(Joe Sommer is the author of this thoughtful article. Mr. Sommer is an attorney and serves as a board member of Ohio’s Common Cause.)
Gov. Ted Strickland and Democratic members of the Ohio House of Representatives didn’t let the Ohio Constitution or other laws stop them in their politically motivated efforts to drive fellow-Democrat Marc Dann from the office of attorney general.
One of Dann’s managers was accused of sexually harassing two female employees of the office and damaging a state vehicle while driving drunk. Shortly thereafter, Dann reversed an earlier denial by admitting to a consensual office affair that may have set a wrong tone for his managers.
When the Ohio media gave heavy coverage to the story, Democratic leaders hastily called for Dann to resign and said they would impeach him if he didn’t. They took this position for political reasons only..
They showed no regard for the rights of Dann, the persons who helped elect him, or the Ohioans he was working to protect.
A populist attorney general
Dann was a heavy underdog when he ran for attorney general in 2006 against the well-known Republican state auditor. She had been elected attorney general twice in the past and was the establishment’s candidate. But by conducting a populist, anticorruption campaign, Dann was elected Ohio’s first Democratic attorney general in many years.
The electorate was clearly disgusted with a “culture of corruption” in their Republican-dominated state government. They wanted change, so they made Dann the state’s chief law-enforcement official. This meant there was a new type of sheriff in town – one that some powerful special interests didn’t expect, weren’t used to, and weren’t comfortable with.
As attorney general, Dann worked hard on matters such increasing the office’s consumer-protection activities, making governmental records more accessible to the public, requiring government officials to hold public meetings as required by law, strengthening protection of the environment, helping Ohio’s poorest injured workers receive compensation they were entitled to, increasing access to health care for the uninsured and the poor, shielding children from sexual abuse, protecting college students from fraud in credit-card marketing, shutting down dog-fighting operations, and promoting quality education.
Additionally, in an era of widespread corporate malfeasance, Dann fought securities fraud, predatory lending, antitrust violations, Medicaid fraud, and other corporate wrongdoing. He sued some of America’s largest corporations on behalf of the public. As he had promised during the campaign, Dann vigorously opposed white-collar criminals.
He was bringing a populist mindset to the operation of the office. Longtime attorneys there said Dann was willing to boldly go where no Ohio attorneys general – Democrat or Republican – had gone before. And those lawyers were pleased about it, because they were at last able to work for some long-overdue justice for the public.
A few months before the complaints against his manager were filed, one Ohio newspaper ran an editorial cartoon favorably comparing Dann’s acts to those of Superman and Batman. It’s not often that anyone today notices a resemblance between a government leader and beloved superheroes.
Approximately a month before the complaints became public, an article about Dann in Columbus Monthly magazine said the aggressive agenda he was pursuing was controversial among some business interests. But the article was mostly favorable toward Dann and contained speculation he could someday be governor. It also quoted a Republican state senator as saying, “He’s a populist,” and, “He didn’t say he was going to be anything other than what he is being.” That is, he was doing what the voters had hired him to do.
Dann’s efforts and accomplishments for the public, though, apparently meant little to Ohio’s Democratic leaders who wanted him gone after being in office only 16 months. They have never shown as much interest as he did in representing average citizens and the poor. But they have been very interested in pleasing big business and receiving its campaign contributions..
And they didn’t appear concerned that their acts against Dann could cause the attorney general’s office to be regained by the Republicans and become a foot servant for corporate interests at the expense of the public.
Because Strickland and other Democratic leaders in Ohio often give a higher priority to serving large corporations than helping people, they have been described as “corporate Democrats.” This is probably why people were amazed – and some business interests were concerned – that the new Democratic attorney general was actually turning out to be a true populist.
A high bar for impeachment
After Dann said he had not committed an impeachable offense and refused to resign, Democrats in the Ohio House quickly brought an impeachment resolution against him under the Ohio Constitution’s Section 24 of Article II.
That section, which was placed in the document in 1851, allows the House to impeach an official “for any misdemeanor in office.” Black’s Law Dictionary defines misdemeanor as a crime less serious than a felony and says the archaic meaning of the term encompasses any crime, including felonies. Either way, a misdemeanor is a crime.
But there was no evidence that Dann had committed a misdemeanor, and thus no authority to remove him under the constitutional standard for impeachment.. Not only so, he clearly didn’t meet the impeachment standard applied to other officeholders in the recent past.
Many observers of Ohio’s state government thought former Gov. Bob Taft met the standard in 2005 when he was convicted of committing four first-degree misdemeanors in his acts as governor. He was the first Ohio governor in history to be convicted of a crime.
The Republican Taft was not only a criminal but an incompetent and unethical dolt who ran a remarkably corrupt administration and allowed the state treasury to be plundered by corporate crooks. Scandals in his administration eventually led to the criminal convictions of about 20 persons, including some of his top aides. But Taft didn’t face any serious impeachment efforts in the Ohio House, even from Democrats.
Of course, Dann’s alleged shortcomings pale even more compared to President George W. Bush’s outrageous wrongdoing as president. Bush should have been impeached on any of numerous grounds, such as intentionally lying to take the country to war in Iraq, causing the unnecessary deaths and maiming of thousands of American soldiers and Iraqi citizens, violating the federal criminal law on wiretapping (FISA), authorizing torture and other violations of international law, detaining foreign nationals and American citizens indefinitely while depriving them of the most basic civil and constitutional rights, and obstructing justice by refusing to comply with Congressional subpoenas.
In his 2008 book The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, famed prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi argues compellingly that Bush, who had avoided service in Vietnam like a coward, should be prosecuted for murder for knowingly using false pretenses to send American soldiers to their deaths in Iraq. And Bush didn’t even provide the body armor and other equipment that would have saved the lives of many of them. He thought providing huge tax cuts for big business and the wealthiest citizens was a higher priority.
Bush was another favorite of corporate America and apparently exempt from impeachment – even for the crime of murder – in today’s political world.
The allegations against Dann were also far less serious than the acts that led to President Bill Clinton’s impeachment. In a lawsuit alleging Clinton had sexually harassed a state employee as governor of Arkansas, he committed perjury, obstructed justice, and attempted to improperly influence the testimony of witnesses. And he perjured himself before the independent counsel’s grand jury investigating the matter.
Clinton, who has also been described as a corporate Democrat, was impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives but not convicted in the Senate. Nevertheless, the judge in the civil case found him in contempt of court for giving “intentionally false” testimony and fined him $90,000.. Then she referred the matter to the Arkansas Supreme Court.
In admitting he had testified falsely under oath, Clinton agreed to a five-year suspension of his Arkansas law license and a $25,000 fine to settle disbarment proceedings brought against him by a committee of the Arkansas Supreme Court. The settlement also enabled him to avoid prosecution by the replacement independent counsel for the crimes of perjury and obstruction of justice. Clinton later surrendered his U.S. Supreme Court law license to end disbarment proceedings begun by that court.
Moreover, Clinton settled the civil lawsuit by paying his accuser $850,000 rather than defend against her sexual-harassment allegation at a trial.
Strickland opposed Clinton’s impeachment while in Congress and has continued to denounce it ever since.
Democrats lower the bar for Dann
The failure to remove Taft, Bush, and Clinton from office seemed to set a very high bar for impeachment. And Dann was far below it. After all, he hadn’t even been accused of a crime.
But the sly Strickland, along with his unprincipled and spineless Democratic lackeys in the Ohio House, devised a method to get around the problem. They apparently decided that a much lower impeachment standard should apply to populist officeholders.
Here’s how they did it. In the impeachment resolution introduced against Dann, they declined to use the impeachment standard in Section 24. Rather, they used the less stringent standards for removal in the Ohio Constitution’s Section 38 of Article II and the statutes implementing that section.
In particular, the standards came from Ohio Revised Code Section 3.07, which lists the grounds for removal for misconduct in office. Its standards include acts less serious than crimes.
But both R.C. 3.07 and R.C. 3.08 specify that those standards apply to the judicial method of removing public officials from office. It would involve collecting signatures of over 600,000 qualified electors and then having the matter heard by a state appellant court, whose decision can be appealed to the Ohio Supreme Court.
By bringing the impeachment resolution under Section 24 but not using the removal standard contained in that section, and instead using the Section 38 standards that apply to an entirely different procedure, Strickland and the Democratic representatives acted unlawfully and fraudulently.
Their resolution was intended to deceive the public into erroneously believing that impeachable acts had been committed. In setting forth the impeachable offenses, the resolution included acts that no one before had ever dreamed could be grounds for impeachment.
Some of the alleged impeachable acts included failing to perform official duties of the office, failing to exercise due care in the administration of the office, failing to ensure the safety and security of state property, failing to know about the misuse of state property for personal business, and undermining the effectiveness and efficiency of the office. Far less than criminal acts are needed to meet such standards.
As one Ohio newspaper editorialized: “Were they not so offensive to the Ohio Constitution, the articles of impeachment against Dann .. . . would have been laughable.”
Democrats lower the boom on Dann
While moving forward with impeachment proceedings in the House, Strickland and House Democrats called for an outside investigation of Dann’s office to determine whether impeachment proceedings should move forward in the House. This was a remarkable instance of putting the cart before the horse.
It showed they knew they didn’t have enough evidence to support the impeachment proceedings they already were bringing. It also showed they had decided the issue regardless of what the investigation would find. But this was not the end of their unfairness or deviousness.
In providing for the outside investigation, Strickland and the General Assembly did not choose an independent and impartial investigator, as would have been the right thing to do under the circumstances. Instead, they chose the Ohio inspector general. In essence, the inspector general answers to the small man who was working feverishly and unethically to remove Dann from office: Strickland.
When the inspector general was chosen, persons having knowledge about the inner workings of Ohio’s state government saw the writing on the wall. The General Assembly might as well have passed a law allowing Strickland to tie up Dann and hit him over the head with a large stick until he agreed to resign. Either approach would have been equally effective in producing the same result.
That’s because the inspector general knew what his boss wanted done. And he would be sure to do it with a vengeance.
After receiving authority to act, the inspector general almost immediately applied force and intimidation by having his agents invade and ransack the attorney general’s office. They seized computers, cell phones, other electronic equipment, and what the inspector general called “a lot” of documents.
Reportedly stunned by the raid, Dann was stripped of his computer, Blackberry, and state vehicle. He hadn’t expected that his Democratic colleagues, whom he had greatly helped in the past, could be so unfair, cruel, and cold to him.
The Ohio media labeled this high-profile raid as “shock and awe,” presumably because it reminded them of the U.S. military’s attack on Iraq in 2003. The military’s shock-and-awe strategy has been described as including a rapid and massive strike with brutal, overwhelming force to destroy an adversary’s ability and will to fight.
As it was undoubtedly intended to do, the inspector general’s shock-and-awe raid crippled Dann’s ability to continue functioning in office. He was compelled to resign, but still contended he had not committed an impeachable offense.
In previous investigations of alleged wrongdoing in state government, the inspector general hadn’t used such strong-arm tactics even against the Bureau of Workers’ Compensation after the media revealed in 2005 that millions had been stolen from the agency.
Other government offices, both at the federal and state levels, often investigate allegations of workplace sexual harassment. They manage to do it successfully without using Gestapo tactics and seriously disrupting the operation of workplaces.
But those offices normally strive to conduct a fair and nondisruptive investigation, which is not what Strickland and other Democratic leaders wanted for Dann. They were determined to force him from office no matter if laws and civilized standards of fairness had to be trampled.
An outrageous injustice
Strickland’s lack of interest in due process and other legal requirements had been shown as early as the press conference at which he first called for Dann to resign or be impeached.
He told reporters the Democratic leaders were “ready to take whatever action is necessary” to remove Dann from office. That is not the attitude of people who want an impartial investigation and a fair application of the law..
To the contrary, it’s a “win-at-all-costs” and “ends-justifies-means” attitude more befitting thugs and scoundrels.
During the same press conference, Strickland advocated impeachment while also revealing he was unsure what the standard for impeachment is under the Ohio Constitution. This nonsensical position was, by itself, indisputable proof that Strickland’s acts were based on political calculations and not the law.
When Strickland’s other statements at the press conference are analyzed, they too indicate he simply wanted Dann out of office regardless of whether the facts and law supported the outcome.
Strickland’s subsequent acts were entirely consistent with that assessment of his attitude. If, as many believe, the manner in which a person uses power is the best test of character, Strickland failed the test miserably.
Conclusion
Strickland and his fellow corporate Democrats should be ashamed of their unlawful and unethical conduct that drove the populist Dann from the office the voters had elected him to hold. A stronger case could be made for removing those officials from office than for removing Dann.
The entire episode was a huge miscarriage of justice, an affront to democracy, and a victory for powerful corporate interests.
For the special election to decide who will serve the final two years of the term Dann had been elected to, both the Republican and Democratic candidates promised business groups they will be less aggressive than Dann was as attorney general. Unlike Dann, they showed the genuflection and obeisance that corporate interests want to see from Ohio’s state officials.
The impeachment bar will surely be raised high again for such officials. And the lower standards will be placed in storage until the next hard-charging, populist statewide officeholder comes along.
Sadly, much of the above story has not been told by the corporate media in Ohio. They seem obsessed with the parts about sex and drinking.
It’s a shame there’s not a real Superman or Batman to right this injustice. If there were, Strickland and Democratic members of the Ohio House would be in big trouble.
But maybe the voters will someday play that role.
(This article was sent to me by a friend who also serves as a board member on Common Cause. This gives me a lot to think about. I will make comments below.)
Mr. Sommers article is nice political fiction, but as legal analysis, it’s utter crap.
First, Mr. Sommers falsely argues that impeachment under the Ohio Constitution requires the commission of a crime. This is patently false. As two noted Ohio constitutional law scholars have noted, the only instances in Ohio when public officials have been impeachment, none of them were impeached based on an accusation of a crime.
Second, impeachment always begins with the introduction of articles followed by an investigation. That’s not “putting the cart before the horse.” That’s the usual process.
Third, Strickland and the Democrats wanted an investigtory hearing on whether Dann’s conduct constituted impeachable offenses. If the appropriate committee of the House found it to be the case, they were to amend the impeachment resolution appropriately and have them be approved by the full House. If the House so agreed, then it was to be sent to the Senate for a trial where it would take 2/3rds of the State Senate to remove him.
That is the “due process” that was owed to Marc Dann, and that was what was used except Dann resigned upon the introduction of the articles.
Fourth, it was Speaker Husted’s idea to have the IG investigate Dann, not Strickland.
Fifth, the IG is a weak-kneed guy doing Strickland’s billing theory takes a head shot when Sommers mentions Taft’s conviction. That was the result of an investigation by the very same IG. Seems like he’s more than willing to take on his “boss” the Governor given his prior actions.
Sixth, Dann lied under oath and then attempted to cure it by “correcting” his prior testimony. Dann’s perjury was of a matter of public concern- the atmosphere of sexual harassment permitted in his office. Clinton’s was about behavior before he was President.
Seventh, impeachment is always a political, not legal exercise. It’s done by the most political branches of government. The fact that Sommer is shocked by this is feigned naivite.
Eighth, I laugh at the idea of Strickland and Sherrod Brown, guys who opposed NAFTA and other free trade deals, guys who their whole political lives have been called the strongest and most dedicated allies of organized labor are considered “corporate Democrats.”
This guy obviously buys into some corporate conspiracy to get Dann. Unfortunately, the evidence is that Dann did in Dann.
BTW, what has Common Cause in Ohio ever achieved?
More by Sommers can be found here.
As farr as Dann’s “promoting quality education,” Dann (and Sommers) both appear to be Democrats who can’t find the state’s K-12 quality policy.
FWIW, from Sommer’s bio:
“An activist for many years with the Humanist Community of Central Ohio, he serves on its board and has held the offices of president, vice president, and secretary. He is a longtime member of the American Humanist Association, the Freedom From Religion Foundation (currently serving on its national board), and Americans United for Separation of Church and State. The American Humanist Association certified him as an Advocate for the Humanist philosophy.”
Sorry, apparently I can’t proofread while ROTFL…
More by Sommers can be found here.
This author is a humanist? Is this supposed to be terrible?
Dann did hire some great people for his office and did some good things. But then he went and embarassed the people he hired. When you just took over the State government where the Rs still hold most of the legislature because of all their corruption, the last thing you want to be doing is having your buddy , who seems to work for the AG simply because he is your buddy, harassing women at pajama parties. Then he has an affair himself. The last thing Ohio D’s needed was a repeat of the Clinton impeachment circus, which Strickland lived through as a Congressman. Clinton accomplished little during his term in part because of the diversion that he handed the Rs. One reason we got Bush as president is because so many people were upset over Clinton’s womanizing that they voted against Gore. Of course impeachment is political. Fortunately the damage Dann did was minimized. The D’s managed to hold the job. Maybe Cordray genuflects to corporate interests, but he has been as good as Dann was on dealing with the predatory lending, foreclosure crisis from his treasurer role. Strickland’s straight arrow actions probably serve him well in an era where people feel the government is for sale to businesses and lobbyists. However Hollywood is more likely to make a movie about Dann some day than about Strickland.
This author is a humanist? Is this supposed to be terrible?
It’s problematic when you associate with organizations committed to intellectual dishonesty. Humanism isn’t the issue. The disingenuous tactics of AU and its philosophical allies are.
An activist for many years with the Humanist Community of Central Ohio
How many “humanist” activists does it take draft a model lesson plan on the nature of science (without it becoming an antireligion polemic)? Has it ever been done?
Dr. W. Edwards Deming was a humanist, and a seminal contributor to school and business improvement. Gangs of intellectual bullies are not humanists, regardless of the name they choose for their gang. This article on Dann is typical of the intellectual rigor found in their other publications.
I got lost. Who or what is AU? Are they committed to intellectual dishonesty? How so? Are they gangs of intellectual bullies? How so? What is bullying about this article? It does not seem to be about humanism, science or religion. Mostly its about political sensitivity, and cutting your political losses. It seems like mostly a judgment issue as to whether you agree with it. What does Deming, management theorist frequently mentioned in Mike Bock’s education posts, have to do with this? Is he an intellectual bully? Or is the point that he is not one and this author is? The author’s linked website has quotes from Jefferson, Tolstoy and various other people which are critical of religion. All legitimate points that people deal with one way or another. It’s easy not to agree with the vision of history of this article, but where is this other stuff supposed to go?
As the author of the above article, I have some responses to the post by Modern Esquire.
(1) In regard to the impeachment standard, although he states that the only two cases of impeachment in Ohio history did not involve criminal acts, he does not mention that in both cases the Ohio senate refused to find that a removable act had been committed. Each case occurred in 1808 and involved overreaching attempts by piqued legislators to remove two judges who had found a law unconstitutional. The cases have little value for determining what an impeachable offense is, unless he wants to argue that judges can be impeached for finding laws unconstitutional, which is a patently absurd position.
(2) I’m old enough to remember the Watergate hearings and also saw the steps taken before the impeachment of Bill Clinton. If I recall correctly, both cases involved extensive legislative investigations, analysis of the evidence, and debate before articles of impeachment were introduced. Thus, I do not believe that the usual process is to introduce articles of impeachment before the legislature has conducted an investigation. That would defy common sense and contravene basic principles of fairness. After going on record as supporting impeachment, legislators would be extremely reluctant to change their position – regardless of what the investigation revealed – because they would look like fools. The legislature should hold an impeachment inquiry before articles of impeachment are introduced.
(3) Stickland and Democrats in the legislature supported having the inspector general investigate Dann’s office. The inspector general wouldn’t have been chosen without their support. The governor appoints the inspector general to the same four-year term of office as he has, and can dismiss the inspector general by merely giving him a hearing on the dismissal issue. This statutory set-up means the inspector general basically serves at the governor’s pleasure. It puts enormous pressure on the inspector general to do the bidding of the governor whenever possible. In regard to Taft, the investigation was performed and the crimes were exposed by the Ohio Ethics Commission. At that point, the inspector general had to get onboard, because the criminal activity was clear and incontrovertible. The inspector general does the same when other wrongdoing has become so big and widely known – such as by exposure by the media – that he has to act. Until then, his normal method of operation is to please the governor and protect the administration as much as possible. And he certainly pleased the governor with his jackbooted raid of Dann’s office
(4) Modern Esquire claims that Dann committed perjury, but that’s not how the Franklin County Prosecutor, a Republican, saw it. The prosecutor did not find that a crime had been committed. And it’s not true that Clinton’s crimes occurred before he was president. Clinton committed perjury and engaged in other obstruction of justice before the federal grand jury that was investigating wrongdoing in his administration. In regard to both the grand jury and the civil trial, Clinton used every illegal and unethical tactic available in trying to thwart the truth from coming out. In Dann’s office, the internal investigation supported the allegations of the two complainants, and acts were being taken to correct the situation and make amends to them. In fact, subsequent media reports – and the position the state’s attorneys are apparently now taking – indicate the internal investigation may have been too deferential to their allegations.
(5) To claim that impeachment is merely “political” and “not a legal exercise” is astounding. Nothing could be more of a legal exercise than a procedure governed by the Constitution. Impeachment is supposed to be a serious, deliberative, fair, and law-driven proceeding, akin to to court trial. The legislators swear to uphold the Constitution, not to use it as a political football.
(6) Finally, Strickland’s performance has been a big disappointment to many who thought they were electing a Democratic governor. His opposition to guaranteeing sick leave for Ohio’s workers is just the most recent betrayal. He also threw under the bus thousands of workers in the adult-entertainment industry, apparently as a sop to the Religious Right. He did the same to persons who work in or could work in the gambling industry. He seems to love hiring Republicans for top positions in his administration. And his continuing decisions on cutting the state budget would do the most heartless Republican proud. His philosophy of government (and of getting reelected) seems to be to take the Democrats for granted, and appeal for as much Republican support as possible, no matter if many Democratic principles are violated in the process. It’s like a Clinton triangulation strategy on steroids. Dumping a populist Democratic attorney general was consistent with that “Republocrat” philosophy.
Modern Esquire claimed above that “Dann lied under oath and then attempted to cure it by ‘correcting’ his prior testimony. Dann’s perjury was a matter of public concern….”
In connection with that claim, it’s interesting to note that on May 4, 2008, someone identifying himself as “modernesquire” wrote the following at the Buckeye State Blog:
“Bacon’s basis to assert that Dann may have committed perjury is because he initially responded in his first interview that he didn’t know whether Utovich ever stayed overnight in the condo, but then revised his answer in his requested second interview to admit that she had.
“That is not perjury. Everyone who was interviewed was told that they had the right to review the transcript of their testimony and request the opportunity to correct their testimony if they thought their answers were incomplete or incorrect. It’s standard legal practice to allow a witness to review and revise their earlier testimony without fear of being charged with perjury. If every time a witness revised their earlier testimony was made into a perjury case, then witnesses simply won’t ever revise incorrect testimony and make taking their testimony less reliable evidence. . . .
“Bacon knows that the practice by Dann of revising his testimony isn’t perjury.”
If the same person wrote these two contradictory positions, Modern Esquire also knows that Dann didn’t commit perjury. But that knowledge didn’t stop him from publicly making the charge.
Joe Sommer, Thanks for preparing and sharing this provocative article.
I would like to know more information about what exactly Dann was doing that justifies your assertion: “He (Dann) was bringing a populist mindset to the operation of the office. Longtime attorneys there said Dann was willing to boldly go where no Ohio attorneys general – Democrat or Republican – had gone before. And those lawyers were pleased about it, because they were at last able to work for some long-overdue justice for the public.”
In order to evaluate this accusations, I would like to know more about specific actions of Dann, or the specific intentions of Dann, that were, in fact, so populist, so offensive to corporate interests and that Dann greatly offended powerful people.
It seems clear that Dann was hounded out of office. But Dann resigned before completing the legal process needed to actually remove him from office. I’ve got to wonder, if the case for impeachment was so weak, why did he resign? Someone paying only casual attention to the whole matter would assume that Dann resigned because he believed the ultimate outcome, if pushed to its conclusion, would be to his disadvantage, and that, by resigning, Dann worked out a better deal for himself than if he had faced the music.
What is clear is that Dann had become a political embarrassment that threatened to be used against the Democrats. I can believe your statement, “When Strickland’s other statements at the press conference are analyzed, they too indicate he simply wanted Dann out of office regardless of whether the facts and law supported the outcome.” This is a serious charge. I can believe that Strickland and the Democrats acted improperly in their zeal to solve the problem of the embarrassment Dann was causing. But, it is much harder for me to believe the central accusation that the underlying motivation for Strickland and the Democrats to improperly pressure Dann to resign was the desire to tamp down or stop his populist agenda. And this article doesn’t give an information that substantiates that accusation.
It is an interesting frame for the whole matter that previously I had not considered — the frame that says an Attorney General has a lot of opportunity, if he so chooses, to act as a zealous populist and advance the cause of the poor and disadvantaged, or if he so chooses, an AG can simply be a tool for the powerful. It would be worth the effort of writing another article that would explain how an AG’s philosophy can impact his actions, what options are available to an AG over which he has discretion.
The core of your accusation is that Dann was hounded out of office because of his actions as Attorney General, actions that put him on the side of the poor and disadvantaged and offended the powerful. I would like to know more about the details of this.
I would like to know more about what prerogatives are available to an AG — I would like to know more about Cordray, how his actions as AG will compare to those Dann would have pursued had he stayed in office.
Who or what is AU
Americans United for Separation of Church and State, formerly Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State, formed in 1947 to ensure that Black children not have the same opportunities to escape urban poverty as Catholic children (among other causes).
I’ll agree with Sommer that Dann ought to have been left to roast on his own barbecue spit much, much longer.
I’m curious, however, why Sommer claims that Dann supports quality education when Sommer has (apparently) not read the risible complaint Dann’s office filed in Montgomery County Common Pleas Court.
BTW, If you want an example of ruthless partisanship obstructing human rights, look at Governor Strickland’s treatment of former Superintendent Zelman.
Marc Dann had it coming. Dr. Zelman is a brilliant advocate for schoolchildren struck down in her prime by a trash-talking partisan hack.
Eric, Sommer writes: “As attorney general, Dann worked hard on matters such increasing the office’s consumer-protection activities, making governmental records more accessible to the public, requiring government officials to hold public meetings as required by law, strengthening protection of the environment, helping Ohio’s poorest injured workers receive compensation they were entitled to, increasing access to health care for the uninsured and the poor, shielding children from sexual abuse, protecting college students from fraud in credit-card marketing, shutting down dog-fighting operations, and promoting quality education.”
Sommer’s theory is that Dann so strongly pushed a populist philosophy that he offended powerful people who oppose implementing such a philosophy. This is a big list, but I’m wondering, if this all has to do with seeing that laws are enforced, what is the discretion available to an AG? How does an AG pursue an anti-populist agenda? How does an AG pursue a pro-populist agenda? Is there any group that monitors the degree to which an AG is effective?
But, yes, I am wondering what Sommers has in mind when he asserts that Dann, in his capacity as AG, promoted quality education, as opposed to an AG who chose not to promote quality education.
Dr. Zelman oversaw a three-track effort to fulfill the state’s obligation to provide public education meeting human rights standards:
1. K-12 reform based on the NEA’s “new unionism”
2. Community schools (aka charters)
3. Cleveland voucher program
(Dr. Zelman and ODE were responsible for 1; the GA initiated 2. and 3.)
Marc Dann, in collusion with the Ohio Education Association (NEA affiliate), pursued the (now rejected) anti-charter harassment campaign against community schools.
To call this calculated obstruction of human rights pursuit of “quality education” is an affront to common sense (but par for the course given Sommer’s political affiliations).
Note that Sommer’s can’t render a professional opinion on the above because he has not read Dann’s complaint–assuming Sommer’s concedes that a lawyer would actually read the complaint before assessing its merit.
Eric says “Americans United for Separation of Church and State, formerly Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State, formed in 1947 to ensure that Black children not have the same opportunities to escape urban poverty as Catholic children (among other causes).”
Not surprisingly, this editorial comment did not appear in the linked Wikipedia article. I would guess that Eric means that Americans United for Separation of Church and state opposes giving tax money to Catholic Schools for either Catholic Children or black children who are mostly non Catholic. Catholic schools never got tax money when Catholic immigrants and their descendants went to Catholic schools, and many escaped urban poverty.
But what did you mean?.
Catholic children were typically eligible for parish subidies to attend parish schools. The demographic shifts that opened slots for non-Catholic Black schoolchildren increased the cost of tuition and availability of parish subsidies.
In any case, “giving tax money to Catholic Schools” is not an issue since a voucher is given to the parents/guardians for benefit of the child.
The important point is the obstructing approaches
2. Community schools (aka charters)
3. Cleveland voucher program
without ensuring the success of
1. K-12 reform based on the NEA’s “new unionism”
denies internationally recognized human rights to schoolchildren.
Apparently, human rights don’t figure into the thinking of AU supporters.
So Americans United for Separation of Church and State has something to do with subsidies that Catholic parishes gave to kids who lived there?
Are the internationally recognized human rights to good schools. So is the educational system, with its mix of local, state and federal funding and control violating these human rights? The funding system does violate the state Constitution according to several decisions which the Ohio Supreme Court decided not to enforce.
We do not have a system that provides schools like we provide hamburgers, i.e. people take money and go find a hamburger provider who sells them hamburgers. Chains of hamburger providers compete for peoples business. This works ok for hamburgers, but that is a more profitable enterprise than schools. Schools are much more complicated and less profitable.
We do have a system where government through school districts provide schools. It has mixed success, or of you agree with Mike Bock, mixed levels of lack of success. The worst problems are obviously among areas of concentrated poverty where there are fewer resources of all kinds.
Competition from non-traditional public schools has not been shown to do much good other than if you can be selective about the kids and parents you let in and let stay in. Catholic schools in urban areas did that. that helps some, but hurts others. Some choice is good just because situations are different and kids are different. However people could survive better without educations in the past than they can now, which raises the ante. Neither mom and pop charters nor the charter school chains have showed us much more than public systems, and there is not enough money in public education for a profit motive to do much. Mostly charters increase the overhead and inflict lots of uncertainties on the system. That would be OK if we were prepared to pay the additional costs, but we aren’t. The biggest problem is figuring out how to make up for the lack of various resources and experiences among a mass of kids who lack them, particularly when these kids are in high concentrations. The difference between public and charters does not fix that.
Stan, you write, “Schools are much more complicated and less profitable.
We do have a system where government through school districts provide schools.”
Government run public schools, of course, are not for profit organizations. But public schools have a ton of money flowing through them and a lot of people — employees, suppliers, building contractors, etc. — are extracting, for themselves, generous amounts of money from our non-profit public school system.
If the government was in charge of running the country’s grocery stores as non-profits, I’m sure that the managers and workers in such stores would personally profit — they would make good money, would have good pensions — and the pressure would be off. Overall, in government run grocery stores, it would be a safe bet that the managers and workers would become lazy and would accomplish much less. It is a safe bet that meeting the needs of the customer would become a much lower priority and meeting the needs of the bureaucracy would become the highest priority. And, if there was ever a movement to take the grocery monopoly away from the government, for certain, these government grocery stores would fight the movement and do everything possible to mold public opinion to support their interests.
Some years ago, I was amazed to learn that the national chairperson of The United Way was paid salary and benefits each year that exceeded one million dollars. I don’t know what the chairman’s compensation is today, but I’m sure it is a substantial amount of money each year. The United Way, like public schools, is a not for profit organization. At the end of each year, they can demonstrate that no profit was made. But in the larger scheme of things, there’s a lot of people associated with United Way who are certainly personally profiting.
Regardless that our public school system is a not for profit system, there are many people entrenched in the system counting on the system for their yearly income. When the NEA or OEA trash the concept of vouchers or charter schools, we need to see through their crocodile tears of “concern for the children.” The real concern is the concern for self preservation, self advancement. This concern is logical and needs to be respected, but it is not a concern that should drive the formation of public policy. The transformation that is needed for our system of public education is the change in the system of its structure of management
No-one wants to see a system in which they are employed, a system that has promised benefits and good retirement, become undermined and weakened. I feel sorry for employees of the auto industry who over the years have seen their economic prospects and their future degraded. The responsibility of the leadership of the OEA and NEA is to envision a process by which, over time, public education can be transformed in a way that is orderly and gives security to those in the present system. If 5% of the current system’s resources each year were devoted to the creation and development of a new system — one based on free market principles — in 20 years the whole system would be transformed. As it is going now, well before 20 years ever gets here, without major change, the public will rebel, and the possibility of orderly change will disappear.
The failure of the current charter school movement in Ohio is a failure of Government. Columbus has been a well spring of incompetence in this whole matter. The failure of charter schools is also a failure of the educational establishment. The OEA and NEA, the education departments of universities, are comfortable in the situation as it is now — because they are personally profiting — they feel they have the upper hand. Unions and universities could have done much to help guide the process for establishing effective charter schools; they could have guided the process in such a way that the interest of their members would have been advanced, and in wuch a way that more effective school models could have been developed and improved. But at every step union and educational leaders have undermined the formation of effective charter schools, and now, they are gleeful at charter school failures that predictably have occurred..
So what should charter schools look like and what are universities doing to prevent them? Teachers don’t want to have nonunion charter schools, so if being nonunion is what will make them work, then I guess so. But if teachers didn’t have unions they would be paid doodley squat and get messed over all the time. Is that what you want in charter schools. Actually teachers I know do in fact care about kids. If they wanted to get rich, they would be hedge fund managers.
So other than being nonunion and paying less and maybe imposing more, what are charter schools going to do different than they are doing now? My feeling is that charter schools have no more ability or resources than present public schools to solve the problems they are facing, And free market principles will not do that either.
When the NEA or OEA trash the concept of vouchers or charter schools, we need to see through their crocodile tears of “concern for the children.” The real concern is the concern for self preservation
Also note that NEA reaction can be quite negative whenever they suspect union busting as a motive for an educational policy.
So is the educational system, with its mix of local, state and federal funding and control violating these human rights?
Yes, as documented via the International Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Note that non-Catholics fare better in (93% Catholic Ireland) than Blacks fare in America, according to the respective CERD reports on education.
On would hope state’s attorneys general would live up to their legal responsibilities regarding CERD, but apparently priorities lie with gaining endorsement from teachers unions…
What is the report and what does it say? Too many Blacks do not get a good education in the US. Most would agree. Charter schools are required by some UN agency? What says that? Religious schools are required? What says that? Or are we dealing with complex social issues and overcoming lack of skills, a culture of poverty and inadequate resources?
Stan, I have a point of view about school reform that comes from teaching in a suburban, unionized, Ohio public school for many years. I am not hostile toward teachers. I agree with your observation, “teachers I know do in fact care about kids.”
What you may not be factoring into your thinking is the reality that many teachers in the present system are totally frustrated and discouraged — by the system itself. A huge percentage of idealistic young teachers — regardless of the time, work and money spent on acquiring a teaching license — throw in the towel, quit teaching, within five years. The present system is not structured to encourage, empower, or sustain teacher professionalism. Based on criteria of what characterizes a professional, teachers, in the present system simply do not have the status of professionals.
We need a system in which the role of teachers is radically transformed. I harp on the key concept of W. Edwards Deming — I’ll say it again — that 85% of the factors determining quality in a system are defined by the organizational structure of the system. The amount of quality outcomes from our educational system, compared to the amount of money poured into the system, is a disgrace. The Nation at Risk document from over twenty years ago said that if another country had somehow imposed our system of education on us — that so hampers and defeats us — that we would consider such an imposition an act of war. And public education, overall, is much worse now than when that report was made — regardless that tons of additional money has been thrown into the system since that report.
My point of view comes from a visceral understanding of the deplorable state of public education — its fraud, waste, its handicapping of talented and well meaning teachers, its failure to educate, its failure to even uphold a vision of what it means to be educated, its labeling and destruction of children, its false claims of “excellence.” My point of view is that there are many well meaning, hard working, dedicated individuals in the system — that is not the point — the point is, the system itself is at fault and the system must be changed.
I’ve tried to make the point in many ways. I’ve noted that East Germany produced the Trabant, West Germany produced the Volkswagan. Just in this exchange, above, I contemplated what grocery stores would look like if they were government run monopolies. Public education is a government run monopoly that has failed.
This monopoly of public education spends a lot of money and effort building up public support, and molding public opinion. A lot of this effort of self promotion and propaganda unethically comes from tax payer money, using taxpayers’ own money, telling them how wonderful the schools are doing, in order to gain even more taxpayer money. These efforts of self promotion have worked in the sense that the system has successfully resisted any fundamental change; the system today is pretty much like it was 20 years ago — but with even more power allocated to those controlling the system, the unions, the state legislature. Self promotion has worked in the sense that public opinion of schools today remains much higher than what makes sense.
Among those controlling the system are university schools of education. These have grown and become more prosperous as an outcome of increased governmental interference — while at the same time, they have shown themselves utterly incompetent to “train teachers” in any profound meaning of the phrase.
What is needed is a long term plan to transform the system. Anyone looking at the criteria for the establishment of charter schools, the structure of accountability for these schools, would have safely predicted that charter schools would have been the disaster that many of them have proved to be. Charter schools offered an easy means for a money grab of public funds. Of course, predictably, these schools would degrade teachers even further — because treating teachers as blue collar, non-union workers increased the money available for these operators to personally profit.
University leadership could have made a difference. Though empowered by the law to start their own charter schools — what a great opportunity to create a lab type school — universities took no leadership. Educational departments are fat and happy in the present system, they want to become even fatter — they would love for even more government mandates to increase their cash flow. They wanted charter schools to fail, because they are embedded in the present system.
The key question is: How can a system be designed and organized in which the principles of the free market that gives us lovely grocery stores and ever improved automobiles could be used to create an effective educational system? The key to such a system, I believe, is the creation of a new professionalism in education. They key is defining the purpose of the system and then aligning resources and structure toward achieving that purpose. The key is making decisions based on sound theory — sound theories of motivation, teaching, learning, growth. I would think that any school system who wants to move toward actually excellence — as opposed to the faux reward system of government awarded gold stars and stickers meted out in the State Report Card System — would be wise to take this point of view and determine a long range plan of transformation. I’m thinking 5% each year of a system’s budget should be allocated to the new system — via a process of Request for Proposals — with the idea that in 20 years the system would be transformed.
I need to unwind this response and write a more coherent essay on the matter.
Eric, you write, “Americans United for Separation of Church and State, formerly Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State, formed in 1947 to ensure that Black children not have the same opportunities to escape urban poverty as Catholic children (among other causes).”
You seem to be ascribing absolutely evil motives to this group, and, I’ve got to wonder if your charge is fair. There are real separation of church and state issues, constitutional issues, and I’ve got to wonder if the motivation of this group was more balanced than you assert.
There are real separation of church and state issues
And they can be addressed without sacrificing poor children on the altar of rabid secularism. But that’s too much to ask of some…
To recap, elected lawmakers established a multithreaded approach to addressing human rights of poor kids:
1. ed reform
2. charters
3. vouchers
AU attacks 3 and Marc Dann obediently harasses 2. Neither appear interested in Ohio’s constitutional obligations to pursue 1.
From the most recent report: “The Committee recommends … measures … to reduce the persistent ‘achievement gap’ between students belonging to racial, ethnic or national minorities and white students … by improving the quality of education provided to these students.”
Again, in part through the political efforts of AU, the United States denies Black families the “quality of education” Catholics provided for their own children. This is an internationally recognized human right denied for political reasons.
While maybe Trabants weren’t so great, General Motors isn’t so doing good either.
If we valued teachers and treated them as professionals, both in terms of the bureaucracy they are subject to and the low pay and prestige that no doubt comes from their history as being women and first step up from immigration or internal migration (here many came from Appalachia) so they didn’t have to be paid much or listened to. If getting a low wage workforce doesn’t help, what will.
I still don’t get the Education college thing. Law schools don’t mind that lawyers at least used to be prestigious and well paid (but read Barbara Ehrenreich on lawyer sweatshops). Medical schools likewise. Why would education colleges want to turn out people who will be frustrated and fail?
The market will only work if there is money to cover the expenses and make a profit so people want to enter the market. Tax payers aren’t prepared to spend that on public education. Besides educating people is different than producing Trabants or Chevrolets. It’s based a lot on relationships with people who can inspire. The other main thing its based on is selecting your students and to the extent you can skimming the cream, or at least dumping the dregs. That may work for the individual school but not for the system as a whole.That’s what we see in colleges but they don’t have to try to educate everyone, and they don’t.
None of this really looks at what needs to be overcome to get people out of poverty and the way they start out behind.
Why would education colleges want to turn out people who will be frustrated and fail?
Ed schools incentive: Graduates get their teaching licenses; school keeps accreditation
Ed faculty incentive: Earn tenure, publish.
So where is the incentive to ask superintendents and principals to report how the graduates fare or for ed schools to ask graduates if the school did right by them?
educating people is different than producing Trabants
Folks have a handle on that…
1992: Congress asked to establish Baldrige Award for Education
1993-1994: Award criteria developed
1995-1997: Award criteria piloted
1999: First year of education award
2001: First winners of education award.
When districts get sued for providing substandard education to minority students, plaintiffs don’t insist that quality be remediated through the nation’s Education Criteria for Performance Excellence.
Stan, you ask, “Why would education colleges want to turn out people who will be frustrated and fail?”
The university and college schools of education, of course, are not wanting their graduates to fail. But, the fact is many young teachers, who have spent a great deal of money and effort in acquiring a teacher license, give up on teaching within five years. In my judgment, this usually is a matter of system failure, rather than individual failure, and, there’s not much a school of education can do to prepare their graduates to deal with system failure. Similarly, the problem with the Trabant was not the fact that East German engineering schools were failing to properly educate engineers — I’m sure that many engineers entering the Trabant system were totally frustrated by the system.
So, schools of education are in a bind. They seek to give teacher candidates the means to succeed in the present system, but this requires that they gear down whole concepts — such as “succeed,” “discipline,” “educate,” and “teach” — and such gearing down legitimizes and perpetuates bad practices and operating theories inherent in the system. I wrote “(schools of education) have shown themselves utterly incompetent to ‘train teachers’ in any profound meaning of the phrase,” but I should have used the word “disinterested,” rather than “incompetent.”
Stan you object to a free market approach because you believe that a lot of additional money would need to be put into the system in order for such an approach to work. I disagree. There is already a ton of money already in the system. Dayton Public, according to this, spends $14,000 per year, per student. I didn’t think it was quite that much. The state average is about $9,000 per year per student. This doesn’t include capital outlay.
A free market approach might work in a lot of different ways. One simple idea is creating a Request for Proposal structure. Let’s say, of the per pupil of $9,000, $7,000 is available for the direct educational program. And so, suppose, as a potential teacher entrepreneur, you have the chance to respond to a RFP showing how you would educate 20 students for $140,000. The RFP would require a detailed plan of how the money would be spent — plus how you would use your fair share of use of already acquired buildings, vehicles, and equipment — how you would define success, how you would measure success, the theories you would employ to achieve success, and how those theories would work in practice. A free market approach would involve a competition of ideas, and a payoff for the best ideas / best plan for implementing good ideas. One big incentive to participate would be the opportunity to enjoy authentic professional status. Huge amounts of money are not needed to give incentive. The chance for increased monetary compensation would also be an incentive, but such teacher entrepreneurs may not be paid astoundingly more. Your concern about “skimming the cream,” about seeking to benefit the whole system, rather than a select few, is a fair concern. A carefully thought out RFP would address such concerns.
Not everyone who wants to teach would care to be a teacher entrepreneur, but, it seems to me, this new category of leaders should be cultivated as a means to improve the whole system. This would give schools of education in universities and colleges a whole new way to meaningfully motivate and educate prospective teacher leaders.
Eric, there may be some benefit to the Baldridge criteria as applied to education. But my impression is that this is a methodology that emphasizes data, making decisions based on data, etc. It is useful to look at data, but according to Deming, the more important factors impacting quality cannot be represented by data. So, I would expect to be disappointed with Baldridge because a school system who might start the process, I would expect would not address the core issues of clarification of purpose, and system organizational structure. Schools are great at window dressing, and creating committees whose report is that still another committee should be formed. Schools operate with a general understanding among the power players in the system that the fundamental system, the organizational structure, will not change. So, I would expect that at the end of a Baldridge process, the 85%, I keep talking about, would remain untouched. If you have an example where a school system experienced meaningful reform via Baldridge, I would like to see the reference. Meaningful reform, I believe, for one thing would result in tearing up the master contract — or, at least, outlining a process where it would be torn up, over time.
according to Deming
Ohio’s K-12 quality policy was developed via the Baldrige education criteria. The regional Deming users group helped with that effort.
“One simple idea is creating a Request for Proposal structure. Let’s say, of the per pupil of $9,000, $7,000 is available for the direct educational program. And so, suppose, as a potential teacher entrepreneur, you have the chance to respond to a RFP showing how you would educate 20 students for $140,000. The RFP would require a detailed plan of how the money would be spent — plus how you would use your fair share of use of already acquired buildings, vehicles, and equipment — how you would define success, how you would measure success, the theories you would employ to achieve success, and how those theories would work in practice. A free market approach would involve a competition of ideas, and a payoff for the best ideas / best plan for implementing good ideas.”
Sounds like what we have now, to some extent. Lesson plans? It also sounds like how social agencies get funded for projects usually in the short term. That volatility is bad enough there but schools particularly need to survive long term. So does the funding system decide which ideas it likes?
It also sounds like the gimmick of the year thing we saw in Dayton in the past. Do we want Montessori, Direct Instruction, Afrocentricism, phonics, who knows what else? Gimmicks haven’t worked, in part because they don’t address the problems. The other thing this seems to do is makes it sounds like individual teachers are like consultants, individual islands rather than as part of a community. Charter schools with the principal rather than the teacher in the entrepreneur role, were supposed to provide the facets of community. After a few years the best urban charters are about the equal of the best urban publics. Some that seemingly should have done well, due to the people involved and possible nontraditional resources they could bring, have not. The differences between publics and charters have not helped solve the problems. Generally charter advocates would like to see a marketplace prevail with the students and parents as funders, so good charters would attact parents and students and bad ones would not. In private trade schools, where the market approach is most prevalent, there are recurring problems with fraud and abuse, in part because schools are hard for people who don’t have access to insiders to evaluate. Contests in marketing will not necessarily be contests in the best education. Assuming the profit motive brought out the best (are hedge funds really the best or did they just find a profitable if ultimately destructive niche to exploit?) you have to be able to provide a decent product and then pay the entrepreneur with a profit. Despite the seemingly frustrating per pupil costs in urban systems (many of which are stuck with high overhead costs and expensive but high quality programs for the disabled) you can’t really get enough profit to make it worth.
I also remember in the 1990s the Edison School in DPS had a great record for a couple of years. But soon it was soon back to the usual urban performance. DPS shuffled the staff and that may be part of it. It seemed like there was some alignment of stars that kids, parents, teachers, administrators and the involved community came together for some brief moment of success, like some sports team that rises from the depth of the standings, wins a championship, and then falls back in a year or two. That seems to be what a hunt for great urban schools around the country gets. The answer may be that systematic generational poverty is a complex system that defies simple solutions, and certainly halfhearted and short term ones.
systematic generational poverty is a complex system that defies simple solutions, and certainly halfhearted and short term ones
Or it could be that leaders with the intelligence to address complex problems don’t get the support they deserve. Former Ohio Superintendent Zelman comes to mind…
Who’s responsibility is it to remind voters of their responsibility to elect officials who work together to solve complex problems?
Stan, you write, about urban education, “The answer may be that systematic generational poverty is a complex system that defies simple solutions, and certainly halfhearted and short term ones.”
The question is, what would an educational program look like that would not be half hearted or short termed and that would be effective regardless of systemic poverty?
If you believe that Deming’s 85% rule is correct, then what is required is a fundamental change in organizational structure. It seems clear to me that the present structure that is common in public schools — bureaucratic, hierarchical, centrally controlled — will not work regardless that tons of additional money might be pumped into it. Adding new programs or new approaches — the “gimmick of the year” you speak of — of course, will not be effective because, at most, this impacts only the 15% that, according to Deming, can be influenced by such actions. Saying that you are using Baldridge, or TQM, without addressing this 85%, confuses the question and simply brings discredit to the whole quality philosophy.
I agree, of course, that “Contests in marketing will not necessarily be contests in the best education.” My thought is that an RFP process could be effective in encouraging and empowering leadership that would bring forth workable, viable ideas and that through the process these ideas would be hammered into effective and practical plans. The essence of a free market approach, as I see it, is the establishment of a structure of opportunity whereby those with the best ideas, the greatest capacity to implement those ideas, the biggest commitment to provide the hard work needed for those ideas to reach fruition, can rise to leadership.
When you write, “you have to be able to provide a decent product and then pay the entrepreneur with a profit. … you can’t really get enough profit to make it worth,” you are rejecting a model quite different from I am proposing. You see an entrepreneur, like Whittle, maybe, of the Edison Schools, taking the place of a school bureaucracy, and creating a new bureaucracy, and then hiring principals and teachers to run a school program designed by the entrepreneur. This model that you reject, I also reject, because it fails to address what I believe should be a key goal of any restructuring — empowering teachers with professional prerogatives. One reason charter schools generally have failed is because charter schools copy the basic bureaucratic, hierarchical structure that has doomed public schools. I am suggesting a teacher entrepreneur system based on an RFP structure. In my thinking, the teacher is the entrepreneur — at least as a start to this whole process of public school transformation — just an an attorney starting his or her own practice or a medical doctor opening his own office, is an entrepreneur. Eventually, given the opportunity to develop his or her own authentic professionalism, as an additional incentive, such a teacher entrepreneur would probably develop materials and examples that might have a market value that could be franchised to other would be teacher entrepreneurs.
I appreciate this type of dialogue because it challenges me to articulate my thinking. As I said, I want to rewind this into a coherent essay and possibly a proposal for consideration by a local board of education. Authentic transformation of an educational system would be a long term process, no doubt fraught with difficulty. It would best happen at a local level if the local teacher union could embrace the notion and even take leadership in starting the process. I wonder why a Republican dominated system like Centerville, with a citizenry that is full of gung-ho free market advocates, would not seek to transform their government run bureaucratic school system into a free market one.
Eric, you ask, “Who’s responsibility is it to remind voters of their responsibility to elect officials who work together to solve complex problems?”
That question really gets to the heart of the matter. Our democracy is failing us.
The fact that our democracy is not working negatively impacts the opportunity to make meaningful educational reform. I wrote on the book by David Matthews of the Kettering Foundation, “Reclaiming Public Education by Reclaiming Our Democracy.” Matthews says in his book, “The Kettering Foundation’s work is not about the argument that education is essential to democracy. That’s already been made. This book is about the reverse argument: that democracy is essential to education.”
“I am suggesting a teacher entrepreneur system based on an RFP structure. In my thinking, the teacher is the entrepreneur — at least as a start to this whole process of public school transformation — just an an attorney starting his or her own practice or a medical doctor opening his own office, is an entrepreneur. Eventually, given the opportunity to develop his or her own authentic professionalism, as an additional incentive, such a teacher entrepreneur would probably develop materials and examples that might have a market value that could be franchised to other would be teacher entrepreneurs.”
Entrepreneurs. like solo practitioners in medicine and law, are honored more in the breach than the observance. We may need them but we don’t reward them much. The most rewarded people seem to be salespeople or manipulators like the hedge fund managers. Maybe that’s why Centerville school system doesn’t work like you’d expect.
Anyway, maybe somewhere someone will try a charter school based on your model, a collective of entrepreneurial teachers. That may be really great in an affluent educated community. Would it work in the inner city, without a lor more including a lot more resources per kid/ Maybe we’ll find out.
Thought I’d share this:
Speaking at the National Press Club, [AFT President] Weingarten stated: “With the exception of vouchers, which siphon scarce resources from public schools, no issue should be off the table, provided it is good for children and fair to teachers.”
By what authority does a teachers’ union president take an alternative for complying with human rights “off the table?”
This is doubly problematic since Catholic schools have a reputation for doing a good job teaching civic responsibility–which public schools could emulate, if they were fully responsive to the General Assembly’s expectations.
So if the best option available for a child to learn principles of democracy and ethics were at a parochial school, the AFT and AU would apparently deny that opportunity to the child, if the child’s family were unable to afford it without a voucher.
From the dubious endorsements department:
I was talking to NEA executive director John Wilson about his personal favorites for education secretary … including Gov. Mike Easley of North Carolina and former Gov. Ronnie Musgrove of Mississippi, among others. In a later email, he mentioned Tom Vilsak, former governor of Iowa, Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, Ted Strickland of Ohio, and Richardson, along with a former state superintendent, Inez Tenenbaum of South Carolina..
Would the executive director’s enthusiasm for these possible candidates for Ed Sec be based on their track record of accomplishments promoting human rights in education? If not, then what?
I didn’t have time to read all the above comments, but I have some responses to some of the ones I did read.
As a former assistant attorney general in the 1980s, and having kept in contact with people in that office since then, I have some knowledge about how the office works. I am aware that over the years, under both Democratic and Republican attorneys general, there have been instances where atttorneys in the office believed that extremely serious violations of law were occurring to the detriment of the public. Although those attorneys wanted to act against the wrongdoing, approval to do so was not given by persons at the highest level of the agency. And the only reason anyone below them could conceive of for the failure to act was some type of politcal reason. Attorneys there also got the impression that certain political interests were so wealthy and politically powerful that there was no way the AG’s Office was going to take them on.
Based on general statements from persons working under Dann in the AG’s Office, I believe that Dann was not subscribing to that practice. In response to requests to act, the assistant AG’s were receiving approvals rather than cryptic disapprovals. Dann appeared to be looking at matters from a populist perspective of helping the public rather than making political calculations about which special interests were too big and powerful to offend. His attitude in that regard was displayed when he sued some of America’s largest corporations. There is no way that some leaders in state government would take such an action.
In regard to education, people can argue about the lawsuits against charter schools, but the fact is that some of the schools agreed to improve operations as a result of the lawsuits. And other schools contacted the AG’s office to ask what improvements they needed to make to avoid similar lawsuits. Thus, there is no doubt that the lawsuits improved the quality of education for children in Ohio.
Now having almost 27 years of experience in state government, I have seen many instances over the years of state employees getting fired, harassed, or otherwise punished for trying to do the right thing for the public. A different removal standard or disciplinary standard was applied to them. They were going against powerful special interests who want to use state government for enriching themselves rather than serving the public. Those special interests have been very successful at doing so. And people in state government who went along with the wrongdoing, or remained silent about it, got promotions and ended up retiring with nice pensions.
The treatment of Dann fit into that pattern. It seems like way too much of a coincidence that the one elected state official who had very strong populist tendencies – and was operating the AG’s Office accordingly – would be removed from office for relatively minor errors, whereas nothing happens to public officials who have done far worse.
Strickland and other Democratic leaders have not explained why they applied a different standard to Dann than they did to Taft, Bush, Clinton., and others. The only conclusion I can reach is that they believe that a lower removal standard should be applied to populist officholders than to officials who do the bidding of powerful special interests. (The same as often happens to people in lower levels of state government who try to do the right thing.)
But I encourage people to ask Strickland and the other Democratic leaders for an explanation for the different treatment they gave to Dann. I haven’t had any success in obtaining one from them.
some of the schools agreed to improve operations as a result of the lawsuits. And other schools contacted the AG’s office to ask what improvements they needed to make to avoid similar lawsuits
How might this be verified? Would an open records request be necessary? How, exactly, does appeasing the AG’s office correlate with meeting human rights standards that the AG’s office does not appear to be enforcing in the (unionized) public schools? Will Governor Strickland be incorporating Marc Dann’s incentivizing measures into his education plan?
I encourage people to ask Strickland and the other Democratic leaders for an explanation …
More important would be an explanation of Governor Strickland’s treatment of former State Superintendent Zelman. Will even one of the 17 US Ed Department nominations President Obama sends to the Senate have match Dr. Zelman’s record of improving education? Her efforts on global competitiveness? Or civil rights (acknowledged by the Leadership Conference for Civil Rights)?