A few ideas that I've had pop into my head while watching the Meet the Press roundtable on Iraq and other issues.
I am a public school teacher who tries to inspire his students in a system ravaged by NCLB (No Child Left Behind). For those of you out there who aren't in the public education sphere, let me just tell you that NCLB causes more fear and dread than any other thing in the mind of the public school teacher. My students are fantastic students: all of them are bright, eager to learn and really want to do well in my class. Now, NCLB and the District require that they show intelligence and progress by performing on a state standard. I'm fine with students performing on a state standard as long as the standard matches the student. For example, I have one student who has a hard time speaking English. He's an English Language Learner (ELL) and just recently exited his status as a Limited English Proficient (LEP) student. According to NCLB he must perform on the same test as my students who are in Honors English I and meet the same standard to show that he actually has learned something and that I have actually taught him something. The benchmarks and standards are cut and dry when it comes to NCLB. It's a game of all or nothing - we meet all the standards or we are labeled as a failure school. Last year, my school met 87% of its benchmarks for AYP; however, 87 is not the same as 100 and thus we are marked with a label as a failure school.
Now on to Mary Matalin on Meet the Press.
Mary and James are in the middle of an argument about the GAO/Congressional Benchmarks on Iraq versus the White House benchmarks on Iraq and she says:
These [Congressional/GAO] benchmarks were designed to produce a negative report. They do not measure progress and they measure apples and oranges. The congressionally mandated progress report for the president is to show progress and the GAO is to show completion. So, if an element of the benchmark has three parts to it and they've completed two; the President says they've made progress, and the GAO says no they've not. Despite the fact that they've completed two-thirds of what it requires to do that benchmark.
So, apparently we're not going to hold Iraq to the same standard that we're going to hold our public schools in this country because a failure in Iraq would look bad for the administration; a failure in the public schools, however, would mean that the right wing could begin to dismantle the public education system in this country.
Does anyone else wonder if the Republicans actually listen to themselves? I'm sure that if they did their heads would explode from all of the double-speak and nebulous defining of progress in the world around us.