Section: Social Issues

Yesterday in Michigan, two Democrat officials blocked a constitutional amendment from the ballot that would have defined marriage as being between one man and one woman. Amendment supporters needed 317,757 valid signatures to put the issue on the November ballot - they got 464,000. All the requirements were met. But that was not enough.

The two members of the Board of State Canvassers don't even try to make legitimate excuses. They approved a gambling initiative (with fewer signatures, mind you), but not this duly certified, simply worded, and properly validated amendment. The law is the law, but they just choose to ignore it. As we've seen in Massachusetts, in San Francisco, in Oregon and now in Michigan, those who seek to radically redefine the family just don't have any use for the rule of law any more - instead, they seek the rule of those who yell loudest.

But it's a tough job, and now, prompted by term limits, Brown is making for the exit, already beginning his run for California Attorney General in 2006. Meanwhile, Oakland is still grappling with big challanges. Crime, quality-of-life, and economic development, to name but a few.

Despite the occasional off-topic mayoral lapse - here, and here - into his past "Governor Moonbeam" persona, the Yale Law-degreed spirit-seeker who lived in a commune and once dated Linda Ronstadt has made things happen.

Read on.

"The North American Free Trade Agreement.... vastly increased the flow of goods and services between Mexico and its neighbours.... Only labour is left out."

The married-with-kids Democrat was not only reportedly facing a (same-sex) harrassment suit, but also acknowledged having had a sexual relationship with a man.

According to the MSNBC story linked above, he said he feared his sexuality and his violation of matrimonial bonds left his office vulnerable.

That remark seems a barely-coded reference to gay marriage activists who - had he stayed in office and rode out the suit, certainly an option - would have presumably tarred him as a hypocritical closeted gay against gay marriage for political reasons.

Yet a hugely discordant note is McGreevy's claim that "I am removing the threats by telling you about my sexuality." Huh? If he truly felt the threat was removed, then why resign? Simply because of committing adultery? Hard to believe in this post-Clinton era.

Read on.

In 2000, sixty percent of Californians (over 4.5 million of them) voted to define marriage in the law as solely the union between one man and one woman. Seventy percent of Missourians voted the same way last week, and in eleven more states voting on constitutional amendments this fall, similar margins can be expected. Yet at the same time, multiple cases filed against the Federal DOMA continue to proceed. The question is, will lawmakers heed those margins and defend marriage from activist courts, or will they wait until a decision is already made?

We saw how that latter tactic worked out in Roe v. Wade. Let's not try it again.

Though now pilloried by many Democrats and educrats, Bush's landmark No Child Left Behind Act not only advances smarter reading instruction, and accountability, but also contains an important "sleeper" school choice provision becoming known to more and more parents, says Stern.

Where?

Where else? Ann Arbor.

Read on.

Heather MacDonald’s reporting on the rise of a Hispanic underclass (in the current issue of the fine publication City Journal)) makes for a lurid and alarming read. It certainly damages the picture painted by many politicians and commentators of a thriving immigrant community of virtuous soon-to-be-Americans.

David O’Connell, pastor of the church next door to Soledad [a troubled charter school in Los Angeles], has been fighting L.A.’s gang culture for over a decade. He rues the “ferocious stuff” that is currently coming out of Central America, sounding weary and pessimistic. But “what’s more frightening,” he says, “is the disengagement from adults.” Hispanic children feel that they have to deal with problems themselves, apart from their parents, according to O’Connell, and they “do so in violent ways.” The adults, for their part, start to fear young people, including their own children.

(Cross-posted at Cella’s Review)

Read on....

``If you want to know how your child is doing, you don't wait seven months to get the results of a standardized test,'' said Judi Hirsch, an Oakland, Calif., algebra teacher who introduced the measure. ``You ask your kid's teacher.''

... Hirsch said many standardized tests, which place children's performance on a 0-100 percent scale, put an average student at 50 — a figure usually associated with a failing grade.

``It's just a total setup for failure,'' she said in an interview. ``We know poor kids, working-class kids, are going to do poorly.''

First, these tests are meant to evaluate districts and schools and teachers. You don't have to wait for them to see how your child is doing in school (though it may offer a good second opinion). Second, if the scale is freaking people out for no good reason, it can be cosmetically changed. Third, yes we know that some kids are going to do poorly. That is precisely why we want to test--so we can find out which schools are good at educating such kids and which ones aren't. Once we know that we can attempt to change the poor-performing schools to better serve their pupils.

We have been throwing money at the problem of public education for 30 years and we have not held schools accountable for results in how they spend that money. It used to be that US was one of the lowest per-pupil spenders among the developed countries. That is no longer true. (See chart entitled "OECD: Secondary Education Expenditures per Student".) Per-pupil spending has almost tripled in the last 30 years. (See chart entitled "Average Expenditures Per Pupil".)

We need to have accountability in education. I'm all for federalism. It is very possible that different kids in different situations will need different educational plans. States can try all sorts of different things to educate their students. But there must be accountability in how money is spent. The only way to do this is to have some method of comparing student learning between schools, districts, and states.

The typical complaint about standardized tests is that they encourage people to 'teach the test' instead of encouraging real learning. I have two responses to that objection. First this test does not have to make incredibly fine distinctions between students. It doesn't need to order students on a precise ranking scale. If it can discriminate between 'generally learned what we want' and 'did not generally learn what we want' the test is good enough. Therefore the test design can be broader than an 'SAT-style' test. Second, is it really impossible for professional educators to design a useful test which will allow people to learn even if teachers are 'teaching to the test'? Or are the institutions of learning more worried that such tests will reveal what a poor job they have been doing?

This week the Senate will vote on a Constitutional amendment explicitly defining marriage as being between a man and a woman. Ignoring the many social, legal, and ethical issues surrounding the Federal Marriage Amendment, the politics of this move will have major repercussions for the 2004 election.

Today I read a story out of Washington State that struck me instantly as a kind of Distributist polemic in parable form.