I'm a long-time Minnesota progressive and proud Kossack, so this is not a  troll or concern diary.

Rather, as someone who supported, worked for and had my heart broken by Paul Wellstone (when his plane crashed), I want his Senate seat back.  This cycle.

I always felt a little leery about Al Franken.  I just didn't see how a ribald New York comedian would be the perfect match for one of the great democratic party institutions in America--a party, Democratic-Farmer-Labor, that has produced Floyd B. Olson, Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale, Eugene McCarthy, not to mention, Paul Wellstone

Now look what is exploding on the media scene just as the DFL heads into its convention next week.

At some point, someone will have to spend some time and research how many people are being "tazed" to death by cops in situations where potentially lethal force is not called for.

Here's one from yesterday in Minnesota.  An "uncooperative motorist", who had been in a traffic accident, was "brought under control" with a tazer.

Troopers responded to a crash about 5 p.m. Tuesday on Interstate 694 near Silver Lake Road in New Brighton and used a stun gun to bring the driver under control, according to a Public Safety Department news release.

Allina Medical Transportation spokesman Tim Burke said the man, who was in his 20s, was breathing but unconscious when paramedics arrived at the scene. He was pronounced dead at Unity Hospital in Fridley.

It's Saturday night.  Can we lighten up?

I hope so.  And to get us there, I suggest a round of light-hearted language:  as in, what will be the new memes around candidates in 2008?

You know how it works--Gore-Lieberman becomes

Sore Loserman

after the election.  I didn't like it but, hey, the media picked it up.

What do we have going out there so far?

With America in high dudgeon over looming primaries, some issues get pushed to the rear, like education.  

This diary offers both a plea for help--Please Recommend--and recent articles that can and should be promulgated so that more Americans understand just where we are at this historical moment.

NCLB has hit stalemate, leaving thousands of schools under threat of State takeover, tens of thousands of teachers in limbo, and millions of young students (the non-drop outs) stuck in dreary test-prep factories right out of a 19th century Dickens novel.

But, this diary plumbs issues beyond the morass that Bush, with bipartisan help, created with his sole domestic "success story"--NCLB.  

Going on three decades, America's political elites have bought into a simple, seductive meme about what education means and how it can be measured. It was sold by business interests intent on boosting America's "competitiveness"--faced with eroding profits from foreign competition.  

Together, they created a dynamic right out of the privatizer's handbook:  denigrate the quality of a public service, blame a convenient scapegoat, and thereby justify unprecedented changes to the way government serves citizens, especially the poor and people of color.

American Indian Leader, Vernon Bellecourt has passed away.  An American Indian, co-founder of the American Indian Movement of the late '60s and early '70s, Vernon was an articulate spokesperson against the United States government treatment of Native Americans for many years.  He was a learned and well-studied advocate for oppressed people all over the world.

We're nearing the lame-duck end of the Bush Administration and it has been one God-awful march through ineffectiveness (9/11, Katrina, health care), cronyism (Katrina, NCLB, Iraq contracting, USA gate), incompetence (everything, especially Iraq), illegality (the Plame affair, wiretapping, USA gate, torture), arrogance (where will it end?), and sheer stupidity (where do we start?).  Has the government of the United States ever been worse?

Reading the recent news on Iraq, and even in-depth analysis like that done recently on Kanan Makiya in the NYT, and watching as NCLB comes up for renewal, it really gives me pause to connect the dots.

Realize this:  Bush's only so-called success story from two terms in office, No Child Left Behind, is up for renewal right now, and none other than the Democratic majority holds its fate in their hands.

I'm not a hater, and sure, I have empathy for our Chief Justice, John Roberts, who is apparently doing fine in a hospital in Maine.  He's young and strong and will recover.    And, "no", I have no problem with him describing himself as being in "excellent" health when he appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee exploring his nomination a few years ago, despite his having had an earlier seizure and being advised another one was likely.

It's just that, sometimes, the news, the terminology, the course of human events, line up in a kind of harmonic convergence of ironic perfection.  His episode is being characterized as a "benign idiopathic seizure."

If I told you that every recent study of education confirms the same thing about improving America's schools.  And if I told you that this reform strategy is non-controversial, non-partisan, does not involve changes to existing education delivery, and does not even require major legislative action.  And if I told you that the strategy not only does not involve a large infusion of new funds but ends up saving America's taxpayers billions of dollars while strategically improving the real-world skills of students, you would probably click on this diary and recommend it, wouldn't you?

Well, your moment of truth has arrived.

Will you help us by answering a question about school?  Okay?

Here it is...

When you were young, did you have a special teacher that made a difference in your life?  Bring them to mind, see their face, hear their voice.  What was it that teacher/coach/mentor had?  

Was it:  
a. their personality itself, bursting with passion, joy, love or connection?  
b.  the way, the actual methods and strategies (i.e. pedagogy) they used to reach out and capture students?  
c.  was it the material, the very content itself that animated what they brought to others?

That's it, skip, and answer the poll.  This is your one sacred contribution to the Ykos education group.  When done, return to politics, imagine everything is just fine in American education.  Nothing to see here.  Move along.  

For the rest--the curious, motivated, and especially those seeking to consider education deeply--jump the fold.  Ed/Up's on stage, and about to tackle a monster roaming the vast plains of education:  How does one go about the task of teaching?

The title references '92's election (It's the economy, stupid!) and is not meant as a general pejorative to idiots everywhere. So, take no offense. Though, in a way, it does capture my overall conviction about building a new education system:  it's all about teachers.

Let me throw the gauntlet down right here, right now, maybe even use it first to slap a few faces out in Kos-land--knowing that every major education study confirms what I am about to say:  there is nothing, nothing, more important for producing positive outcomes for kids at school than the quality of the teacher in his or her classroom.  Period.  End of point.  
 
We have a first principle.  Chisel it in:

A great education system is wholly dependent upon great teachers.

Now, let's get after it.  This diary is part of a series leading up to Ykos; it will dance arm in arm with this question:   Who should become a teacher?<a</p>

Folks, this diary is a reference diary that lists all the diaries published so far by the Yearly Kos Education Group, which is aptly titled:  Education Uprising.

If you have missed any of these or would like to get caught up with the fullness of this project, I invite you below the fold to read the diaries and threads around these issues.

Is there anything more important in a democracy than the quality of the education we provide to children and citizens?  

I think not.

Enjoy.

It's Black History Month.  As my African-American students used to note reflecting on its overall importance to America: it is the shortest month of the year.  Let's not tarry in celebrating.

And, for all the fulminating about education and politics at Big Orange, we don't often broach issues of race.  It isn't safe, nor pretty.  Just when you think you've hit on something substantial, deep and true, another poster from a micro-niche of the represented group steps up to let you know how full of shit you are. Really full of shit.

With that in mind, I want to risk holding the "achievement gap" up to the light of day. It is the very reason for the entire bureaucratic and pedagogical nightmare of "No Child Left Behind."  And, presumably, when it's gone, we will no longer have to endure the torturous exercise of putting young children through batteries of "national security exams", repeating every time the exact text written in instruction booklets about how really important, really-really-really important this test is.  

Fix the gap, we can remove the vomit pails and get back to learning.  

The Grey Lady is out with word about the "achievement gap":  aside from a few schools and partial improvement in a couple states, the gap is as large, pervasive and troubling as ever.

Naturally, this does not discourage Bush flaks from claiming success: "...it’s also accurate to say that when taken as a whole, student performance is improving.  To reach the 100 percent by 2014, we’ll all have to work faster and smarter.”  

Faster and smarter.  Remember, under NCLB, by 2014, not only will there be no achievement gap, but with Garrison Keillor-like fantasy, there will be no students, none, that are even below average.

Incredibly, Democrats are embracing this fantasy along with Republicans, making it a rare bi-partisan delusion.  George Miller (D) of California recently gave NCLB an "A", as did Ted Kennedy, Buck McKeon ® and John Boehner ®.  

With all the talk about the Democrats moving to the right in this Fall's election, I thought I'd post a snapshot of what's going on in true-blue Minnesota, where Governor Tim Pawlenty was the lone state-wide Republican winner from November 7th.  He managed to beat Mike Hatch, a decent but flawed candidate by a single percentage point, with a 3rd party candidate--the very progressive Peter Hutchinson--getting 9% of the vote.

It seemed like "posturing" when Pawlenty conceded at his victory speech that the voters had sent a message about politicians needing to get things done.  But, not anymore.

While education was not much in the headlines or the speech-lines of Congressional candidates, it likely will be one of the first BIG policy issues the Democratic controlled Congress will have to confront.  The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) must be renewed in 2007, and its centerpiece is the No Child Left Behind Act, with 800 pages of punishments and sanctions for schools if there is even one child in America who reads below grade level in 2013.  Looking back to 2001 when it was passed and considering that Tom Daschle was majority leader and Ted Kennedy and George Miller were strong supporters along with many others, Democrats are suddenly in the very odd and unfortunate position of being the party of NCLB.

This is their first real "test" in confronting the Bush era authoritarian government, and how they respond will not only set the agenda for other issues, it will have a tremendous and lasting impact on the future of American education.  They damn well better get it right.

Hard to believe with so many problems, complaints, and resistance to No Child Left Behind, but this is the word from Washington.  And he isn't just any Dem, but George Miller of Califronia, ranking member of the education committee. Such is life in the Beltway, I guess, that decisions are made before hearings are held, and Democrats line up like sheep behind Republican "consensus", which is then dutifully annointed as Gospel reality by mainstream media outlets.

Now pardon my French but "Fout le camp, la".  Just what do the Democrats stand for?  I mean, help me on this.  It's not like NCLB is popular, with both a solid Blue State (Connecticut) and a solid Red State (Utah) fully prepared to give up Federal Aid rather than follow the death march of endless testing, distorted curriculum, and improvement by threat and intimidation.

While everyone is waiting for the next Bush Administration scandal to pop, I thought I would post this little information tidbit and see if anyone out there is willing to get off their asses and put some feedback into the system in regards to No Child Left Behind.

Yeah, I know, Tommy Thompson is the exact cross between Boris Karlov and a 1950s era mafia tough and the liklihood of him doing anything to change the status quo in education approaches zero.  Nonetheless, we are (nomimally) still a democracy and this does constitute a public record of what people showed up and what they said.

Hang with me people.

I was doing my usual stopovers yesterday, surfing for education news and I came across a familiar sounding name in the Washington Post column of Jay Mathews.

A couple of months ago, Mathews wrote a column about how teaching to the test was no big deal and that most "good teachers" he had watched didn't really teach to the test at all, but rather, subsumed the sought-after material magically within a stimulating and personally relevant lesson.  The students, according to Mathews, never even knew they were being prepped and landed safely in the "pass zone" as a result of their teachers' effortless efforts.

Well, wouldn't you know that a Kossack called him on it.