Monkeying Around With Education

While we all were waiting for the inevitable shutdown to begin last night, we thought we might actually try to be more effective than the idiots in Congress - a low standard, we know. Still, we began by looking back through some recent news, and came across more stories about the ever-failing No Child Left Behind law. The law - also known as NCLB - now appears to be reaching critical levels of failure in our home state of Nebraska.

As Margaret Reist detailed in the Lincoln Journal-Star last week, sixty-five percent of Nebraska's schools failed to meet the Bush-era NCLB academic target last year. That failure is in part due either to a stubbornness to change or simple stupidity by both Nebraska's Governor and legislature to formally request a waiver from the Federal government on the NCLB standards, as other states have done.

As Joe Dejka outlined in the Omaha World Herald, even some Nebraska schools well-known for high academic standards, like the Omaha-area Millard North and Millard West high schools, have now run into some well-known problems with the NCLB - namely, the bananas requirement that schools be nearly perfect in their testing results. Those unrealistic standards, in fact, are a big part of why 42 other states have applied for waivers from the Obama administration on the NCLB standards and have been granted those waivers.

Many educators say the problem is simply that so-called educational "experts" keep insisting on more and more testing - the kind of nutty educational policy that's often the hallmark of educational standards efforts.

Some educators even say the Obama administration's attempt to do something similar, Common Core, is equally bad.

We hit on this issue just a month and a half ago, and we still believe one of the biggest problems remains, as we pointed it out at that time: Billion dollar for-profit educational testing companies, who have a vested interest in pushing ever-greater numbers of tests, for which they'll charge districts every-greater amounts of money.

We're not saying all standards testing is bad. Tests do have a place - but that place should not be a place that crowds out all other learning opportunities.

Whether the standard is Common Core or NCLB, standards testing must be completed and do need to be implemented wisely, in part because of the kind of fluid economic format we've chosen in America, at this time. Americans go where the jobs are today. If a parent moves from one state to another, their children will come with them. Therefore, what Eighth-graders learn in one state should be same for those children in all states. Unfortunately, it is not, currently.

Each child, school, and teacher should be given the leeway to actually teach. Broad standards are also good - but they need to be implemented carefully and given time to work. Amanda Ripley's great piece published online over the weekend, and in this week's edition of Time magazine, shows that Kentucky of all states, has been doing this - applying the Common Core standards broadly, with small individual exceptions. After three years of implementation, the Kentucky experience with Common Core seems to be going amazingly well.

Whatever the final solution to our academic standards problems may be, as the failures of No Child Left Behind have proven, hard, unrealistic standards don't work - and neither do ever-growing piles of testing. As the refusal by Nebraska's government to do anything about those failed standards has also shown, doing nothing is also bananas.

Simply Ridiculous

As our staff gathered up research and discussed today's commentary idea, the fact that the U.S. federal government is less than twenty-four hours from a completely unnecessary shutdown was on everyone's mind.

As much as the right-wing media has spent the weekend trying to complicate the reasons for this fight, writer Kevin Drum on Friday nailed - in one sentence - the simple reason why Congressional Republicans are about to shut down the government:

"The Republican Party is bending its entire will, staking its very soul, fighting to its last breath, in service of a crusade to make sure that the working poor don't have access to affordable health care."

Drum was right, of course, as was The Washington Post's Greg Sargent when he said something similar on Friday.

Sargent in fact, recently proved there is no real Republican alternative to Obamacare, even more than three years after the law's passage. That fact, however, hasn't kept Republican clowns - like Nebraska's entire congressional delegation - from trying to convince the gullible rubes who elected them that Republicans have any alternatives, or that a government shutdown could, in any way, stop Obamacare.

For the record, Obamacare has already been rolling for three years now, and a shutdown of the federal government isn't going to stop the health insurance exchange markets from opening on Tuesday around most of the country. Further, a delay in the rollout of the individual mandate like Republicans in Congress are demanding would actually cost Americans billions. As Tara Culp-Ressler points out, not only would it add to the national debt, it would also leave more Americans uninsured, while jacking up insurance premiums for ALL Americans by an estimated 15 to 20 percent.

All of these arguments become moot however, when you look at the facts behind both the shutdown, and the looming debt ceiling battle.

Republicans in Congress are acting like terrorists, effectively trying to force President Obama and Congressional Democrats into giving the GOP everything Republicans lost when they blew it in the 2012 elections. President Clinton even defended President Obama's refusal to be held hostage over the weekend, noting that it's Congressional Republicans who really have no intention of negotiating.

Clinton is right of course, as is conservative writer David Frum when he notes that this shutdown - like when the Republicans shut down the government under Clinton - will only politically damage the GOP. When Republicans financially hurt millions of Americans this time, we highly doubt it will win them more voter approval in 2014.

Of course, Republican stooges in Congress like Rep. Michele Bachmann - who is conveniently retiring from Congress - keep saying they don't fear a federal government shutdown. The Washington Post's Ezra Klein even said on Friday that a shutdown now might actually be good news, as a shutdown now might shock Republican freshman into being more responsible during the debt ceiling fight. That kind of thinking assumes the tea partiers holding the rest of the Republican Party hostage will listen and understand when they lose on the shutdown - something that Klein himself ended up arguing against over the weekend.

No matter how you look at it, two facts remain: Obamacare isn't going away, and the clowns in the GOP still don't have any real alternative to Obamacare.

That Republicans refuse to accept those two cold hard facts - potentially at the expense of millions of Americans and billions of dollars - is simply ridiculous.

Smashingly Bad Behavior

We feel like parents, coming home to children or pets who've destroyed our home - and each other - while we were away.

Multiple members of our staff have been traveling in different directions across the country this week, while we've been covering some heavyweight topics for you. We'd hoped the more sensible Congressional Republicans would have reined in their extremist colleagues in the GOP by now, and that at the very least a deal to keep the government open would be in the final stages of passage - so that everyone could enjoy a nice, relaxing weekend.

Looking at the news, however, it's obvious that Congressional Republicans don't give a damn what the plans of any other American is, either for this weekend or for the foreseeable future. Hostage takers rarely do.

As people all around the world witnessed this week, Republicans in both the House and the Senate have been far too busy, destroying each other and their own party, to handle their Congressional responsibilities - things like paying the bills they already ran up or ensuring the government has enough money to continue to operate.

That irresponsible behavior has even driven some on Wall Street like Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics to finally speak out against the Republicans in Congress, since either a government shutdown or a debt ceiling default will deal lasting economic damage to the nation - and to the bottom line of Wall Street corporations.

Unfortunately, Republicans in Congress are no longer listening to anyone on this issue - not Wall Street, not each other, not Congressional Democrats, and certainly not President Obama.

After delivering a ransom note on Thursday that read more like an ultraconservative letter to Santa, House Republicans and Speaker Boehner told the media they would not accept a 'clean' continuing resolution or debt ceiling increase from the Senate. That slap in the face to both Democratic Senate Leader Harry Reid and Senate Republicans like Ted Cruz almost certainly means the U.S. federal government will shut down at one second after midnight next Monday into Tuesday night.

There are many on the right still begging and screaming for President Obama to negotiate with Congressional Republicans on both the CR and the debt ceiling.  We think those people must have forgotten that the President of the United States does not negotiate with terrorists - which is effectively what Congressional Republicans have become.

Still, the damage Republicans are doing to the government and attempting to do to the nation is nothing compared to the damage they are doing to each other and their own party.

For now, even though the debt ceiling deadline of October 17th still has us a bit worried, we realize there's nothing we can do to make the situation in Congress better. Even if there were an action we could take, after a week of work and travel, we're too tired to do anything other than slump down at home, catch up on our reading, and maybe take a nap.

When we wake up, we're sure the Republican Party will still be destroying itself, while the government burns around them.