"Increasing student achievement —- that's what I care about and what I have devoted my life to. We simply have to get better than Canada."

Martha Kanter
Undersecretary of education nominee

I've got nothing against Martha Kanter, but there's another woman in California who'd make a better Undersecretary of Education. To be fair, Linda Darling-Hammond made it clear months ago she's not leaving town.

Arne went to a fancy private school as a lad,
Martha went to a fancy private girls' school as a lass.

Arne tutored the underclass on Chicago's South Side as a lad,
Martha tutored the underclass "in a tough inner-city neighborhood" as a lass.

Arne's on a listening tour,
Martha's about to start her own "listening tour."

Ms. Kanter loves technology. She spoke Friday at Hewlett-Packard.

She cited new planetarium technology that Fujitsu recently installed at De Anza in which "kids can fly through the human heart and fly through outer space. Imagine teaching with holographic opportunities and getting inspired when you're in seventh grade. These are the technologies we can put in schools."

Flying through the human heart is a fine and dandy thing--dazzling colors, loud sounds, more dazzling colors, more loud sounds.

Ask the kid to take a standardized test right after the razzle-dazzle, and see what remains.

Call me old-fashioned, but dissecting a sheep's heart tells a lot more about us than flying through a virtual heart. My kids have enough trouble distinguishing what's real from everything else--they live in a world of everything else.

I'd bet my cherished lucky bones that my frog dissections can hold a child's attention longer than a holograph, and lead to better understanding.

If a kid can learn about the human heart by using "holographic opportunities," maybe Kanter can save a public dime or two by taking a virtual listening tour.

We need to stop picking on Canada. They have potable water. Lots and lots of potable water. Anyone from California knows that potable water beats gold.

READ MORE - Arne light

Arne Duncan carries a lot of weight in Washington. He's the education go-to guy. If he were a neighbor ranting about schools at a barbecue, I'd just nod a few times then wander away--he doesn't listen, he makes stuff up, and I'm not sure of his command of the mother tongue.

I now have two people to avoid at barbecues--Justice Thomas.

In an 8-1 vote, the Supreme Court ruled that another student's accusation of having prescription strength ibuprofen (4 tabs' worth of the over-the-counter variety) does not allow school officials to conduct a strip search.

Clarence Thomas' response would have been the perfect sentence for Ms. Sciala, my 8th grade teacher who made us diagram sentences; she would have saved it for the final exam:

“Redding would not have been the first person to conceal pills in her undergarments,” he wrote. “Nor will she be the last after today’s decision, which announced the safest places to secrete contraband in school.”

NY Times, June 25

The first (and screamingly obvious) objection, Your Honor--she did not have the pills. You can hide behind the pluperfect subjunctive (help me here, grammar sharks) of the first clause, but the "nor will she be the last" unveils your confusion. You appear to believe that she did, in fact, hide them in her netherlands.

Had you diagrammed your sentence ahead of time, you would have seen this. Ms. Sciala would be crowing. If this were a verbal response, all would be forgiven. But it's not. It's written.

“Preservation of order, discipline and safety in public schools is simply not the domain of the Constitution,” he wrote.

NY Times, June 25

Um, no kidding, Mr. Thomas. When was the last time you set foot in a classroom of 13-year-olds? (What better ad for prescription strength Advil?)

You can substitute "public spaces" for "public schools" and still be mostly correct.

If you're argument is that the Constitution does not extend to public schools, well, you're wrong. If you want to say that children are not protected by the Constitution, that's sad but true, no argument there. But no one is going to peek at my pubes looking for a contraband prescription drug in the school--the adults in the building still have Constitutional rights.

The Constitution is a feisty document--you might consider reading it, Mr. Thomas.

One more point.

If you knew anything at all about our tadpoles at thirteen, you would have realized that putting a tablet of anything anywhere near the "safest places to secrete contraband in school” will turn on the yuk trigger in the vast majority of even the hard-core ibuprofen addicts.

And next time, consider using a word besides "secrete." It's creepy in this context.

Yes, I was trying to be cute, using the subjunctive. No, it didn't work.

READ MORE - Clarifying Clarence

Go peek at the Federal Department of Education website--try to find the NCLB logo. Try to find the words "No Child Left Behind."

Then try to find any changes beyond that.

I do think the name 'No Child Left Behind' is absolutely toxic;
I think we have to start over.

Arne Duncan in USA Today, May 5
I'm so naive--I thought he meant start over with NCLB.

What to do, what to do? How do we maintain a Spellingesque reality? How do we convince people that the NCLB is still good for them?

It's been an interesting month. A major study demonstrated that charter schools do not, in fact, outperform public schools, Texas tells the feds to kiss its yellow rose and refuses to follow "voluntary" national standards, and Duncan revises his Listening and Learning tour to avoid the wrath of D.C.

What to do, what to do?

Rebrand!

It worked for Phillip Morris. Remember them? They're now Altria Group. And they still sell cigarettes.

So Mr. Duncan got incented enough to erase No Child Left Behind. The logos are off the website, and off the letterheads. The new name is....um...the new name...guys, where'd you put it?

OK, no new name yet.

A month ago, Mr. Duncan had a plan:

He said he would like to hold a contest for school kids to come up with a new name.

Arne Duncan, again in USA Today, May 5

This is like asking Anne Boleyn to name the sword that severed her neck.

So, Mr. Duncan, you like basketball analogies, let me explain it to you nice and slow. My New Jersey Nets went 17-65 about 20 years ago. They were, indeed, "absolutely toxic." How can you fix a team like that?

Do you think changing the uniforms would have made a lick's worth of difference?

(Maybe Duncan is right after all--the Nets change to a new uniform in 1990-91, and their record did, in fact, improve to 26-56.)

Go read Schools Matter, the best website I've found that keeps the spotlight on the unfolding disaster Formerly Known as NCLB.







And Section 1905 of the No Child Left Behind Act?

The Federal gummint shall not "mandate, direct, or control a state, local educational agency, or school's specific instructional content, academic achievement standards and assessments, curriculum or program of instruction."

The logo is public, the photo of the old Nets uniform is not--it looks like NBAHOOPS by the logo.

READ MORE - Section 1905

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READ MORE - BCL new hairstyle, WOW !