Grading O's First 100 Days

The grading period ended last Wednesday. Grades are due. Another crunch time for teachers. After 100 days, somewhere between a quarter and semester in school time, and admittedly not very much time at all in the grindingly slow speed of democracy in our nation’s capitol, Obama is like the student who you think is doing fantastic. A standout member of daily class. Regularly engaged in group discussions, he always has clever, thoughtful things to say. In collaborative activities he assumes leadership responsibilities, suggesting creative solutions to problems and pushing the group work forward. But then when grading, looking back over records of assigned work (fulfilled campaign promises?), you note they have not turned in much and what they have turned in were the simplest tasks requiring the least effort.

Establishing conservative plans to close Guantanomo and exit Iraq, getting a stimulus bill passed (that is too small), opening relations with Cuba, and releasing some memos that authorized torture during the Bush years. Welcome deeds but nothing very substantial.

Worse yet is when you pause to consider more closely the new Pres’s comments on, say, education, a subject close to my home. O’s stimulus bill includes, reportedly, the most money for education ever in an annual federal budget. One of its stated goals is to reduce job losses in education from the economic crisis. But the losses have already started. Cuts locally are being announced weekly without any word from the feds. Another round of cuts in the school district where I work is scheduled for May 15th.

O has repeated an intention that the stimulus money contribute to reforming our troubled public school system. How? Charter schools and merit-pay pop up in his spare remarks like talismans. Without clarifying details these aren’t just bad ideas but, frankly, old hat and dangerously stupid. Charter schools within the public school system, as alternatives programs (e.g., smaller schools, lower teacher-student ratios, more flexible schedules, etc) to the comprehensive high school, are a fine idea. Both comprehensive high schools and alternative programs have their place and should compliment each other in meeting the varied needs of students passing through the ruthless popularity contest and emotional minefield that is teendom. Charter schools as an end-run around teacher unions, however, by profiteering corporations seeking access to public education funding only undermines public education. (O, BTW, sends his own kids to private schools.) Early reports suggest O’s Education Secretary Arne Duncan might be no better than Bush’s Rod Paige. It’s no small irony that in these times of economic crisis public education is going to be saved, again, by corporate conceits.

Merit pay is an even bigger can of worms. Linking teaching pay to student economics—the lower the student economic demographic the higher the pay— makes some sense: certainly, in my experience, the lower the economic demographic, for a host of reasons, the greater the learning challenges and so the more difficult the teaching work. But so far O’s allusions link teacher merit-pay to standardized test scores. This would be idiotic on multiple fronts: 1) Foremost, the pressure to game the system (don’t forget Paige’s so-called “Texas Miracle”); 2) The contested reliability of standardized testing, in general; 3) The impracticality of linking annual test scores from year-to-year to a teacher without looping teacher schedules (which in the short run will weaken instruction); and 4) The tendency to reinforce the already existing tracking system in most schools that matches the more experienced teachers with the easiest to serve students and young inexperienced teachers with the hardest to serve students. I am really not a standardized test basher; such tests have their place. But at my high school the WASL takes up too much time and over time marginalizes subjects not on the test. Moreover, I’ve been to enough meetings on the subject to know the WASL has wrecked even more havoc at the elementary level. I think standardized tests should be part of a graduation portfolio (with course requirements, GPA, community service, etc), not the high stakes be-all-end-all of graduation. At any rate, tying “merit” pay to test scores, really, just continues No Child Left Behind’s punitive model of school reform and accountability. Neither of these— charter schools or merit pay— are new ideas at all. They are parcel to the privatizing, free market stratagem that is crashing down around us as I write.

At this point, perhaps inaction is the best that can be said of Obama’s education policies. His banking plan, by contrast (and still subject to change we can only hope), is already out there. It would be hard to imagine (although we might see even more over the next few years!) more concrete refuting evidence of the Reagan Revolution’s supply side, deregulatory, privatizing, free market bullshit than the current debacle on Wall Street. But rather than exposing the-- literal-- bankruptcy of this economic model, O seems bent on rallying support for necessary reforms talking the talk while at the same time spending trillions of taxpayer dollars on helping giant banks and corporations continue to cover up their gargantuan boondoggle. Bailing out the banks is crony capitalism; bailing out the auto industry, after its conduct the last 30 years, without the most heavy-handed mandates requiring a green restructuring is just plain embarrassing.

Worst, this government coddling has the bizarre effect of keeping alive right wing boilerplate about the perils of big government and socialism and entitlements when in the current context these canards should appear as merely absurd. Government should be big enough to enforce the rules, takeover, and break-up, if necessary, businesses that have become too big to fail (what could be more anti-free market than this notion of businesses too big to fail?). It should be socialist enough to ensure all citizens have the opportunity to share in our national prosperity and are protected from predatory business practices. And, yes, the citizens of this government are entitled to job opportunities, safe food and water, good health care and education, and a fair legal system. These entitlements are the very reason for the government’s existence. Entitlements of the sort (capital gains tax rates on hedge fund managers, for instance) that have generated the widest wealth inequality gap since the 1920s, and the right fiercely defends, are the ones that gotta go.

The risk here, for Obama, trying to maintain popular support while slathering more butter on corporate bread, is NOT small. Bailing out the banks to the tune of hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars risks running the congressional and public wells dry before it’s time to draw support for the reforms necessary to reestablish a regulatory structure that rewards hard work and honesty and rebuilds a green based manufacturing economy that can support a living-wage working class. It’s a risk that is wrongheaded at best. Some, I know, say taking on Wall Street would be political suicide. I don’t believe this and, if not now, then when? And if not ever than things are as bad as some say.

Oh yes, this is what any leftie worth their salt would have said was inevitable given the Clinton team (including Wall Street insiders) O has teamed with in the White House. But I’m not ready to give up on Obama. If we get out of this presidency with a reasonable semblance of affordable universal health care and carbon limits factored into the economy he would be the best president since before my time. And, perhaps I’m grasping at straws, but I see something significant in the video above when Summers gives Geithner a look in the background just as Obama says that when banks play chicken with the government on bailouts he sides with workers and consumers. I still think that with the right leverage O might take a stand and provide the leadership necessary to turn his words on the economy into deeds. Not just because I think O has more to offer in terms of leadership than Clinton did but because in the world today, the pieces are there, financial collapse, threadbare infrastructure and safety net, looming environmental crisis, worldwide pressures from the have-nots, and the time is right for a paradigm shift. Messy, lurching, full of denials, it feels like we’re already in one now.

Like much of America, I’m still charmed by Obama like no President before. I’m still holding out hope that O is the man to lead us out of this wilderness. (And if I’m wrong I had hope for awhile and let it animate my actions.) For now, I recommend President Obama come in after school to catch up on his homework and get some extra tutoring support. Good luck.

Grade: C-

Currently playing: Robyn "Don't Stop The Music"