There is a man-made category known as the "Peter Principle" and it has proven accurate in many cases regardless of what arena one works or plays in. For example, Jack O'connell the present Superintendent of Education under the formerly prestigious banner of the California Department of Education is an individual who fits this description almost perfectly.
As a California State Assembly member from 1982-1994, Jack was outstanding, beloved, and protected District 35. He continued in the State Senate from 1994-2002 and represented his constituency with great attention and kindness. Jack was for the people and by the people.
In 2002, Jack was elected to the post that he currently holds with 61% of the vote and was re-elected by an even greater majority in 2006.
Jack is and has been a politician and every person conjures up their own definition when that title is placed next to their name. I'm not here to denigrate Jack in any way for the work he did serving his district from 1982-2002, but after that something went awry...
As in the Peter Principle, people can and usually do reach a point where their effectiveness stalls. It could be their talent doesn't match their job or what they are doing. It might be a run of bad luck or poor decisions. In Jack's case, he succumbed to an alien "disease" which was reacting to the failing of the California Public Schools by some expert panel and budget cuts in education. Additionally, No Child Left Behind came along and pointed out that schools everywhere were being unsuccessful and the ESEA (Elementary &Secondary Education Act) was a bust.
So, in an effort to stem the tide and apparently not looking too closely at the reasons this might be happening (2nd language learners, an exploding population, shortage of funding, etc), Jack focused on the A to G curriculum and an exit exam (aka CAHSEE) that would be the linchpin of California's graduation standards. By ramrodding the exit exam, Jack honestly felt we [California]\would show the rest of the country how "it" should be done, would make voters happy, and would demonstrate just how well teachers taught and how good or bad, schools were! Makes sense huh? In effect, we would tell all kids that you go to school from the time you're 5-18 or19, you learn what we say you should be learning, get your 230 credits, and then pass this exam which is on the 7th-9th grade level and if you do all of these things, you get a real honest-to-God D-I-P-L-O-M-A. If not, you get a "Certificate of Completion". Oh, and by the way, California is 1 of 23 states that have this requirement. Incidentally, if you are a special needs individual, you could apply for a waiver (and that caveat is currently being tested in the courts).
This test is not an easy test and it doesn't really test what students are necessarily learning. It is also multiple choice except for the one writing segment that can be fair or not so. Supposedly, members of our state assembly took it and the results were not very pleasant to many who did, so I'm told.
The current story is that Jack claims that we have a 7% dropout rate but my sources tell me it's much higher. Jack also has been applauded by none other than Margaret Spellings, Secretary of Education, the enforcer of NCLB, for coming down hard on those schools who are falling below the acceptable test scores (failing). (Note: And Jack had ample reason to challenge NCLB as unfair and biased)
My questions are: How often is negative reinforcement successful? How are we bettering our children's opportunity in the adult world? what happened to the "many paths" approach for education since obviously, not everyone is college material or has an interest in academia? Where did Jack develop the idea that we needed an exit exam? and finally, will we ever get back to the land of Common Sense?
Tune in...
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Sunday, June 15, 2008
A commencement speech we should all hear...
The commencement speech by Serge A. Storms, one of the many malfunctioning characters in Tim Dorsey’s series taking place in the ‘sunshine state’ filled with mischievous plots and subplots and serpentine paths arriving at a suitable conclusion. This is at a commencement exercise in the book Triggerfish Twist:
`”Has anyone heard that Jerry springer now has a place in Sarasota?
I mention this because I’m still waiting for Tonya Harding to move down here and make a clean sweep. I’m going through withdrawal because I haven’t heard anything about her since she beat that guy in a head with a hubcap in a hoedown. And what about that poor guy? I don’t think there is any better time to sit down and have a heart-to-heart with yourself.
‘Good morning. This is your wake-up call. It’s from Darwin’
But that’s just one person’s tiny drama, meaningless except in the bigger picture, which is trying to isolate the exact moment we turned into Trash Nation, and nearest I can tell, it was one second after Nancy Kerrigan took a telescoping blackjack to the knee. Now there was a cute little soap opera. What an absolutely fascinating underwater view into the Kmart inflatable backyard American gene pool. I have a dirty little confession: I loved it! We may have learned everything we needed to know about life after kindergarten. But you know what? We can learn everything we need to know about the incredibly rude, selfish, infantile country we’ve become by observing the human spokes revolving around the Tonya Harding sociocultural axis. The Greeks reveled in Homeric tragicomedies; the English lived out Shakespearian dramas. But we, America, are the cast of the Kerrigan farce. Is it any wonder we’ve thrown manners, compassion, and respect out the window? We’ve become one big, self-absorbed nation holding up an ice skate pointing at a broken lace and blubbering our eyes out. We don’t know our neighbors anymore. We have no shame, no consideration, no sense of duty or sacrifice. Need more metaphors? We don’t go the extra mile, meet anyone halfway, and if somehow, somewhere, anything at all goes wrong in our pathetic daily wanderings, if some random misfortune drops at our feet like a Taco Supreme, we don’t commence to tidying up the floor and getting on with our lives. We start making a litigious radar sweep of the room, seeing if there is anyone in recrimination range, some entitlement cadet to whom we can construct a Bridge-over-the-river-Kwai blame-path of tortured logic and sheer reality-sculpting self-deception. Maybe they handled a taco once, and maybe even made tacos. Maybe they could have warned you – yes. They knew all about that treacherously viscous emulsion of grease and sour cream on wax wrapper. They deliberately chose not to say anything as they saw it slipping out of your hand in Peckinpah slow motion while you were trying to eat, talk on the phone and log on to eBay at the same time. Well, here’s a newsflash for you. Believe it or not, the blacks and the gays and the Jews did not drop your taco. You dropped the fucking taco my friend! It doesn’t make you a bad person. It doesn’t even mean it’s your fault.
What it does mean is that this cosmic slapstick that we refer to as life has just elected you as the schmuck who has to get the mop. So get the goddam mop already! Don’t just stand there staring down, reliving the lunch-that-could-have-been and trying to figure out how affirmative action did this to you. That’s just the way life is pal. It can be exquisite, cruel, frequently wacky, but above all utterly, utterly random. Those twin imposters in the bell-fringed jester hats, Justice and Fairness – they aren’t constants of the natural order like entropy and the periodic table. They are completely alien notions to the way things happen in the human rain forest. Justice and Fairness are the things we’re supposed to give back to the world for giving us the gift of life! They are not birthrights that we should expect every second of the day. What do you say we drop the intellectual cowardice? There is no fate and there is no safety net.
I’m not saying God doesn’t exist. I believe in God. But he’s not some micromanager, so stop asking him to drop the crisis in Rwanda and help you find your wallet. Life is a long, lonely journey down a day-in-day-out lard trail of dropped tacos. Mop it up, not for yourself, but for the guy behind you who’s too busy trying not to drop his own tacos to make sure he doesn’t slip and fall on your mistakes. So don’t speed and don’t weave in traffic; other people have babies in their cars. Don’t litter. Don’t begrudge the poor because they have a fucking food stamp. Don’t be rude to overwhelmed minimum-wage sales clerks, especially teenagers – they have that job because they don’t have a clue. You didn’t have a clue either at that age. Be understanding with them. Share your clues. Remember that your sense of humor is inversely proportional to your intolerance. Stop and think on Veteran’s Day. And don’t forget to vote. That is, unless you send money to TV preachers, have more than a passing interest in alien abduction or recently purchased a fish on a wall plaque that sings ‘Don’t worry, Be Happy’. In that case, the polls are a scary place! Under every ballot is a trapdoor chute to an extraterrestrial escape pod filled with dental tools and squeaking, masturbating green men from the Devil Star.
In conclusion, Class of ____, keep your chins up, grab your mops and get into the game. You don’t have to make a pile of money or change society. Just clean up after yourselves without complaining. And, above all, please stop and appreciate the days when the tacos don’t fall, and give heartfelt thanks to whomever you pray to…
`”Has anyone heard that Jerry springer now has a place in Sarasota?
I mention this because I’m still waiting for Tonya Harding to move down here and make a clean sweep. I’m going through withdrawal because I haven’t heard anything about her since she beat that guy in a head with a hubcap in a hoedown. And what about that poor guy? I don’t think there is any better time to sit down and have a heart-to-heart with yourself.
‘Good morning. This is your wake-up call. It’s from Darwin’
But that’s just one person’s tiny drama, meaningless except in the bigger picture, which is trying to isolate the exact moment we turned into Trash Nation, and nearest I can tell, it was one second after Nancy Kerrigan took a telescoping blackjack to the knee. Now there was a cute little soap opera. What an absolutely fascinating underwater view into the Kmart inflatable backyard American gene pool. I have a dirty little confession: I loved it! We may have learned everything we needed to know about life after kindergarten. But you know what? We can learn everything we need to know about the incredibly rude, selfish, infantile country we’ve become by observing the human spokes revolving around the Tonya Harding sociocultural axis. The Greeks reveled in Homeric tragicomedies; the English lived out Shakespearian dramas. But we, America, are the cast of the Kerrigan farce. Is it any wonder we’ve thrown manners, compassion, and respect out the window? We’ve become one big, self-absorbed nation holding up an ice skate pointing at a broken lace and blubbering our eyes out. We don’t know our neighbors anymore. We have no shame, no consideration, no sense of duty or sacrifice. Need more metaphors? We don’t go the extra mile, meet anyone halfway, and if somehow, somewhere, anything at all goes wrong in our pathetic daily wanderings, if some random misfortune drops at our feet like a Taco Supreme, we don’t commence to tidying up the floor and getting on with our lives. We start making a litigious radar sweep of the room, seeing if there is anyone in recrimination range, some entitlement cadet to whom we can construct a Bridge-over-the-river-Kwai blame-path of tortured logic and sheer reality-sculpting self-deception. Maybe they handled a taco once, and maybe even made tacos. Maybe they could have warned you – yes. They knew all about that treacherously viscous emulsion of grease and sour cream on wax wrapper. They deliberately chose not to say anything as they saw it slipping out of your hand in Peckinpah slow motion while you were trying to eat, talk on the phone and log on to eBay at the same time. Well, here’s a newsflash for you. Believe it or not, the blacks and the gays and the Jews did not drop your taco. You dropped the fucking taco my friend! It doesn’t make you a bad person. It doesn’t even mean it’s your fault.
What it does mean is that this cosmic slapstick that we refer to as life has just elected you as the schmuck who has to get the mop. So get the goddam mop already! Don’t just stand there staring down, reliving the lunch-that-could-have-been and trying to figure out how affirmative action did this to you. That’s just the way life is pal. It can be exquisite, cruel, frequently wacky, but above all utterly, utterly random. Those twin imposters in the bell-fringed jester hats, Justice and Fairness – they aren’t constants of the natural order like entropy and the periodic table. They are completely alien notions to the way things happen in the human rain forest. Justice and Fairness are the things we’re supposed to give back to the world for giving us the gift of life! They are not birthrights that we should expect every second of the day. What do you say we drop the intellectual cowardice? There is no fate and there is no safety net.
I’m not saying God doesn’t exist. I believe in God. But he’s not some micromanager, so stop asking him to drop the crisis in Rwanda and help you find your wallet. Life is a long, lonely journey down a day-in-day-out lard trail of dropped tacos. Mop it up, not for yourself, but for the guy behind you who’s too busy trying not to drop his own tacos to make sure he doesn’t slip and fall on your mistakes. So don’t speed and don’t weave in traffic; other people have babies in their cars. Don’t litter. Don’t begrudge the poor because they have a fucking food stamp. Don’t be rude to overwhelmed minimum-wage sales clerks, especially teenagers – they have that job because they don’t have a clue. You didn’t have a clue either at that age. Be understanding with them. Share your clues. Remember that your sense of humor is inversely proportional to your intolerance. Stop and think on Veteran’s Day. And don’t forget to vote. That is, unless you send money to TV preachers, have more than a passing interest in alien abduction or recently purchased a fish on a wall plaque that sings ‘Don’t worry, Be Happy’. In that case, the polls are a scary place! Under every ballot is a trapdoor chute to an extraterrestrial escape pod filled with dental tools and squeaking, masturbating green men from the Devil Star.
In conclusion, Class of ____, keep your chins up, grab your mops and get into the game. You don’t have to make a pile of money or change society. Just clean up after yourselves without complaining. And, above all, please stop and appreciate the days when the tacos don’t fall, and give heartfelt thanks to whomever you pray to…
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