Massachusetts’ spectacular "education reform" program of 1993 was based on a simple proposition: The state will spend more on public education and public schools will be held accountable for improving academic performance.

The money has been spent – the state has doubled per-pupil expenditures since 1993.

But now that the first measures of accountability are in place, the state has begun to renege.

The MCAS have been instituted, but results have been so poor that many students would not graduate if they were required to pass it, as they were supposed to do starting in 2003.

So the state Board of Education announced in September that "proficiency"would not be the standard and students may only have to pass the exam in math and English. The Board promises that the reduced standard is only temporary, until the state’s schools get their curricula up to speed.

What have the students been doing for the past ten years?

Schools also Given a Pass

It seems increasingly unlikely that the Board will hold schools and teachers accountable, either. It has begun to retreat from using the MCAS scores to measure their performance.

At its October meeting, the Board voted 7-1 to adopt a new system of evaluation for public schools. As Board Chairman James Peyser said, "No judgment whatsoever will be made about school quality on the basis of MCAS performance, especially during the first year."

But the Board has tried to claim this is a step forward rather than a step back. And much of the media have trumpeted this line.

The Boston Globe hailed "the first-ever statewide policy to hold schools to higher standards." Buried is the fact that, "Board members, however, were careful to stress that MCAS scores would be the main, but not the only, criteria used to identify underperforming schools."

Union Calls the Tune

But even this remote specter of accountability is unacceptable to the master of public education, the Massachusetts Teacher Association.

Stephen Gorrie, union president, says, "I would never judge a student on the basis of a single battery of tests. Schools, like students, deserve to be evaluated based on multiple criteria."

Though this sounds innocuous, "multiple criteria" really means finding some standard that everyone can meet, so that no student or school ever fails.

"They should be evaluated in the context of school resources, including class sizes, technology, textbooks, library holdings, building quality, programs for disruptive students and mentoring programs for new teachers," he says. Even after doubling spending on public schools, the MTA is still demanding more "inputs" before any "outcomes" can be expected.

This is the standard reaction of the education establishment across the nation. On the same day that Gorrie attacked standards, a national survey of American student writing was released, showing that barely a quarter of American students are proficient writers. The reaction of educators, according to the television network MSNBC, was to call for smaller classes, more parental involvement, more teacher training, computers and after-school programs. Behind it all is the orthodox progressive pedagogy that school should be more "fun" or "exciting" for students.

Board under a Cloud

Many observers were suspicious when David Driscoll, the favorite of the union-dominated public school establishment, became education commissioner and John Silber was squeezed out.

Driscoll told the Worcester Telegram & Gazette that the board is engaged in "the first stage of a long accountability process." Just how long a "process" will this one be?

"This is all part of the education reform law," said Roberta Schaefer, vice-chairman of the board and a key player in Silber’s ouster. "The law said ‘first we will give you the money, but then you will have to be held accountable.’"

The question is, When?

If the MTA calls the tune, don’t hold your breath.

Massachusetts has implemented one of the most successful welfare reform laws in the country, ending cash assistance to 70 percent of those who faced a two-year time limit.

But The New York Times reports that this was all President Clinton’s idea.

In a long feature on welfare reform in the state, the Times claims: "Clinton’s Proposal Seized by Republicans."

A bolder attempt to turn history on its head is hard to imagine. It was, of course, the Democrats who seized a Republican idea – knowing that the Times and other media would cover for them.

The Times says, "Though they swept the country appearing inevitable, time limits on welfare reform were anything but. Until Bill Clinton ran for President in 1992, few welfare experts had pondered them and no states had tried them."

Perhaps no welfare experts with whom the Times consults. But Charles Murray argued for ending cash relief in his 1984 book, Losing Ground. He was dismissed as crazy by the liberal academic and policy establishment.

"At the time I was writing Losing Ground in the early 1980s, I could not find a single liberal commentator who thought that welfare had any significant downside," Murray tells Massachusetts News.

The Times says, "Although time limits are now hailed by conservatives, they were first proposed by a liberal, Professor David T. Ellwood, an economist at Harvard."

Murray says, "Ellwood can lay claim to being among the first on the left who departed at all from a solid wall of liberal support for unending, generous welfare benefits."

For the Times, all successful ideas must originate at Harvard.

The Boston Globe failed to reveal that it has a conflict of interest in the nomination of Margaret Marshall as Chief Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court. Her husband is employed by the New York Times, which owns the Globe. 

It’s true that many people know that her husband is Tony Lewis, the longtime columnist for the Times; but the Globe came out strongly for Justice Marshall – without ever telling its readers that it has a conflict. 

Would you like to have the husband of the next Chief Justice of the SJC in your employ? 

We understand that the owners of the Times are very ethical and wouldn’t do any wrong – but it never hurts to have an important friend, does it? It certainly adds stature to the owners of the Times if the Chief Justice happens to come to their office parties. Wouldn’t it be nice to have intellectual chats at their apartment or summer estate with the Chief Justice? 

And it does no good to reply that the Globe is "totally independent." Nobody needs to inform them that their owners in New York were rooting for Marshall. They understood that very well; they didn’t need to be told. 

The Globe wrote editorials calling enthusiastically for the appointment of Justice Marshall, plus many opinion pieces and articles in her behalf. 

The Globe certainly has a right to champion Justice Marshall, but as the most important arbiter of opinion in New England, it also has a duty to inform its readers when it has a conflict as large as this. 

Do Husband and Wife Talk? 

We realize that it is not "chic"to believe that husbands and wives influence each other, but this husband is so ultra-left that it is impossible to believe that this wife does not share some of his personal philosophy. That should also be reported. 

Some of his columns have included the following: 

• "Mr. (David) Duke was only following in the footsteps of respectable politicians. [Such as] Ronald Reagan [and] George Bush." 

• "If the official Republican platform is carried out, a 13-year-old girl who becomes pregnant as a result of being raped by her father and has an abortion could end in the gas chamber." 

• "People across the country, opponents and supporters both, are learning something that Massachusetts has understood for some time. Never underestimate the intelligence or determination of Michael Dukakis."
 

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