LAST CHANCE FOR STANDARDS NOW LOST IN CALIFORNIA

California's lowered-expectation Democrats have embarked on a pleasantly foul strategy to cope with the state's horrific national ranking of 48 out of 50 states in K-12 academic performance - cancel entirely the already-tabled high school exit exam required to receive a diploma. The exam has become a public relations nightmare for the ruling leftists who dominate both bodies of the legislature in Sacramento.

Ironically, Democrats can't seem to escape the responsibilities and consequences of some of the good decisions made by other Democrats. The high school exit exam, the brainchild of one-time Democrat state senator, now Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O' Connell, and the mantelpiece of former "education governor" Gray Davis, was enacted into law in 1999, and scheduled for first use with the state's graduating class of 2004. However, in July 2003, the California State Board of Education issued a memo titled "State Board of Education Delays Consequences of California High School Exit Exam. Decision postpones exit exam as graduation requirement to class of 2006." The critical portion of the memo reads as follows:

The action means students in the classes of 2004 and 2005 are no longer required to pass the exit exam as a condition of earning a high school diploma. Instead, the class of 2006 will be the first class that must pass the exit exam as a requirement of graduation. The State Board delayed the exit exam in the wake of a recent independent external evaluation that found the test has been a "major factor" in boosting standards-based instruction and learning but that many students, for different reasons, may not have benefited from courses of initial and remedial instruction to master the required standards.

Translated - the state was worried that an estimated 30-40 percent of 2004 examinees would have failed the test, resulting in thousands of lawsuits filed by angry parents.

This type of exam is nothing new. High school exit exams are now required in 19 states. So, a pioneering "Queen Bee of Self Esteem" has arrived to save the day. Her name is Karen Bass, a newly elected assemblywoman from Los Angeles. According to Jim Sanders of the Sacramento Bee Capitol Bureau ("Activist takes office, comes out swinging," March 14, 2005):

"Bass, the state's only African American female legislator, is a former nurse and physician's assistant with brown belts in tae kwon do and hapkido martial arts.

"The freshman Los Angeles Democrat is likely to need both skills; toughness and compassion, in tackling one of California's most controversial education issues: the high school exit exam.

"Shortly after unpacking her bags at the Capitol, Bass launched a bid to eliminate the requirement that no diploma be given to high school students who fail the exam, beginning next year.

"If you begin taking the test in the 10th grade and you're not passing it, what's your incentive to finish high school?" Bass asked. "The last thing in the world we want to do is increase the dropout rate."

How inspiring! Just what every ambitious kid needs.a mentor in calling it quits. Here is the key language of her proposal (AB 1531):

Existing law requires, commencing with the 2003-04 school year and each school year thereafter, each pupil completing grade 12 to successfully pass the exit examination as a condition of graduation from high school. Existing law requires the board, in consultation with the Superintendent, to study the appropriateness of other criteria by which high school pupils who are regarded as highly proficient but unable to pass the exit examination may demonstrate their competency and receive a high school diploma.

Is she serious? "High school pupils who are regarded as highly proficient but unable to pass the exit examination?" What is a high school senior "highly proficient" at if they can't pass a test that educators rate as equivalent to 10th-grade standards? Maybe this language is only an invitation to lawyers to start feeding at the public trough...

It would seem that Ms. Bass should be more focused on content, aptitude and qualifying students for advancement, and less on doctrinaire liberalism, mediocrity, and self esteem. What is more expensive to the child and the state as a whole? An uneducated dropout, or a valuable contributing individual who works hard in school, sees the value of academic success, and prepares themselves for a lifelong competitive world? The dropout rate is already a huge problem. Ms. Bass's "solution" will only make it worse.....

Parents who continue to vote Democrat over progressive policies like these should realize that they are being victimized by deceitful politicians who purport to help their families......

Not a single parent should be satisfied if their undereducated child ends up with backbreaking menial work washing dishes and cleaning houses because nothing more was expected of them, when they could have become doctors, scientists, accountants, and engineers. The "activists" in control have decided that educational excellence takes a back seat to the raw pursuit of political power on the back of innocent kids.

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STUDENTS LEAD THE WAY IN DEFENDING FREE SPEECH

It isn't often that a group of college professors is soundly and thoroughly embarrassed by a collection of mere students in an intellectual arena. But that's exactly what happened at the end of February, when the University of Alabama's Student Senate passed a sharp resolution directly opposing a heavy-handed, short-sighted and illiberal "hate speech" resolution that their Faculty Senate had already passed. The Faculty Senate's original resolution called for the creation of a series of new regulations which threatened to drastically curtail First Amendment rights at their public university. With their remarkably independent and sophisticated response, UA's students have schooled their teachers with a much-needed lesson in the fundamentals of a free and open society.

The Faculty Senate's original "hate speech" resolution came down after an incident that smacks of tired familiarity to any casual observer of campus political correctness. UA hired a comedian who came and made some offensive remarks to a gay student. Like clockwork, with factory-produced fervor and indignation, the college administration put out a statement condemning this "shameful incident" of "bigotry and malicious aggression" which was a "personal attack" on a student. Everyone sat around rubbing their temples, bemoaning oppression and intolerance for a few days, until some towering, renaissance-minded enthusiasts were struck with the brilliant and novel idea to finally put an end to hate speech, once and for all. It just can't help but make your heart warm....

Now, it's not clear whether they stopped to ponder the fact that Christians and conservatives happen to be individuals with group affiliations and personal characteristics that have historically made for some pretty good satire. Nor has it been reported whether or not whatever was left of the faculty's liberal souls shriveled up and died immediately upon seeing themselves approve the words "control behavior" and "standards of civility" in the same sentence, advocating censorship of words and ideas.

But imagine the professors' shock and inner turmoil when they received an open letter from a civil liberties watchdog group, with Stanford and Harvard law credentials, accusing them of trampling on the First Amendment. The letter, from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, stated: "The United States Supreme Court has consistently held that empowering public officials to ban speech based on its content will naturally result in the silencing of dissenting viewpoints." The letter also demonstrated that the spirit of the "vague and dangerously overbroad restriction" proposed by the Faculty Senate clearly served to undermine the values of free inquiry and open discussion that are at the heart of any healthy university.

Picking up on FIRE's message, the members of UA's Student Senate laid out their obvious case. First, they argued, "The right to free speech is an inalienable human and civil right that is protected by the United States Constitution and the Constitution of Alabama." They continued, "Free speech is absolutely vital to the mission of any university, where new and often controversial ideas must be discussed openly and rationally in order to make advances in knowledge." And as they also pointed out, "Speech codes have been used by other colleges and universities to silence dissenting speech, not merely so-called 'hate speech,' and to persecute those with unpopular opinions." Finally, they used a Thomas Jefferson quote to demand that UA should explicitly protect, not reject, the individual rights of free expression that the First Amendment guarantees.

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Rules and regulations are paralyzing US schools: "A new study from the bipartisan legal reform coalition Common Good found U.S. schools are greatly over-regulated, in many cases to the point of paralysis. The study details thousands upon thousands of laws and regulations that apply to public schools in New York City. The study was released on November 29 as an interactive Web interface. ... The study, titled 'Over Ruled: The Burden of Law on America's Public Schools,' found more than 60 separate sources of laws and regulations governing the operation of a typical public high school in New York City, imposing thousands of specific obligations on school officials."

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

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