obama is.

Standardized tests do serve some purposes: with other tools, they should be used to help diagnose a student’s current academic abilities, strengths, and weaknesses; to help inform teachers’ teaching of their students; and, yes, to help measure student progress. Standardized tests are a fact of life—for better or worse, they are not going away any time soon. Normally, those who score well on them are those who come from backgrounds of education, power, and affluence. To fail to prepare the children who do not come from similar backgrounds to take and score well on such tests would be doing them a disservice. That being said, the test itself should be one of many measures of a student’s progress, of a school’s quality, and of a teacher’s impact and effectiveness; the tests and their results should be a means to a quality education, and not the end. I do not want a doctor who was trained to score high on his medical board exams but who lacks hands-on medical experience or knowledge of how to work with patients; likewise, I do not want our nation’s children to finish school knowing how to take and score well on a test but without being practiced and versed in critical reading, thinking, and analysis; scientific research; creative composition and interpretation of art, music, and writing; mathematical problem solving; knowledge of geography and history and their patterns; active civic engagement, and making healthy choices. Very few standardized tests currently measure the type of knowledge I just described.

If Obama wants to treat teachers as the professionals they are, he should start with not simply dividing them into “good” and “bad.” Surely, an intellectual like President Obama can be more thoughtful. Teachers have areas of expertise and interests; they have strengths and weaknesses. Why not talk about a system that builds on teachers’ strengths and strives to resolve their weaknesses and that finds the best ways to put their interests and areas of expertise to use? Sure, there are some teachers we could call “good” and some we could call “bad” but such descriptors are not productive, nor do they do justice to the complexity of what leads a teacher to be successful or not. Moreover, most teachers didn’t start out being effective or ineffective; they started out being passionate but inexperienced. I wish Obama and his reformers would first conduct an examination of how public education systems work effectively and how they work deficiently and dysfunctionally, how they turn inspired teachers into “bad” and ineffective ones. How do under-performing systems make those teachers that way and how do more successful systems work to produce more effective teachers? Until we can answer those questions, we'll just fire “bad” teachers and replace them with those doomed to become the same.

Obama called for nationalizing standards and benchmarks. With input from educators across the country, this could be a good idea. Currently, standards across the country differ such that some states’ school systems make the grade where others don’t. Common standards might also keep each state from having to reinvent that wheel every few years, and increase mobility between states for teachers and students, including into out-of-state colleges and universities. Some decisions, though, about funding priorities or curricular content, for example, should be made locally; each state, county, and municipality comprises different cultures and serves different populations.

A longer school day could have a positive effect, but only if it includes enriching academic activities, outdoor education, the arts, sports, and some choice for students, and a isn’t longer simply to accommodate more dreary test-based math and reading drills, short-changing other forms of knowledge. According to University of Virginia cognitive psychologist Dan Willingham, time for reading skills is already taking over time for content-area studies and as he puts it in this short video, teaching content is teaching reading. Also, a longer day may be difficult for the youngest students for whom even six or seven hours of structured activities is already too long.

Talk of more funding for programs such as Head Start is encouraging; however, the spending need not stop with primary schools. Programs like Title I Reading, for example, are phased out by high school. Even students who score well on reading tests need help with how to read a biology textbook. Speaking of secondary schools, the high drop-out rate, which Obama is concerned about, increased when N.C.L.B. and its emphasis on high-stakes testing came to town, particularly among Latinos (whom he singled out by the venue of this speech) and English Language Learners, who struggle to pass the English-language-centered standardized tests needed to qualify for a high school diploma. A return to using those tests to diagnose and inform teaching, rather than to inform the curriculum and unfairly stigmatize, might encourage those in danger of dropping out to stay in.

Charter schools are desirable on a limited scale, but we need to strengthen and re-invest in our neighborhood schools first. As the number of charter schools increases, they begin to displace neighborhood schools, undermining the communities those schools help to facilitate. Obama commends charter schools for being labs of experimentation and progressive thinking. Why can’t we experiment and be progressive in neighborhood schools? In the Oakland Unified School District, where my two sons attend school, neighborhood schools must use the Open Court Reading Program even if educators at those schools haven’t found the program to be successful or effective. High-scoring schools, such as that of my sons, are allowed some space to be creative with such programs; they can use programs like Open Court as they should be used: as a tool to see where their readers are and to teach reading skills. When it comes to having a rich experience with literature, they are free to use more complex and complete reading materials, which Open Court does not offer. Schools with lower test scores, however, are forced to use Open Court in a rigidly scripted way and are not allowed to supplement with other more interesting books and authors. Charter schools, on the other hand, don’t have to use Open Court at all--they can choose the materials, pedagogical approaches, and curricula that they feel most suit the students they serve and most fit the mission of the school. Why not give neighborhood schools this same latitude?

Tying teacher pay to students’ performance, especially to standardized test scores, only sets up perverse incentives that don’t encourage teaching or learning. A study highlighted in the book Freakonomics by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt showed that bonuses tied to test scores resulted in high rates of cheating. How does Obama define “progress” and “failure” anyway? What is due to teacher’s failure and what is due to the circumstances of students’ lives and communities? Didn’t a focus on short-term incentives recently lead an entire sector of our economy to ignore long-term realities? Current standardized tests scores tell us mostly about the educational background and socio-economic status of students who are taking the tests; they tell us very little about how they’re being taught. Looking at the scores of students at Bell Multicultural High School in Washington, D.C. (where I taught), one would conclude that it was full of “bad” and lazy teachers. Not true. Never have I worked with such talented and hard-working teachers and we saw some amazing progress. For example, it wasn’t uncommon a ninth grader to arrive reading on a first-grade level and then finish the school year on a third-or fourth-grade level, but to be seen as making progress, the student had to score as proficient for an average ninth-grader. Merit-based pay will reward teachers whose students would score proficiently on the tests regardless of their teaching, and force those who don’t teach such students who focus relentlessly on test-prep at the expense of richer content. In 2008, the chancellor of the D.C. Public Schools, in a desperate attempt to raise test scores, called for the elimination of foreign language instruction for all ninth graders due to low language arts test scores. Why should under-performing students sacrifice foreign language education, the enrichment it brings, and skills they’ll need to survive in our global economy for further test prep? If their test scores did go up slightly at the expense of the quality of their education, who does that serve? Chancellors and politicians; certainly, not the students.

There are ways beyond merit-based pay to both support and reward quality teaching. Many education programs include only a few months of student teaching and pay next to nothing to cooperating teachers. Why not require a full year or two of student teaching, paying those student teachers a modest salary, like medical residencies do, while compensating their master teachers adequately? Next, why not improve working conditions? I heard once that teachers have one of the highest incidences of bladder infections because of insufficient bathroom breaks. This NEA article describes the particular health hazards teachers face. Reducing class sizes and teaching loads and increasing planning time would also make all teachers more effective and students more successful without needlessly resorting to a competition. Increasing staffing at schools of arts and physical education educators, reading and content-area specialists, school psychologists, social workers, counselors, and nutritionists would provide support for teachers and essential services for students. Finally, let’s simply raise salaries for ALL educators.

Obama seems to be listening to only one recent brand of education reformer. What happened to Linda Darling-Hammond, the Stanford professor who was the architect of Obama's education platform during the campaign, and her ideas? Education academic and former teacher Mike Rose describes in his blog how and why Darling-Hammond was passed over. Why doesn’t Obama examine the work of innovators John Dewey, the founder of the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools where his daughters attended, or examine the practices of the illustrious Sidwell Friends School, where his daughter are currently enrolled? Surely, the educational philosophy at those schools is not based around the contents and results of high-stakes tests. Why, then, should the education of nation’s public school children be so based?

The problems of our educations system are not as simple as parents, teachers, or schools failing their children and students. Of course, everyone who is a part of our education system should be held accountable, and of course, standardized tests play a role in that process, but we need policies that acknowledge the complexity of the teaching and learning process and that bring out the best in our teachers, students, and learning communities. Abandoning the neighborhood school, sacrificing rich and challenging curricula and education for higher test scores, and throwing merit-based pay at uninspired teachers will not achieve this; and, neither will reducing our teachers to “good” and “bad.”


(photo by flickr user edlabdesigner)

Sprinkling on the Parade

This is my attempt at a much more traditionally bloggish piece (is that an oxymoron?), a departure from the first two posts.

During the primary season, while most people of my ethnic, socio-economic, and age demographic (I’m white, educated, thirty-five, and a liberal) were busy listening to the music of Barack Obama’s awe-inspiring speeches filled with complex and smart ideas, I was busy deciding that I would vote for Hillary Clinton. I left the “Presidential Preference” section blank on my mail-in ballot for days, but diligently researched the options of and filled in every other section. Finally, one day, I grabbed the ballot, hastily checked the box next to Hillary’s name, and sealed it as quickly as I could before my husband, or anyone else, could see it. I have not told many people about this decision, especially not my father, who while not part of my age demographic, has never cared for Hillary Clinton. The man who stormed out of a cruise ship movie theater during a screening of American Beauty, yell-whispering accusingly to the daughter who had brought him there, “This movie won the Oscar for best picture! This movie!” will not be pleased.

At the time, I just wanted a known quantity. I felt at least that I knew her, flaws and cardboard political persona and all. The people who voted for Bush in the 2000 and 2004 elections thought they knew what they were getting from him and look what we got there: compassionate conservative, my ass. Hillary’s laundry and flaws had been aired out already, I reasoned. I was also concerned by what I saw among my peers as the pedestalization and idealization of Obama.

I’m known to be skeptical, critical, and wary of the latest trend. I hated the movie Titanic (why should I have paid good money to spend an hour watching people screaming and falling to their drowning deaths and the rest of the time being hit over the head with the formulaic “so evil, so good” character dichotomy); the girlfriends I watched it with wished they had left me at home. When I started questioning the literary quality of the Harry Potter series to my super fan family-in-law, they came close to shunning me. A friend from my husband’s graduate school days, himself no pollyanna, once lamented, “Great, Rachel, you’ve ruined another restaurant for us.” I have a way of raining on the parade, but during the primary, I kept my mouth shut about my doubts about an Obama presidency.

It’s not that I was in any way anti-Obama or that I had any particular problem with his voting record or policies. I liked what he had to say and how he said it. I was not disappointed when he attained the Democratic party’s nomination. In fact, once the racist undertones started in earnest in Hillary’s campaign, once she and Bill alienated the African-American community that had been so loyal to them, and her true turncoat colors began to show, I deeply regretted voting for her. The last straws were the proof offered that her campaign altered Obama’s image to make his skin tone darker and nose broader as well as comments like, “He’s a Christian, as far as I know.” It was too easy for her to sell out the black community for the working-class white males (who vehemently hated her just recently, but the irony of Hillary bashers becoming Hillary lovers is another story) and to try to profit politically from hate and ignorance. Around late February, I started rooting for Obama in the primaries. Once he won the Democratic nomination, I started praying for his victory in the general election.

Once he defeated John McCain, I myself was not immune to Obama fever. Election night was a joyous night, although that elation promptly deflated with the passage of Proposition 8. Inauguration Day was also a glorious and emotional day. I cheered and jumped up and down that morning, singing, “Ding dong the Bush is gone, the Bush is gone, the Bush is gone. Ding, dong the wicked Bush is gone!” I teared up and flat out cried several times that day watching the inauguration coverage on my living room television. To have a president who is educated, eloquent, smart, open-minded, curious, intellectual, from a non-traditional family, a person of color, and with an elegant, stately, and well, presidential wife and children is thrilling. It is refreshing to have Barack Obama be the person of the hour who so many of us, especially young people, are looking up to. Like so many, I felt proud to be an American that day.

That night and the next morning, however, the euphoria began to fade; I started to feel anxious and the misgivings I had during the primary season resurfaced. The excitement of the inaugural consummation started to turn into an inaugural hangover for me, and I started to worry that we might eventually do a walk of shame after the initial fervor surrounding Obama’s historic rise to the presidency. The pictures I saw on-line and that friends had posted were informative and documentary, but the prevalence of iconographic paraphernalia and images of idolatry disturbed me. During election season, the Obama campaign needed all of the free advertising and fundraising resources it could get. I understood the cultivation of a cult of personality for the sake of strategy and marketing. Likewise, Inauguration Day should be marked with all of the fanfare and souvenirs it was (especially if that means money is going into the pockets of disenfranchised and underfunded D.C. residents. Disclaimer: I am a prickly native of the District of Columbia). It was his day, D.C.’s day, African-American’s day, and America’s day.

But now I’m hoping that we can move on from the cult of personality and fan club mentality. I fear Obama has become the new Che, the person who people proudly sport on a t-shirt but of whom they have little idea for what he stands. Obama is not a savior. He is not the Messiah or the Buddha reincarnated or the second coming of Che. He’s a politician. He’s a family man. He’s a human being. Will Obama be like the movie that everyone raves about but which ultimately turns out to be a disappointment once we really watch it? Has he become the politician to love much like Bush became the politician to hate, even for things that he shouldn’t have been hated for (like watching a movie with his family in October of 2001)? Would he become merely the celebrity of the moment to worship, like Angelina Jolie is the one so many of my mommy peers seem to despise because she’s rich, beautiful and has eight nannies? Furthermore, have we built him up so much that he’s destined to fail?

There is a lot Obama does not know. Let’s take education, one of my pet topics (I was a public school teacher for seven years). The author of his education platform during the campaign was, refreshingly, Linda Darling-Hammond, but his choice was the pro-high-stakes testing “reformer” Arne Duncan. In his blog, Mike Rose, a veteran teacher and currently on the faculty of the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, does a good job of explaining the conflicts behind his appointment and why Darling-Hammond was a better choice. Parents United for Responsible Education (PURE) has produced some reports on problematic “reform” efforts that took place in the Chicago Public Schools under Duncan. In the last debate with John McCain, Obama praised Michelle Rhee, the current Chancellor of the D.C. Public Schools, as "wonderful." (If she's so wonderful, why isn't he entrusting the education of his own children with her schools. Cheap shot, I know.) Rhee is another pro-standardized-testing-based curriculum “reformer,” who also happens to be a darling of the national media but not of current D.C.P.S. educators or of those who have toiled to improve D.C.P.S. in recent decades. Even Colbert I. King, the Washington Post columnist who was a Rhee supporter, is starting to see through the buzz surrounding her. In an especially paternalistic piece in the New Republic, Joel I. Klein and Al Sharpton, of all people, add to the grand media fawn . An idea of hers that should give Obama pause is her plan to remove many D.C.P.S. career teachers (who are mostly over forty, middle class, and African-American Washingtonians) and replace them with Teach for America-esque recruits (who are mostly white, affluent, and from out-of-town).

Let’s hope that Obama won’t be blinded by the buzz surrounding individuals like Rhee and Duncan, and neglect to gain real knowledge about quality teaching, public schools, and education. Obama does surround himself with smart, knowledgeable people who have differing opinions, and he seems to listen to those people and to be a lightning-quick study. I just hope he listens to all of the experts in education (and other fields) and not just the policy wonks and people who get the media’s attention with gimmicky slogans but no substance. I hope he is able to convert what he doesn’t know to positive, progressive, and logical solutions. His administration's stated agenda for education so far includes a sound and reasonable approach and philosophy that does seem to include making teachers and educators part of the reform effort, and I like how they want to change No Child Left Behind (N.C.L.B.). But still, the statements are full of vague language such as, “demanding more reform and accountability” and neglect to lay out many details or the how of getting their goals accomplished. We need to recognize how much Obama doesn’t know and need to give him a chance and time to learn.

In the meantime, we need to do what we can do and fulfill our responsibilities as citizens and help him to fulfill his promise of change. The Obama team does offer a forum for ordinary citizens to express themselves on various topics. If we have detailed, expert knowledge, let’s speak up and make ourselves heard and remind him of his promises. Using education as an example again, we can make changes at the local level by at least considering enrolling our kids in public schools--if there are things we don’t like or would like to see change, we can engage the school leadership in a respectful conversation about it and join the P.T.A. We can ask actual educators their opinion about policies such as N.C.L.B., rather than rely on politicians three steps removed from the system. We can volunteer to work with young people at schools or elsewhere. We can pledge to withhold contributions to elite institutions of higher education until they vow to get out of the U.S. News and World Report ratings game, reform their S.A.T.- and A.P.-dependent admissions policies, and decide to reward students who are great and promising students, and not punish those poorer students whose parents could not afford S.A.T. prep classes and whose schools are unable to offer plentiful, or any, A.P. courses. (For more on this and to understand why loan-free grants to low-income students are not enough, consider reading Peter Sacks’ somewhat preachy but very well-researched Tearing Down the Gates: Confronting the Class Divide in American Education.) While we’re at it, let’s ask them to spend the ten dollars we are able to afford to give on the students and not on those useless pamphlets showcasing new computer labs or whatever. Finally, let’s not assume that just because we’ve studied a subject that we know how to teach it, or that because we’ve attended school that we know how the education system should work. I’ve been a city bus passenger numerous times and I have a driver’s license, but I don’t know the first thing about what it takes to actually drive a bus, unruly passengers and all, and I certainly don’t know how to show someone else how to do so.

Obama is not perfect. He is going to make mistakes. He is going to make compromises. He is going to make decisions that will be unpopular with certain groups of people. To butcher Abraham Lincoln’s famous quote, you can please some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot please all of the people all of the time. He may have a lapse in judgment at some point, either personal or professional. None of this bothers me or makes me think he should not be president or even stops me from believing that he may be the best president we’ve had. I’m not simply happy to see him in office because he isn’t George W. Bush. I did not agree with all of the Nader supporters in 2000 who said, “How much damage could one man do in four years?” No, I’m concerned that we’ve come to expect such perfection that if he makes one unpopular decision, makes one mistake, or has one momentary crisis or collapse of his moral and ethical code, that he won’t be forgiven and that the people who were engaged in the process for the first time in this past election because of Obama will disengage from the political process altogether. I’m afraid that the thin line between cynicism and unabashed optimism will blur and that all of those people will disengage and not vote again. We need to understand that Obama will make mistakes and the he will do some damage.

So, here’s what I’m inspired to say. Let’s not do that walk of shame. Let’s not be minions of the man and his image; let’s be minions of his message and values. Let’s not end up like my sophomore year economics textbook, full of highlighting for the first chapter but nothing beyond that. Let’s not pat ourselves smugly on the back after our one day of service and ballot casting. Just because we slap a bumper sticker on our car and buy a t-shirt does not make us part of something, except a no-longer-necessary branding. Let’s disavow greed, invest in public education (and be distressed that even the guy who wants to reinvent America's relationship to government did not see fit to send his own kids to America’s public schools), be active members of our communities, become civically engaged, demand affordable and universal healthcare, address the shame of having a class of people called the working poor, demand that equal rights be granted to all Americans, and address the ineffectiveness of incarcerating so many for so long.

There, I’ve said it. I’ll lie in wait for all three people who read this blog to say,"Come on, Rachel, do you have to ruin everything for us? Let me alone to enjoy my feelings of hope and relief." I realize that I am not the first to express these concerns and sentiments. For a much more wonkishly nuanced version of the sentiments in this piece, but regarding the economy, read this. In another wait-and-see piece, Juan Williams asks us to refrain from judging Obama based on the group he represents, although I rather feel that Juan Williams is not giving African-Americans enough credit. As a social studies teacher during the 2000 election, I took part in the Supreme Court Historical Society’s course for D.C. Social Studies teachers. After commiserating about the outcome of Gore v. Bush and bashing Bush, bashing Clarence Thomas was next for the majority African-American class. He got no free pass for being the second African-American on the Court. My favorite response so far to Obama’s Inauguration is from Jay Smooth’s blog, ill Doctrine, where Jay tells his readers to be pleased with the outcome of the election, but not to stop working to make ourselves and our society better.

I have a great deal of confidence in Obama, but I am concerned that the fan club mentality that seems to have swept over some of my demographic peers will cause them to make only superficial changes in the way they think, live, act, and spend. I’m concerned that Obama will fall hard and fast from that pedestal and that no one among us will question his choices or hold him accountable while he’s up there. Here is my commitment: I will endeavor to be a steward of his message and of the promises he made, I won’t be surprised or disappointed when that mistake, that failing, or that compromise comes, and when it does, I’ll still be loyal to Obama and, more importantly, to his message.


(photo by flickr user Lanterna)