Washblog

Leaving aside the question of whether the state Party Chair ought to be equating the American army with the Wehrmacht, I note that we lost the war a long time ago and I don't see a shred of evidence that Bush has noticed it or will ever notice it. And even if American forces begin withdrawing in earnest in 2009 that doesn't mean our war in that region of the world is over. What magic thing will have happened in 2009 to diffuse the anger of the millions we have humiliated with wanton destruction and disregard? What wall can we build to keep the consequences of that cruelty out?

And what magic thing will have happened in 2009 to calm the bizarre paranoia of that portion of the American middle class that was so jubilantly ignorant as to cheer on revenge of Saddam for his role in 911? Dwight may see the end of the Iraq war, but I don't see the end of what caused it in the first place: human greed and stupidity. Wake me up in forty years, and I won't be surprised to find American forces fighting somebody in that part of the world. No doubt the Democratic or Republican Commander-in-Chief will have the best of reasons for persisting in war, as Commander-in-Chiefs always do.

But because we lefties understand that the underlying causes of war--whatever those might be--don't go away easily, we've been quite busy all these years worrying about things like energy policy, sustainable economics and agriculture, civic engagement, international humanitarian law, the foundation of our democratic political culture, civil liberties, corporatism, and so on. If Dwight has failed to notice that the left is eager to talk about so much other than the war, it's because he's chosen not to notice. He's been recently heard to say that our problem is that we don't realize when we've won. On the contrary, we are wise enough to celebrate our recent electoral gains without mistaking them for some kind of total victory. We thankfully are not so filled with hubris as to declare the dawn of a new age. We, perhaps more than anyone else, know the work to be done.

Among our concerns in Washington State--and I'll wager among the concerns of the state's middle class--is the worrisome condition of our public education system. Dwight, as leader of the state Democratic Party, should have something cogent to say about public education. I'm waiting. I'm not waiting hopefully, because it's difficult for me to believe that someone who writes at an eighth-grade level could have anything to say about something he so obviously lacks. However, that may be the English teacher in me, and I've been wrong before. In this case, I would dearly love to be proven wrong. If Dwight is the visionary he seems to believe himself to be, then let him say something visionary about public education--something that goes beyond the short-term necessities of increasing taxes to save the system from ruin.

And that, I'm afraid, is really the subtext of the Washington Learns report. I've talked to a member of a Washington Learns committee, a former Seattle School Board member, advocates for children's issues, a city councilman, teachers, education academics, and just about anyone who has anything to say about the report. I haven't come to any definite conclusions yet, but I'm beginning to suspect that the report is less education policy than cover for the governor, whose steering committee will propose tax increases in 2008 to rescue our public education system.

A legislator directly involved with the project has told me that the enabling legislation for Washington Learns originally called for funding proposals to be set forth last month. I'm told that the governor and steering committee she chairs discovered that constructing the policies that would accompany the funding proposals was harder than expected. This accords with what Governor Gregoire said in the Seattle Times:

I admit to you I didn't appreciate the enormity and challenge of the task," Gregoire said. "I thought we'd start with how much money would it take and where do we want to spend the money.

It may well be that the steering committee became, in the process of working on the report, more ambitious about policy than originally anticipated. However, I must note that the governor has recommended that the final report for funding proposals be submitted in December 2008--conveniently one month after her presumed reelection. In other words, if the governor and her steering committee had done the job that the legislation had expected of them, the governor would be facing a reelection campaign having to justify a tax increase. While Bill Gates, the editorial boards of the Seattle Times and P-I, and a few insiders I've talked to seem favorably disposed toward the report, I'm less than satisfied with it as policy.

In her cover letter, the governor writes, "We reviewed our entire education system--early learning, K-12, post-secondary education and workforce training--to figure out how to provide high-quality lifelong learning for all our citizens in the 21st Century." I think that "high-quality lifelong learning" is as good a place to begin education policy as any, but I find it undermined by the overarching theme of the report, stated in its first two sentences: "Our current education system was designed for the previous economy, and our students are falling behind international standards. As our economy and the world around us changes ever more dramatically, we must transform our education system to better prepare our children."

As policy, I don't disagree with these two sentences. They are merely restating what Tony Wagner has argued more eloquently and substantially in Making the Grade: Reinventing America's Schools. However, Tony Wagner would have never privileged the economic goal above all others and would never have limited the goal to one sector of the economy. In section 3 of the report, "The Global Challenge States," we read:

In his widely acclaimed book "The World is Flat," New York Times editorial writer Thomas Friedman described how technology, education and economic interconnections have come together to allow India, China, and many other nations to join the global supply chain for services and manufacturing. In just a few short years we've seen a dramatic improvement in the ability of individuals as well as companies and institutions to collaborate and compete globally. Friedman offers convincing evidence that we must focus on education training if we are to succeed. . . .

As we improve our education system to fit the new global economy, we cannot compare ourselves to mediocrity or settle for average. We propose a new benchmark to make sure that we remain competitive: the Global Challenge States. These states are the top eight performers on the New Economy Index. . . .

What's important here is not that the report turns to the jejune Thomas Friedman for expertise on education, nor that it proposes we measure Washington against the Global Challenge States of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Virginia. Rather, what's important is that features of the New Economy Index form an unstated overriding criteria for how we should redesign public education. While privileging such criteria might be an effective way to sell a tax increase as an "investment in our future," it makes lousy policy to subordinate all other considerations to those criteria.

The reports cites the Progressive Policy Institute as having developed in the mid-1990s the indicators for the New Economy Index, which may be categorized as (1) knowledge jobs, (2) globalization, (3) economic dynamism and competition, (4) transformations to a digital economy, and (5) technological innovation capacity. The report generally assumes that we should be training our students for the high-tech, globalized, information-based New Economy by improving math, science and technology skills. I don't doubt that those skills need to be improved, but I do doubt that those are the only skills that need to be improved. Moreover, I question the wisdom of restructuring an entire education system to train a limited number of students for a limited sector of the economy, which, if we accept the assumptions of the report, is rapidly changing beyond what we can predict anyway.

I want not only our future high-tech workers to have an education worthy of their ambitions and ours, but also our future home healthcare providers, small business owners, construction workers, homemakers, cab drivers, medical technicians, zoo keepers--in short, I want all students to receive an education that enables them to engage in "lifelong learning." I would like all of them to understand the scientific process, do practical math, practice an art form, read and think carefully, speak and write articulately, and engage in civic activities and discourse.

In other words, I don't understand how restructuring our education for the 21st century means restructuring it for one sector of the economy, even if that sector enjoys the most growth and offers the best jobs. The idea of public education is that it's for everyone, and everyone will not, thank heavens, end up working for high-tech firms. But even if this most antidemocratic of visions for public education policy were realized, I don't see how the policy will even meet the future needs of our elite corps of biotech workers and code slingers. Any education policymaker who underemphasizes reading and writing doesn't really understand what high-tech workers do out in the real world. And what are we to make of a report that purports to train workers for a global economy and has nothing to say about teaching students to speak foreign languages?

I understand the governor's political pragmatism, and I might be willing to support her efforts and the Washington Learns report as the best we're going to get. However, I won't accept that our long-term vision for public education must be circumscribed by short-term political objectives. I would appreciate it if our Party's Visionary-in-Chief had something visionary to say about education, but I don't think we progressives can afford to wait for a miracle. Neither, in fact, can the young people of this state.

While the war ravages on and the national debt piles up, we progressives, by necessity, will continue our traditional work of figuring out what we want the next generation to learn and how we want them to learn it. The public in public education suggests that it's a complex task that concerns us all, one that we engage in the context of other complex tasks. But we should know by now that political leaders, policymakers and elected officials won't find the will to undertake ambitious changes to our education system unless we focus their energies with sustained public pressure. If there is one thing we've learned from our education as progressives, it's that we can't wait for someone else to do the important, necessary work.