Test-Prep Education! Part Deux

A magical, mystical fix-all for America’s still-best-in-the-world higher education system from the lady who replaced America’s primary and secondary education curricula with teaching to the test: …(wait for it)…(wait for it)…(have you guessed what it is yet?)…THAT’S RIGHT, High stakes testing! Please, hold your applause.

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Secretary of Education Margaret “The Testinator” Spellings has set her sights anew on the hallowed halls of American higher learning. With a plan to provide “matching funds” to universities and colleges that begin administering standardized tests and tracking student graduation rates, Spellings vows to wake our institutions from their lazy and slothful slumber. And why shouldn’t we trust her judgment? After all, she did such a wonderful job of correcting the deficiencies of our elementary and high schools and sending them down the right path to improved test-preparation training, why shouldn’t we want the same quality from our universities and colleges?

Of course, were I a university or college president salivating at the thought of those matching funds, I would probably be wise to hold off on any expensive testing plans until I saw the green of Spellings’s cash. Administering standardized tests is grossly expensive, and the more likely the test is to measure actual knowledge beyond test-taking ability, the more expensive it is. The rhetoric that accompanied No Child Left Behind promised funding to offset the additional financial burden states and school districts would bear in administering the federally required tests, but alas, said funding never really materialized.

It is interesting that Spellings, who is part of an administration that likes to privatize (including armed security forces in Iraq), feels it’s the government’s job to rate universities and colleges and compile and keep that record. Aren’t there organizations already doing this? Of course there are—the major accreditation agencies certify whether or not a university or college’s diploma is worth more than the paper it’s printed on, and a number of publications publish rankings of our institutions of higher education (most notably U.S. News and World Report).

Since there are already organizations efficiently and effectively fulfilling some of the major functions of Spellings’s proposed scheme, one is led to examine the charge of higher education’s complacency (read: college graduates are dumber these days; I mean, just compare the average college grad today to intellectual powerhouses like Spellings and W and you’ll see they’re right). My personal, longitudinal observations of higher education (as a nearly continuous college student for the last thirteen years) suggest this is probably inaccurate. But if college grads are less qualified than their earlier counterparts, then we could well argue that the root problem is not watered down curricula, but rather that public institutions of higher education have become so reliant on tuition for their funding that they are being forced to do whatever it takes to keep those tuition dollars coming in.

Frankly, No Child Left Behind was nothing more than a gimmick to promote the privatization of public education. There’s no reason to think this new scheme isn’t meant to justify the diminishment of public colleges and universities.

It’s Official: Torture IS an American Value

I’m awfully glad this has been clarified and we no longer have to ponder the rightness or wrongness of such activity. As a teacher, I’m always looking for new ways to motivate my students, and ten months in a Syrian dungeon ought to do the trick. Of course, some of my students might prefer that to nine months of my lectures and homework. But could they live without MTV?

I digress. I was rather surprised to hear of this Arar fellow being shipped off from New York to a Syrian dungeon where he was tortured into admitting he regularly had tea with Osama and even helped him carry his dialysis machine through mountains of Pakistan—and all on the flimsiest of evidence that he had any connection to terrorism (well, he is Muslim—isn’t that evidence enough?) and no evidence whatever of connection to al-Qaeda. No, I’m not surprised that our government would ship an innocent man off to be tortured baselessly, but that such a mistake would ever see the light of day. One expects at least minimal competence from one’s government—if a mistake’s on paper, you shred it; if it’s a person, you make it look like an accident.

Attorney General Gonzalez—you know, W’s numero uno Latino—claims the U.S. merely deported a foreign national suspected of terrorist ties and that they were assured that Mr. Arar would be treated humanely in the land of his birth. Interestingly, the big red maple leaf on Mr. Arar’s passport failed to tip off U.S. authorities to the fact that Mr. Arar was also a citizen of Canada. So when deciding which country to deport Arar to—a cheap short flight to Canada or a long expensive flight to Syria—they chose Syria because…because…obviously because they thought this guy looked like he needed to get in touch with his roots.

Alberto…G… it’s okay; we already know you’re into the whole torture scene…getting hot over the idea of being roughed up and powerless, or maybe hot over the idea of roughing up someone who’s powerless—we get it. The S&M thing—hey, whatever raises the flag to full mast. However, you don’t have to play dumb and look like a jackass on national television. If the American people thought torturing innocent men was wrong or unchristian, then there’d be a mass outcry for justice and an end to you and your boss’s tactics. There wasn’t and, sadly, won’t be; so buck up, little guy—you no longer have to hide your alternative sexual desires in the closet; take that little light of yours out from under the bushel and let it shine, let it shine, let it shine. Proudly proclaim to the world that you favor torture, that your boss favors torture, and that the American people favor torture for it is truly an American value.