Date: November 19, 2003
Subject: My recent letters to the editor

To the editor (Star Tribune):

While we pat ourselves on the back over Minnesota's first-place rank in the National Assessement of Educational Progress (NAEP) math assessment, we should understand that the role of the NAEP is to enforce compliance with the "voluntary" national standards under No Child Left Behind. Since the Profile of Learning was aligned with the national "fuzzy math" standards ("a large percentage of constructed-response questions and questions that require the use of calculators and other materials" according to the NAEP web site), and what gets tested gets taught, it should come as no surprise that we're number one.

To D.J. Tice (Pioneer Press):

Thanks for another cogent analysis of the debate over the draft social studies standards. Detractors of the new standards continually elevate "higher order thinking skills" and disparage "life-draining, robotic rote memorization, regurgitation, and parroting of hundreds of mere trivial factoids." Talk about a false choice.

Minnesota's kids, as you put it, are "better off knowing a few facts, if only so they can understand the opinions they're 'forming.'" In social studies, "higher order thinking" without a foundation of facts is indoctrination. Lenin understood this when he said, "Take away a people's heritage and they are easily persuaded."

Date: November 17, 2003
Subject: The long knives

The debate over the Academic Standards has gotten even more bitter and polarized over the past week.

On Saturday, the U.S. History subcommittee met and restored some of the specifics from the "examples" column into the benchmarks. On Sunday, Norm Draper of the Star Tribune, in his news report (not opinion) "Rewriting history is proving to be tricky," stated in the lead paragraph, "Minnesota teachers won't have a choice about whom and what they can teach now." Talk about a call to arms; I can almost see the letters to the editor this week. Yet later in the article, committee member Todd Flanders was quoted, "This whole thing is a process, and there is a give and take. There is reflection. There is deliberation."

Friday's Twin Cities Public Television show, "Almanac" featured American Indian activist Clyde Bellecourt repeating his comment that Commissioner Cheri Pierson Yecke is "scholastically retarded," and again called for the Senate to deny her confirmation next year.

Former Governor Arne Carlson crowed over Minnesota's outstanding National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores in math, claiming vindication for the Profile of Learning, as everyone including the Department of Education fails to report the details about how the Profile of Learning was aligned with fuzzy national math standards and therefore the NAEP, so of course Minnesota's students score "high" on this test — look at what was measured (for more on the NAEP, see http://www.edwatch.org/ and click on Federal issues).

Liberal/progressive vs. conservative. Rote memorization and parroting of trivial factoids vs. higher order thinking. Slave-owning aristocratic white men who didn't want to pay their taxes vs. the conquered, subjugated, exploited, and enslaved.

I would expect and was prepared for the 2004 legislative hearings to be contentious, partisan, and even bitter. But the citizen standards writing process until then should be lively, interactive, and as Flanders said, characterized by give and take, reflection, and deliberation. Instead of coming to the table with constructive criticism and suggestions, opposition groups have brought out the long knives of identity politics, polarizing rhetoric, broad brush generalizations, and false dichotomies, starting with Rep. Jim Davnie's media appearances in September, when the first drafts were released.

As President John F. Kennedy said, "Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us." I dare say Kennedy would mourn the passing of the days of the "happy warrior" Hubert Humphrey and the nonpartisan Minnesota legislature.

I also wonder whether the Commissioner, a former history teacher who stands by her standards admirably and unequivocally, should be quite so out in front at the public hearings and in the media, when members of her quite capable staff could be deflecting the brickbats and taking a few of the lumps. As Christine Jax said famously, it's not her job to advocate for education, it's her job to implement the governor's education agenda. Yet what if she used her bully pulpit to gather together Education Minnesota, superintendents, principals, and school boards, present a ten-year vision for public education in Minnesota, and enlist their support in making it a reality? And what if in return she offered to go to bat for them at the legislature?

Date: November 7, 2003
Subject: The fog of war

"War is the realm of uncertainty; three quarters of the factors on which action is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty." —On War, Carl von Clausewitz

Now that we are coming down the home stretch to the final draft of the social studies (and science) standards, I sense that the public at large is having trouble cutting through the "fog of war" over the U.S. History standards in particular. They are feeling some of the fear factor when the education establishment uses straw-man terms like "factoids," "drill and kill," "rote memorization," "dead white man history," and say there won't be time for any critical thinking after we fill our wee ones' heads with such trivia. Conservatives fear a return to the Profile of Learning under a new name, if all of the specifics are stripped from the U.S. History standards and overruled by a new history skills standard filled with process and devoid of knowledge.

In his November 5th commentary in the Saint Paul Pioneer Press, "Commissioner Yecke, tear down this wall (of ignorance)!," D.J. Tice cuts past the content vs. process debate by reminding us that we need both. The larger question is, what is the purpose of social studies? Is it, Tice asks, "to teach schoolchildren that American history is just another sorry sequence of 'tragedies and injustices' (like every other nation and culture on earth)" or that it is "a special experiment in human liberty whose ideals and institutions, however imperfect and imperfectly realized, have produced as decent and successful and improvable a society as humankind has known."

We need to know about America's history, warts and all as the Commissioner has said, without forgetting to teach our children what makes America great.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant -- and free -- in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." —Thomas Jefferson

The Albert Shanker Institute sent the Academic Standards Committee a copy of their report published in September 2003, called "Teaching for Democracy." Endorsed by a wide range of prominent citizens, scholars and educators—including former President Bill Clinton, President Reagan's UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, historian David McCullough, essayist Richard Rodriguez, NAACP President Kweisi Mfume, actor Christopher Reeve, and Middle East scholar Fouad Ajami—the document calls for an expanded course of study in history, civics, and the humanities, providing students with a full, warts-and-all understanding of our own and other nations. It is an important document that unfortunately was not made available to the committee until last Saturday's meeting.

In the weeks ahead, the social studies writing committee needs to blow past the fog of war, and carefully consider: what is the purpose of social studies education? Is it enough to teach our children to be "active citizens in a democracy," or must we first pass them the torch of the principles upon which our country was founded, to ensure that freedom is preserved? As Diane Ravitch said, "Our ability to defend -- intelligently and thoughtfully -- what we as a nation hold dear depends on our knowledge and understanding of what we hold dear." Knowledge must proceed "critical thinking;" otherwise we end up with a cohort of ignorant activists, which is already happening.

Date: November 4, 2003
Subject: Guess who's coming to dinner?

A variety of observers were present for Commissioner Yecke's opening remarks on Saturday. Some stayed the entire day, most left throughout the day, which ended around 5:00 p.m. Those who stayed generally sat just beyond the table where each strand subcommittee met. One of the observers stood over my shoulder a few times. Groups represented that I am aware of:

• EdWatch (formerly Maple River Education Coalition)
  
• MAPSSS
  
• Minnesota Historical Society and Minnesota Human Rights Commission, representatives of which were permitted direct participation in the committee's work even though they were not on the committee
  
• Minnesota Center for Community Legal Education (promotes the federal curriculum, We The People, and submitted comments on the first draft standards under the name "MN Civics Group")
  
• Unite 196
  
• Minnesota PTA

The number of citizen observers was greater for this meeting than for each of our previous two meetings.

Nelson Garcia from WCCO-TV, with a videographer, covered the event and interviewed Marc Doepner-Hove and others. Norman Draper from the Star Tribune interviewed Julie Quist from EdWatch, and others, for his story that ran in Sunday's paper. His photog took pictures of the Commissioner and of a minor confrontation that took place at the 8:00 a.m. press conference. There was apparently an Associated Press reporter there, because the AP ran a detailed account of the day. John Welsh from the Pioneer Press also reported on the meeting.

Date: November 3, 2003
Subject: Social studies smackdown!

It's going to take me a few sessions over the next couple of days to debrief you on Saturday's meeting of the Social Studies Academic Standards Committee. I will be giving you the nitty-gritty eyewitness detail from the inside, including some of the esoteric technical minutiae that you have grown to expect (and love) from this blog, including the dish but no dirt (there really wasn't any "dirt" to report, sorry).

The bottom line is that we won't really know who the "winners and losers" will be until the standards are approved by the legislature during the 2004 session. "Winners and losers" may be the wrong way to look at it, since all sides of the debate are ostensibly on the same "side" (public schools and their students), unless you define the "sides" as those who favor keeping the current process versus those who want to dump the standards-in-progress and start over with a new committee and process.

The Academic Standards Committees have finished or are in the process of finishing their second draft standards. The second draft will go to a writing committee, appointed by the Commissioner from among the committee members. The writing committee will polish and integrate the various strands into a complete social studies standards document, which they will submit to the Commissioner on or before December 15. Department of Education staff will then edit the draft at their discretion before the Commissioner presents the final version to the Legislature.

The Legislature will hold hearings on the final version. Sen. Steve Kelley, chairman of the Senate Education Committee, has announced that he will hold public hearings in January, prior to the start of the legislative session in February.

Having said that, since I sit on the Government & Civics subcommittee, I can say that, as of Saturday, the integrity of our strand was maintained and quality increased. We carefully considered a large volume of public comment. Comments from the Hopkins school district and the Minnesota Civics Group were most prominent in our discussion, since they provided well-organized comments in writing that followed the structure of the standards. In the days and weeks before the meeting, I read hundreds of pages of public comment, plus many standalone letters, "expert" reviews, and other documents, and the MAPSSS web site.

Most of the public comment received was directed at the history standards (both U.S. and world). Most of these comments were repetitive and fell into categories: there are too many standards, the standards are politically biased, why did you leave out this person/event, why did you overemphasize this person/event, too much memorization, you overemphasize "trivial factoids" at the expense of higher order thinking skills, where are the research skills, this benchmark is not age-appropriate.

On Saturday, the various strands (U.S. History, World History, Economics, Geography, and Government & Citizenship) chopped standards and benchmarks, moved many of the names and events out of the benchmark statements to a new "examples" category, and formed a new strand committee called Historical Skills to create the skills standards. A new recommendation to the legislature was approved that would give school districts flexibility to group standards by grade "bands" (K-2, 3-5, 6-8) if they wish, rather than grade-by-grade as they appear in the standards document. (The 9-12 standards are already grouped into a band.) The standards framework was also modified based on comments received from school districts.

So the standards were not merely "tweaked" on Saturday. As Marc Doepner-Hove, a vocal critic of the first draft, said in the Star Tribune yesterday, "We are rewriting the document."