Date: March 11, 2004
Subject: Get Yecke

In case you haven't noticed, Cheri Pierson Yecke is in the DFL crosshairs. She has been attacked at every conceivable turn, for her leadership on the new Academic Standards, blamed for the fallout from the new U.S. Mint rules governing the state quarter dollar program, and chastised for a technical error on setting cut scores for the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs). With Education Minnesota's vote of no confidence this week in the MCAs, the stage is being set further for a bitterly partisan flogging of the Commissioner during her confirmation hearings in Sen. Steve Kelley's (DFL-Hopkins) Ed Policy Committee.

Carrie Lucking, a teacher and department chair of the social studies department at Hopkins High School, has circulated an online petition under the flag "Alliance to Block the Confirmation of the Commissioner." The opposition forces have successfully mobilized their base to do what grassroots activists are supposed to do: sign the petition and contact their legislators with a unified message.

In response, I decided to circulate my own online petition to support Yecke's confirmation. (Thanks to King at SCSU Scholars for the promo.) The Taxpayer's League of Minnesota posted a similar petition on their web site, EdWatch issued a press release in support of Yecke's confirmation, and the Republican Party of Minnesota has encouraged their activists to support the Commissioner.

In response to this response, Lucking recently told her network in an e-mail:

It’s time for a second round of calls and letters! Although we have over 2600 signatures on our petition, groups are beginning to mobilize in favor of the confirmation of Cheri Pierson Yecke. They have created a counter-petition. This week, EdAction and EdWatch have asked their members to call or write their State Senator in favor of confirmation. We MUST counteract these contacts.

The disconnect or irony here is that commissioner confirmations are customarily fairly nonpartisan. The recent and future DFL attacks on Yecke amount to meddling in a popular governor's ability to govern as mandated by the voters who elected him. On a recent installment of "At Issue," the Sunday public affairs show with Tom Hauser on KSTP Channel 5, former DFL Governor Wendell Anderson commented that the Senate should confirm a governor's well-qualified appointments, and that the governor should be held accountable for his policies by the voters. The problem for the DFL is, right now Governor Pawlenty is very popular. So one way for the party out of power (in the House and governor's mansion) to stick it to the party in power is to block some appointments, especially a certain high-profile appointment.

The Governor and the Republicans in the Senate are solidly behind Commissioner Yecke. Her resume and list of achievements in 2003 show that she is an obviously well-qualified and engaged commissioner — whether you agree with her (i.e. Gov. Pawlenty's) policies or not. When the DFL began attacking the Commissioner, Gov. Pawlenty suggested that as an alternative they should "try winning an election." Knowing that Gov. Pawlenty was personally responsible for Yecke's accepting his appointment over a similar offer from Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, the stakes will be high over this confirmation. Sen. Kelley's committee may recommend to not confirm, but the final decision will hinge on a dramatic vote on the floor of the DFL-controlled Senate. If the Senate votes to deny the confirmation, two things will be immediate: the end of Yecke's term as commissioner, and a careful examination of the roll call vote by the governor.

Most of the teachers I talk to are not into politics. They just want to teach. They are fed up with the partisan back-and-forth over the standards and education in general. They wonder whether Minnesota should go back to a state board of education to "depoliticize" the appointment of the education commissioner. Sounds tempting, but recall that the state board of education was disbanded in 1999 because it was "too apolitical," in other words, out of touch with the public. That was before the increasing influence of the federal government in education very much changed the role of the Commissioner of Education into what it is today.

Date: March 5, 2004
Subject: Memo to Homeland Security

In his article for the Strib, Norm Draper quoted Rep. Gene Pelowski (DFL-Winona) at yesterday's House Ed Policy Committee meeting, during which the social studies and science standards were passed out of the committee:

"Pelowski drew a comparison to Robespierre and his fondness for putting his opponents on the guillotine during the French Revolution in the 1790s.

"'Are we going to be cutting off students through testing?' Pelowski said. He likened testing, which has increased dramatically in recent years, to 'a new tool of terror.'"

Someone put Tom Ridge on alert. Forget unleashing chemical weapons on the Kurds, Cheri Yecke may want to unleash social studies tests on our own children!

Date: March 1, 2004
Subject: Strange bedfellows

History was made yesterday on KSTP-TV Channel 5's "At Issue" public affairs program with Tom Hauser. Dave Thompson, KSTP AM 1500 talk show host, wowed Hauser and across-the-ideological-table mate Ember Reichgott Junge with his natty bow tie. But more than that, Thompson stayed intellectually and ideologically honest by agreeing with Junge — and disagreeing with President Bush, Governor Pawlenty, and Commissioner Yecke — about how "broken" the No Child Left Behind Act is. Hauser remarked that he never wants to see Thompson and Junge agree like that again!

Thompson was unapologetic. He took Junge's objections further, saying that while Junge thinks the federal role can be fixed, he believes that the federal government has no place in education at all, that it's a state responsibility. A self-styled "recovering attorney," Thompson knows his constitutions, U.S. and state. His conservative "bona fides" are bona fide.

Date: February 27, 2004
Subject: Where have all the conservatives gone (in the Republican party)?

At yesterday morning's House Ed Policy Committee, where they discussed the legislative auditor's report on the costs of complying with the intrusive, underfunded mandates of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, Majority Whip Rep. Marty Siefert (R-Marshall) was feeling like a voice in the wilderness—in a majority caucus under a Republican administration.

Commissioner Yecke, who for years has walked a tightrope of advocating for federal education programs while working, often successfully, for increased flexibility for the states ("local control"), at one point made the most un-conservative comment of the day: "trust the federal government." This was remarkable for someone who, in preparation for her confirmation hearings in the DFL-controlled Senate, has been on the receiving end of every synonym of "right-wing" in the thesarus. She equates the importance to civil rights of NCLB with Brown v. Board of Education and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA or "special ed").

Rep. Seifert said that he's an "old time Republican," who believes that the Constitution prohibits the federal government from being involved in education ("Amendment X: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."). Why, he asked, are we begging the federal government for waivers at all? Have we thrown in the towel? He said that this is "not the kind of Republican I was elected to be."

Caught between the federal government and the courts, with their mandates and invalidation of state laws, who can blame state legislators if they are feeling, like the Constitution itself, a little obsolete lately?

Date: February 23, 2004
Subject: A quarter for your thoughts

Strib columnist Nick Coleman's cheap shots yesterday at Commissioner Yecke ("State's quarter ideas are bad, even deadly," February 22) were ironically exposed by the layout artist who located a related Associated Press story ("Quarter designs aren't always on the money") directly below the Coleman column.

After reading both articles, Coleman's attempts to stick it to the Commissioner ("Maybe she hasn't had time to worry about the quarter, but these designs make us look like hicks from the sticks") made him look either ignorant or like a liberal partisan hack. The truth is, starting with Minnesota, the U.S. Mint changed its design submission procedure. In typical bureaucratic fashion, the Mint required that Minnesota's design proposals be submitted in writing, ostensibly to avoid the complaints that resulted when state-submitted artwork for previous quarters was altered by Mint artists. The result was even worse than under the previous procedure.

"Education Commissioner Cheri Pierson Yecke," continued the AP article, "who leads the quarter commission, said that describing scenes with words rather than pictures was challenging."

Although the artwork that Coleman nitpicks did not come from Yecke's artists, the Coleman piece ends, "The governor should just say no. And order Yecke back to the drawing board (she's used to it). There's only one thing to do...Start over." What a nice allusion to the social studies standards, which is, besides Yecke, what Coleman is really attacking, right?

If someone asked me whether I would prefer being "shut out" of the standards committees or "shut out" of the media, I would answer by flipping through my paperback copy of 1984 to this passage:

"And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'"

Date: February 19, 2004
Subject: As Seen on TV

Thanks to my role models at the Northern Alliance blogs SCSU Scholars and Fraters Libertas, this newbie to the blogosphere has finally added "permalinks" to these pages (after I finally figured out what they are). These links allow others to link directly to individual blog entries, the better to cross-reference the entire blogosphere to itself. Fascinating, Captain. We now return you to our regularly scheduled coverage of Minnesota education reform news.

Date: February 19, 2004
Subject: R-E-S-P-E-C-T

In this morning's "House DFLers take off gloves in battle over Yecke," the Strib's Conrad deFiebre reported that House minority leader Rep. Matt Entenza (DFL-St. Paul) finds calling someone's agenda "socialist-leaning" is "disrespectful." In the same article, Entenza is quoted saying that Commissioner Yecke "is on the fringes rather than in the mainstream...It's time for her to pack her bags and go back to Washington, D.C., where she belongs." I guess that "respect" is in the eyes of the beholder.

Date: February 18, 2004
Subject: One Sided Reporting?

In an unexpected twist, Norman Draper's article in today's Strib, "History guidelines take another punch," only included quotes by Julie Quist from the (WARNING!) "conservative education group" EdWatch and Commissioner Yecke. He did not identify by name the DFL members of the Ed Policy Committee who "suggested that a gender-neutral word be substituted for 'statesmen,' and wondered why Marcus Garvey wasn't included in a list of black civil rights leaders." In the interest of fairness, couldn't Draper report on something more objectionable in the third draft than the "statespersons" debate or the absence of an obscure, if important, historical figure from the Examples column?

Meanwhile, John Welsh at the PiPress, who also quoted Quist from the "conservative" EdWatch, gave a little more coverage to the critics. He actually identified Parents United as a "more liberal" group in his article today, "New standards keep critics abuzz." I thought there was something in the AP Stylebook that prohibits identifying liberal groups or persons as "liberal," but requires them to identify conservatives as "conservative." Or so it would seem.

Date: February 17, 2004
Subject: Third draft

Now that the social studies standards hot potato has landed in the lap of the House Ed Policy Committee, Republican legislators and Commissioner Yecke are struggling to craft a third draft that will pass out of committee (which includes MAPSSS friend Rep. Jim Davnie (DFL-Minneapolis)) and onto the floor of the House, where it is expected to pass. At today's House Ed Policy Committee hearing, the third draft caught heat from EdWatch for being crafted behind closed doors by Yecke and legislative leaders Rep. Barb Sykora (R-Excelsior), chair of the House Ed Policy Committee; and Rep. Alice Seagren (R-Bloomington), member of the same committee and chair of the House Ed Finance Committee. Julie Quist of EdWatch called for a return to the second draft, which was created by the citizen committee, of which yours truly is a member.

One of the more interesting revisions to me was the deletion of this benchmark:

Students will explain that Lincoln’s understanding of the founders’ principles includes that the principles of the Declaration of Independence are universal and applicable to all people at all times. (Emphasis added)

This is a big deal because the Declaration of Independence says that certain rights are inalienable, meaning that the government can't ever take them away. Why would anyone object to this benchmark, unless perhaps they believe that the rights to life, national sovereignty, and property rights are not so inalienable after all?

DFLers are fuming over the standards and education funding, and they will have a field day in the Senate, where they hold a slim majority. Forget tweaking content in the Senate, look for Sen. Steve Kelley (DFL-Hopkins) to scrap the social studies standards and start over with a new committee composed of liberal interest groups and education establishment types. The confirmation of Commissioner Yecke also hangs in the political balance. How will the new Senate majority leader Dean Johnson (DFL-Willmar) play these issues? The bigger question is how far will our popular deficit busting, hockey-playing governor go during eleventh-hour negotiations to save the social studies standards and his education commissioner. Do you believe in miracles?

Date: February 9, 2004
Subject: Standards sophistry

The PiPress ran the following letter from Paul Seeba today. It's a clear example of the standards opponents' embrace of identity politics, and ironically, elitism:

The composition of Education Commissioner Yecke's social studies writing committee needs to be questioned by the people who currently use the public schools in Minnesota. As a member of this committee, I found it strange that the users of the public system (i.e. public school parents, teachers and administrators) were grossly underrepresented, while the non-users of traditional public schools (i.e. private and charter personnel, home-schoolers and ideologues who have little contact with public school children) were grossly overrepresented, given the tiny percent of the population they represent.

Minnesotans ought to know that not one public school administrator served on the final committee, yet a private school headmaster was given a starring role. This is especially strange as private schools are not held to these standards.

Gov. Pawlenty has stated publicly that we need "standards that stand the test of time." How can this happen when the actual users of the public schools find out the standards were largely written by a coalition of people who do not use the traditional public schools?

Personally, I find it strange that the non-users of traditional public schools (i.e. private and charter personnel, home-schoolers and ideologues who have little contact with public school children) are nevertheless compelled by law to surrender tax dollars to support the public schools. Oh, I know that public school districts are compelled by law to provide them with access to services such as transportation and extra curricular activities, but I'd wager that most would gladly pay fees for such access if tuition tax credits were also part of the bargain.

The truth is, most private school parents I talk to are willing to pay taxes to support the public schools, even though they are "non-users" who have "little contact with public school children." They understand that all Minnesota citizens — even the headmasters of private schools — have a big stake in a high-quality public education system. Conversely, don't Minnesota's children deserve the academic standards that draw from the best that education has to offer, regardless of where those ideas originate?

It's true: the personal backgrounds and ideologies of the Academic Standards committee members would not have reflected those found at an Education Minnesota convention. The committee was much more diverse than that. The "public" is back in "public education" like never before.