Twofer

Today you get a twofer, yes, count 'em, two posts for our same low price.

Elizabeth Taylor died earlier this week. Fulsome tributes poured in, lauding her for her ability as an actress, as a sex symbol, and as a humanitarian.

I was never much of a fan. I've seen Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, thought she was very good, but that's really about it.

Forty some odd years ago, the Chad Mitchell Trio did a song about her, though, that I do remember. Here are the lyrics, offered kindly. I think you could call it a satire.

When I think of Elizabeth Taylor,

(And many's the time I do).

I think what that poor kid puts up with,

And it tears my heart in two.

She's out every night at a gay cabaret

Eats breakfast each day from a solid gold tray

I hear that she makes seven thousand a day

What kind of life is that?

What kind of life, what kind of life,

What kind of life is that?

At MGM they silver-spooned her,

I think National Velvet ruined her.

I pay for a house what she pays for a hat,

What kind of life is that?

Poor Liz, poor Liz,

Does she know what it means

To make a pot roast last a week?

To wrap a towel around a pipe

In case it springs a leak?

Does she know what it means

To get down on her hands and knees

To wash her kids' pajamas

And her old man's BVDs?

These simple pleasures don't delight her,

She's too busy with la dolce viter.

But for all of her glamor and her whoop-de-doo

And her house in the best neighborhood,

Would you take that lousy life

If it was offered to you?

You can bet Cleopatra's asp

You would!

Good-bye Liz. Rest in peace.

Today is baseball's opening day. As I write this I'm watching the Yankees and Tigers on television. Tomorrow my Red Sox open, deep in the heart of Texas, favored to win the American League East, the American League pennant, and the World Series. My favorite National League team, the Colorado Rockies, start tomorrow in Denver, facing the Arizona Diamondbacks, known to headline writers as the Snakes.

Baseball seasons proceed at a leisurely pace for a while. It's hard to get excited about wins and losses so early in a 162 game calendar. April games count as much as September games, but for the good teams the first forty or so games are a shakedown cruise. They find out which veterans can still help them and what younger players are ready to contribute.

That leaves some room for the upstarts, the teams that don't really have enough talent to compete through the summer, but might get off to quick starts. Here are two candidates for the annual "flash-in-the-pan" label, one in each league, and for opposite reasons.

The Houston Astros are a team of moderately skilled veterans, who will fade when the weather gets hot, but who can take advantage of the feeling out process the better teams will be going through. Look for them to compete until Memorial Day and then settle to the bottom of the pack.

By contrast, the Kansas City Royals are composed of young players who might be very good within two or three years, but who, all together, aren't ready for prime time. Their weaknesses will be exposed eventually, but they could be tough to handle for those first forty games.

As they say, the cream will rise to the top. Look for the usual cast of characters in the American League come fall, the Red Sox, Yankees, Twins and Rangers. The NL is slightly more volatile, but I'm predicting the Phillies, Braves, Reds and Rockies.

Rox and Sox in the World Series. How could I say anything else?

Education in America

What follows is part of an article from the March 20 issue of Newsweek magazine written by Diane Ravitch. It says better than I could what has been happening to education in America during the last ten years. I'll just say briefly that we don't educate our young people anymore, we process them through our educational system.

Standardized-test scores can provide useful information about how students are doing. But as soon as the scores are tied to firing staff, giving bonuses, and closing schools, the measures become the goal of education, rather than an indicator.

So now come President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan with their Race to the Top program. The administration invited the states to compete for $4.3 billion in a time of fiscal distress. To qualify, states had to agree to evaluate teachers by student test scores, to award bonuses to teachers based on student scores, to permit more privately managed charter schools, and to “turn around” low-performing schools by such methods as firing the staffs and closing the schools.

Race to the Top went even beyond NCLB in its reliance on test scores as the ultimate measure of educational quality. It asserts that teachers alone—not students or families or economic status—are wholly responsible for whether test scores go up or down. Now teachers rightly feel scape-goated for conditions that are often beyond their control. They know that if students don’t come to school regularly, if they are chronically ill, if they are homeless or hungry, their test scores will suffer. But teachers alone are accountable.

The Obama agenda for testing, accountability, and choice bears an uncanny resemblance to the Republican agenda of the past 30 years, but with one significant difference. Republicans have traditionally been wary of federal control of the schools. Duncan, however, relishes the opportunity to promote his policies with the financial heft of the federal government.

The confluence between the Obama agenda and the Republican agenda became clear in the fall of 2009, when Duncan traveled the country with Newt Gingrich to promote Race to the Top. And on March 5 of this year, President Obama flew to Florida to celebrate the test-score gains at a high school in Miami with former governor Jeb Bush, one of the nation’s most vocal proponents of conservative approaches to education reform.

In his recent State of the Union address, Obama rightly asserted that we must encourage innovation, imagination, and creativity so we can “win the future.” But the federal government’s emphasis on standardized tests subverts that lofty goal. Drilling children on how to take tests discourages innovation and creativity, punishes divergent thinking, and prioritizes skills over knowledge. And the endless hours devoted to test preparation certainly deaden students’ interest in school.

Emboldened by the Obama administration, as well as by hundreds of millions of dollars from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, many districts and states now plan to use test scores to evaluate teachers. Most of our nation’s leading testing experts think this is a risky path.

Teachers see these measures as an attack on their profession. Recently elected governors such as Scott Walker in Wisconsin and John Kasich in Ohio are ratcheting up the attack, pushing hard to end teachers’ collective-bargaining rights, while Mayor Michael Bloomberg in New York City, Gov. Chris Christie in New Jersey, and Gov. Rick Scott in Florida would like to eliminate seniority and due-process rights for teachers. Destroying the unions will silence the only organized voice that opposes draconian cuts to education budgets. Without that voice, schools can expect larger class sizes and reduced funding for the arts, school nurses, libraries, and other programs.

Many of our nation’s top teachers—some with National Board Certification—are so disgusted by the attacks on public education that they are planning a march on Washington in July. They plan to demand equitable funding for all public schools, an end to using test scores to punish schools and teachers, and involvement of parents and teachers in the decisions that affect their schools.

The only question is whether President Obama, Secretary Duncan, and Congress will hear their message about what’s best for our children—and best for our country.

Ravitch is a historian and author of The Death and Life of the Great American School System.

Next

• 1
• 2

View As Single Page

• print
• email
• comments28

Next: Forget About Your Dream School »

YOU MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN

Paid Distribution

10 Things Not to Say to a Coworker(Man of the House)

The Scientific Case for Masturbation(NEWSWEEK)

Paid Distribution

10 Traits Men Look for in a Girlfriend(iVillage.com)

Paid Distribution

The 50 Most Awkward Moments in Sports History(Bleacher Report)

How Ignorant Are Americans?(NEWSWEEK)

More on Newsweek

• Junot Díaz Reflects on Tokyo
• Please Stop Writing!

by Diane RavitchMarch 20, 2011

Education

• barack obama

• print
• email
• comments28

Trending on Newsweek

• How Ignorant Are Americans?
• America's Best High Schools: The List

Popular on Newsweek

1. Rare and Unusual Photos and Images From the Burns Archive
2. How Ignorant Are Americans?
3. How a Girl's Murder Led to a Coca-Cola Boycott
4. Take the Quiz: What We Don't Know
5. How to Get Smart Again

Newsweek.com on Digg

• 1Forget About Your Dream School - Newsweek
• 3Ferguson: The Rise of Asia's Bachelor Generation - Newsweek
• 1How a Girl's Murder Led to a Coca-Cola Boycott - Newsweek
• 1A Wimp He Wasn't - Newsweek
• 1Washington's Suicide Pact

Powered by Digg