I miss Howard Troxler, former columnist of the St. Pete Times who retired in June and moved out of the state. Troxler had a wonderful way of ending the year of always-biting columns, sometimes with fake carols and always with a fake year-in-review (see 2010 Part I and Part II). Taking Troxler's idea in a different direction, here is my tongue-in-cheek prediction of 2012's education news, week-by-week:
- January 3: The Republican Iowa caucuses. Newt Gingrich finishes third and (after screaming Dean-style) announces his bold plan to hire poor nine-year-old children to replace teachers as well as janitors in the nation's schools.
- January 10: New Hampshire primary. Mitt Romney trounces all other candidates on the GOP side. Newt Gingrich announces his bold plan to hire poor nine-year-old children to replace principals as well as teachers and janitors in the nation's schools.
- January 11: Republican activists wake up to realize (1) Mitt Romney is going to be their presidential nominee and (2) Newt Gingrich still isn't going to stop talking in public.
- January 15: U.S. DOE officials get on a plane to visit Hawaii to check on Race to the Top progress. A complete coincidence: meteorologists forecast that a snowstorm will hit the mid-Atlantic region by the end of the week.
- January 16: Martin Luther King, Jr., federal holiday. At none of the official commemorations is there a mention of the extent of racial segregation in the country's cities and schools.
- January 17: Wisconsin activists file more than 700,000 signatures on the petition forcing Governor Scott Walker to face a recall election later in 2012, partly motivated by his attacks on public-employee collective bargaining in 2011. A Wisconsin GOP press representative immediately asserts that most of the signatures are fake and blames UW-Madison historian Bill Cronon.
- January 18: Mayor Rahm Emmanuel swears at a teacher while on walkabout in Chicago. Chicago's schoolchildren immediately start using "the Rahm standard" in arguing against discipline for cursing.
- January 20: Two inches of snow fall in the District of Columbia, and area schools close for the day.
- January 26: At a GOP presidential debate, Newt Gingrich announces his bold plan to hire poor nine-year-old children to replace superintendents, principals, teachers, and janitors in eleven states.
- January 31: Mitt Romney wins the Florida GOP presidential primary. Newt Gingrich announces his bold plan to hire poor nine-year-old children to replace all public-school employees and fifteen-year-old children to teach college history classes.
- February 1: The Eurozone collapses in a puddle of warm spit. Mike Petrilli says, "Well, I told you school districts have to get used to the new normal" and is immediately zapped by a bolt of lightning from Lake Superior State University.
- February 2: Groundhogs read the morning news and decide winter will last all of 2012.
- February 3: A quarter-inch of snow falls in the District of Columbia, and area schools close for the day.
- February 9: Retiring Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman announces he will run for president in the Democratic Party asserting the need to reform schools to continue a whining tradition in American politics. All seven reporters at his press conference fall asleep before he finishes talking.
- February 13: Twenty-nine states apply for NCLB waivers in the second round.
- February 16: In a major speech in the morning, Education Secretary Arne Duncan emphasizes the importance of the arts in education and how critical it is to prevent narrowing of the curriculum. In a major announcement in the afternoon, Education Secretary Arne Duncan congratulates all the February state applicants for NCLB waivers for making teacher raises essentially depend on student test scores in reading and math.
- February 17: A light dusting of snow falls in the District of Columbia, and area schools close for the day.
- February 22: In response to pleas by Palm Beach County, the Florida legislature repeals the requirement that school districts start the school year no later than two weeks before Labor Day, or three weeks for "high-performing districts."
- February 29: The Eurozone is resuscitated after Mario Draghi recovers his wand made of holly with a phoenix feather at its core. At the recording of the Fordham Gadfly podcast, Mike Petrilli announces the importance of maintaining fiscal discipline "with the new normal, which is not going away!" Another lightning strike comes from Lake Superior State University.
- March 1: The American Association of Groundhogs issues a statement: "Oh, hell, we can't fight global warming. Winter's over."
- March 2: Three snowflakes fall in the District of Columbia, and area schools close for the day.
- March 5: U.S. DOE announces that after an on-site review and promises made by the state of Hawaii, the federal government is not yanking Race to the Top funding, but off the record key department officials warn of the need for vigilance, probably with an on-site visit some months later -- say, somewhere between mid-December 2012 and mid-February 2013.
- March 6: Romney mostly sweeps through Super Tuesday. Newt Gingrich announces his bold plan to hire poor nine-year-old children to replace all public-school employees, fifteen-year-old children to teach college history classes, and seventeen-year-olds to replace all employees in the U.S. Department of Education.
- March 12: A well-designed study is published concluding that the competition effects of vouchers make no significant difference in the test scores of elementary students in reading and a significant difference in math scores with an effect size between 0.01 and 0.05 standard deviations. On his blog, Jay Greene trumpets the study as proof that vouchers work and should be expanded to the whole country.
- March 29: Florida Governor Rick Scott signs a budget that keeps total state/local funding for K-12 steady for 2012-13, does not replace lost federal stimulus dollars, and makes up for declining state contributions by doubling the required local effort in county taxes. "No, I'm not worried about the constitutionality of this," he tells dubious reporters.
- April 1: Rick Scott, Scott Walker, John Kasich, and Chris Christie hold a joint press conference apologizing for their previous arrogant attitudes towards teachers and collective bargaining and promising to reform their ways.
- April 3: Mitt Romney sweeps all four GOP primaries. The last of the non-Gingrich challengers, Rick Perry, suspends his campaign after a humiliating defeat in his own state. Newt Gingrich announces his bold plan to send five-year-olds into West Virginia coal mines: "These kids need a taste of work, and the country needs cheap energy!"
- April 11: The Springfield Board of Education approves a mandatory uniform policy, which the superintendent promises will decrease teacher turnover, increase student attendance, improve test scores and grades, reduce adolescent angst over clothing, and clear up acne.
- April 27: At the end of all the annual testing mandated by NCLB, a school official seals up the last of the nation's 1,149 scannable test sheets put in a bag that year made specifically for cases where elementary school students vomit on the test sheet, right after the official erases two wrong answers and corrects them.
- April 30: Gary Orfield makes his lonely, annual pilgrimage to the middle of the woods in Michigan where he cries out at the fact that very few people in the country say or write anything about racial desegregation any more. In his D.C. office, Richard Kahlenberg hears Orfield's cry and writes another op-ed about the benefits of socioeconomic integration.
- May 1: Newt Gingrich finally suspends his presidential campaign after Tiffany & Co. hires him as a spokesperson for their new "loud and proud" advertising campaign. The advertising firm managing the campaign denies Newt's attempt to hire four-year-olds to run the cameras for the commercials.
- May 16: Arne Duncan predicts that by fall, 87% of all of the country's schools would be declared to have failed to meet AYP standards under NCLB as written. "Aren't you so glad we had the waiver program now?" he tells reporters.
- May 21: Pundits write a number of blogs pointing out that Duncan is wildly overestimating the number of schools dinged by the NCLB standards. "It's only 55% of schools, which shows how reasonable NCLB was," grumbles one defender of the 2002 law.
- May 25: Jerry Brown announces his 539th plan to save the state of California from immediate doom, or the state's college students will begin to promise their first-born children as part of the state's higher-ed fee structure.
- June 14: President Obama speaks at a high school in a state with electoral votes, urging students to __ (c'mon, you can fill in the rest of the sentence!). He is immediately criticized for politicizing education and indoctrinating the graduating seniors in his weak, apologetic, Kenyan socialist dictatorial ideology.
- June 30: The 2011-12 fiscal year ends for the nation's school districts, and the total carry-forward amount put into reserves nationwide is $3.14.
- July 2: An alternative weekly newspaper uncovers a scandal at a charter-school educational management organization (EMO), documenting fraud that cost that state more than $10 million in 2011-12.
- July 3: Friends of an executive of the accused EMO in turn accuse the Obama administration of planning a series of fake exposes by alternative weekly newspapers of for-profit education firms.
- July 5: With nothing else to do, 70% of the education bloggers in the U.S. cover the back-and-forth accusations over an alternative-weekly newspaper's column. The other 30% comment about the NEA Representative Assembly that just ended.
- July 6: The alternative weekly's publisher sells the outfit to News Corp. for an undisclosed figure.
- July 9: A blogger writes that Rupert Murdoch and Eli Broad are never seen in the same room and wonders publicly...
- July 10: The nation's bloggers explode again with allegations that fly back and forth. A few bloggers point out that Dennis Van Roekel bears a stronger resemblance to Broad than Murdoch does.
- July 13: Blogs settle down with a clear consensus: Murdoch and Broad do not look much alike, and they are not the same person, but there's a strong likelihood they are from the same alien species.
- July 16: The News Corp. publishes a firm public denial that Murdoch is an alien or that he had anything to do with the fast-moving lights seen over Brisbane on July 18, 1969.
- July 20: U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announces a Giant Kumbaya Summit he plans to hold in early September where Susan Ohanian and Lisa Graham Keegan will break bread, hug each other, and declare that everyone can live with Race to the Top. Meanwhile, in the last day Congress is in full session before its summer break, Senator Tom Harkin and Rep. John Kline agree that Congress will reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act as the Hell We Can't Figure Out What to Do But This Is Embarrassing Us To Death Act. They change nothing but the title, in hopes that the next Congress really will be embarrassed enough to act.
- July 21: A school district in Florida opens for the school year in hopes of stuffing more test-prep in before FCATs.
- July 24: Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker loses the recall election, and new governor Bill Cronon tells the state's residents that it's time to put sanity back in state government and respect the public school teachers across the state.
- August 1: An alternative weekly newspaper in California reports that half of the state's public debt is now owned by the mythical being Cthulhu, who has been using a Los Angeles law firm to buy up coastal assets and debt instruments with a range of maturities.
- August 6: Several mediums in the San Francisco Bay Area report sensing a deep and troubling voice say "Delicious!" at 5:03 a.m.
- August 7: University of California President Mark Yudof is reported as missing to state police by the UC system staff.
- August 8: California State University chancellor Charlie Reed announces a 120% increase in fees for 2012-13, starting with the fall semester. "I apologize most deeply for the sudden and late fee hike, but we have some ... um, creditors ... who are requiring an immediate response to a partial call on several bonds." Reporters are told they did not hear Reed mumble "and he's hungry" at the press conference's end.
- August 10: At 4 pm on a Friday in early August, the U.S. Department of Education releases a study suggesting that the turnaround strategy the department has pushed for a number years "does squat."
- August 15: New York Times columnist Tom Friedman argues in one of his biweekly opinion pieces that "teachers are the highest foundation we have in this society, but teachers unions must grab the reform bull by the nettle, for if there can't be reasonable compromise about how to evaluate teachers, the general public and policymakers will realize that there's more than one way to skin a potato."
- August 27-30: Hurricane Isaac threatens Tampa and the Republican National Convention but veers away at the last minute to hit the Florida panhandle instead. Relieved convention delegates open the convention by approving a GOP platform that denies the existence of global warming and opposes any regulations of greenhouse gas emissions as well as promoting vouchers and full-time online learning for five-year-olds, before nominating its 2012 ticket: Mitt Romney and Tina Fey.
- September 3-6: The Democratic National Convention nominates Barack Obama and Joe Biden for a second term. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan makes an appearance, talking about how he will defend the role of the humanities by making sure there are multiple-choice tests in every subject from philosophy to music.
- September 13: The U.S. DOE publishes data that if the NCLB waivers were not in place, 63% of public schools would have failed AYP by fall 2012. "See, that's not close to Duncan's asserted 87% at all!" exclaims a critic of the waivers.
- September 18: President Obama makes his fourth annual "back to school" speech at a school, again webcast to the world. And once again it is controversial. Talk-show host Glenn Beck accuses the president of using the speech to promote his reelection with such "socialist concepts as hard work, equal opportunity, and resilience."
- September 24: President Obama signs the Hell We Can't Figure Out What to Do But This Is Embarrassing Us To Death Act saying, "This is the first sign of bipartisanship since the seventh extension of the payroll tax cut last week, and while this is but a small step towards true reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, it'll keep the late-night talk show hosts distracted and may motivate Congress next year. What the hell!"
- October 3: In the first presidential debate, moderator Chris Matthews asks, "Gentlemen, both of you advocate school choice for parents, but in different ways. If Congress agreed with you, through which route would you have public funds sucked up without much accountability?" President Obama said, "private management of charter schools." Governor Romney said, "opportunity scholarships, which some people erroneously call vouchers."
- October 10: A study by Amy Cherubim is published and widely reported on, showing that children whom their parents describe as "totally obnoxious brats" generally grow up to have a harder time than "perfect little angels who volunteer for chores and don't claim that you're over the hill and stupid." She advises parents who have children with troubling behavior "to get a spine, already."
- October 12: Amy Cherubim is found by police in the alley by her home after being beaten by a pack of twelve-year-old girls.
- October 25: As part of a last-minute get-out-the-vote effort, several million teachers receive clothespins in the mail from their unions along with reminders to vote.
- November 6: Barack Obama wins re-election with a projected 283 electoral votes. Joe Biden is overheard to whisper to the president that his re-election is a "big f$#%ing deal, and can my brother get on with a deal with Jeb Bush now?"
- November 8: European stock futures drop precipitously with the publication of an op-ed by Voldemort that more austerity is needed across the entire European Union, and he is sending out his Debt Eaters to enforce the austerity regime that circumstances require.
- November 15: California Governor Jerry Brown announces that within six weeks, it will be clear to the entire world how California's debt will be wiped out. "It will be much faster than what Voldemort is trying in Europe," he tells press in Sacramento, "and I assure everyone in California that college students in the state's public colleges and universities will find their costs dropping dramatically by the end of the year."
- December 2: A twelve-year-old girl living in southern Mississippi, Christina, prays quietly to herself before school. Like all other cases where children pray to themselves without disrupting the school day, the First Amendment protects her rights, and no one tries to interrupt her praying. Later in the day, a talk-show host tells his national audience about how the re-election of Obama guarantees continuation of the "War on Christmas" and that "they've thrown prayer out of the schools."
- December 11: In a lame-duck session, the 112th Congress passes its thirty-fifth and last extension of payroll tax cuts. It fails to extend the Bush tax cuts, either for those making more than $250,000 or anyone else. President Obama threatens dire consequences if taxes are raised on those making less than $250,000. New Speaker of the House Eric Cantor promises dire consequences of taxes are raised on the wealthy.
- December 18: As California school districts and the state's colleges and universities start to distribute IOUs instead of paychecks, Governor Brown reassures public employees that this is entirely temporary and there will be no more IOUs as of January 1. "All debts will be paid," he promises.
- December 24: A generally happy nation celebrates one of the biggest shopping seasons in years, with unemployment down to 8.1%, GDP rising at 2.8% for the year, and hoping that the new year truly brings peace.
- December 27: Cthulhu rises from the deep and eats California.
- December 28: In his daily radio show, Rush Limbaugh describes the eating of California as "an Obama conspiracy," for if Cthulhu had risen before the election, Mitt Romney would be President-Elect with a majority of electoral votes cast from the other 49 states and the District of Columbia.
- December 29: The blogosphere is absorbed by arguments about the redistribution of Congressional seats, with a fairly convincing argument by Nate Silver that even if California had been eaten before the election, President Obama would still have won.
- December 30: In Tampa, Florida, a middle-aged historian of education attempts to write something funny on his blog and is strangled by the laptop's power cord before he can finish.
- December 31: Aliens surround the earth and demand an instant surrender, though they'll allow Twitter, Google, 30 Rock, and WordPress to continue. An education blogger notices a remarkable resemblance between the alien spokesbeing and Rupert Murdoch...
Happy a peaceful and Elder Gods-free 2012. (Note: This satire was posted in two parts earlier today on my standalone blog.)