Fans of Common Core should read this outstanding article by Kevin Williamson on what we can learn about large-scale reform efforts from the VA scandal.
First, Williamson makes the point that reform efforts are often counterproductive even when everyone wants the same outcome:
Democrats did not want the hospitals that care for our veterans to be catastrophically mismanaged while administrators set about systematically destroying the evidence of their incompetence, and Republicans did not want that, either. Independents are firmly opposed to negligently killing veterans. It doesn’t poll well. Everybody is so opposed to that outcome that we created a cabinet-level secretariat to prevent it and installed as its boss Eric Shinseki, a highly regarded former Army general. We spent very large sums of money, billions of dollars, to prevent this outcome, almost trebling VA spending from 2000 to 2013 even as the total number of veterans declined by several million.
Nobody wanted these veterans dead, but dead they are. How is it possible that the government of the United States of America — arguably the most powerful organization of any sort in the history of the human race, in possession of a navy, a nuclear arsenal, and a vast police apparatus — cannot ensure that its own employees and contractors do not negligently kill its other employees and former employees? Never mind providing veterans with world-class medical care — the federal government cannot even prevent bureaucratic homicide. All of the political will is behind having a decent VA, and there is nothing to be gained politically from having a horrific one. How can it be that, with everybody free to vote as he pleases and to propose such policies as please him, we end up with what nobody wants?
Efforts to reform the VA were not laid low by people who wanted veterans to die. Applications of this principle to the rhetoric of CC supporters should be obvious.
The larger point of the piece, however, is that reformers can’t reform unless they have a mental model of how the universe works, but the universe is far more complex than any model the human mind is capable of constructing. The more centralized control your reform requires, the more the real complexity of the universe will defeat your reforms. Conversely, the more your reforms move toward decentralization, the more success they’re likely to have because you’re working with complexity instead of against it.
Let’s call it Williamson’s Razor, the political analogue of Ockham’s Razor. Just as Ockham would have us adopt the hypothesis that fits the facts with the fewest assumptions, Williamson would have us support the reform that alleviates the problem with the least centralized control.
That’s why school choice succeeds at raising standards where centralized efforts to raise standards fail. Choice first, standards second.
First George Will stole Greg’s money as a movie star, and now it appears that Jonah Goldberg — in the very same Fox News segment! — had intended to make the same point that Greg made earlier this week.
Folks, from the moment you set yourself up as the dictator of the system,you officially own everything that happens in the system. This is not a new phenomenon. This is simply what you get when you announce that you have set a single standard for a huge, sprawling, decentralized system with literally millions of decision-makers, very few of whom have much incentive to do what you want, but very many of whom have some pet project they’d like to push through using your name to do it.
One of the problems the Obama administration faces with regard to Obamacare is that basically any adverse changes to health care will be blamed on Obamacare, even if the law has little to nothing to do with it. That’s because Obama and the Democrats vowed that Obamacare would transform the entire health-care sector. As a result any changes in that sector can be chalked up to Obamacare. In other words, Obama broke it, now he owns it. At least for public schools in 45 states, the same will likely hold true for Common Core. Not every stupid decision by a school administrator should be laid at the feet of Common Core, but because Common Core is transforming public education it will be easy to blame it for any bad decisions.
Not only that, but they both used the same example to buttress their point: California superintendent Mohammad Z. Islam blaming the Common Core for the ridiculous decision to have students write a paper taking sides on the question of whether the Holocaust occurred.
Greg, there is yet hope for your future as a talking head!
Before things get out of hand, which they will when this hits the rounds, let me say something about this horrifying story.
The Rialto public school district asked eighth graders to write an essay about whether the Holocaust really happened. Students were pointed to several informational documents to help them, including one that argued the Holocaust was a “hoax” invented by nefarious Jewish groups to raise money. The assignment will be changed.
Interim Superintendent Mohammad Islam said he was going to talk to administrators to “assure that any references to the Holocaust ‘not occurring’ will be stricken on any current or future Argumentative Research assignments,” according to KTLA-5.
But this is not just an anti-Semitism story. Common Core has, of course, been invoked. The L.A. chapter of the ADL seems to have originated the CC connection:
ADL does not have any evidence that the assignment was given as part of a larger, insidious, agenda. Rather, the district seems to have given the assignment with an intent, although misguided, to meet Common Core standards relating to critical learning skills.
Uh-huh. However that may be, media reports are already picking up the CC connection from ADL and re-broadcasting it.
Now of course it’s nonsense to attribute this kind of thing to the Common Core as such. This is a locally generated scandal, and no doubt Mr. Islam will not rest until he gets to the bottom of it and makes sure those responsible are held to account.
At the same time, I have never had much sympathy for CC supporters who beat their breasts and wail every time a local scandal (poor exam questions, bad pedagogy, etc.) is labeled a “Common Core” scandal and laid at the feet of CC.
Folks, from the moment you set yourself up as the dictator of the system, you officially own everything that happens in the system. This is not a new phenomenon. This is simply what you get when you announce that you have set a single standard for a huge, sprawling, decentralized system with literally millions of decision-makers, very few of whom have much incentive to do what you want, but very many of whom have some pet project they’d like to push through using your name to do it.
When you undertake a huge reform effort, you have only three options:
Loose: Allow systems to adopt Reform X if they really want to. You get fewer systems adopting it, but those that adopt it will really adopt it.
Tight: Force, bribe and cajole systems to adopt Reform X, then take over the daily responsibility of running those systems to enforce the reform.
Tight-Loose: Force, bribe and cajole systems to say they’re adopting Reform X, but don’t take over their daily operations.
What we have with CC is case #3. And the unavoidable reality of case #3 is that everyone at every point in the system will suddenly start doing whatever they wanted to do but were previously forbidden or unable to do, and will call it Reform X. I feel embarrassed that I have to point out these obvious realities.
Common Core did not invent most of the awfulness being done in the name of Common Core, but it opened the back door for all the awfulness to slip in. Simplest solution: close the door.
A good Higgy nomination is a tough target to hit. As we found out last year, your pick can be rejected for being too powerful and thus being more a case of BSDD (Big Scary Dictator Disorder) than PLDD (Petty Little Dictator Disorder), as happened to my nomination of David Sarnoff. But your nomination can also be rejected for being not powerful enough, and thus not making a sufficiently large contribution to the worsening of the human condition to merit the award; this was the rationale given by the judges for not selecting Jay’s nomination of Louis Michael Seidman.
So the big behind-the-scenes bigshots who pull the real strings of power are out, and TV blowhards who just talk about what the bigshots do are also out. The core value of the Higgy is “arrogant delusions of shaping the world”; the bigshots are not deluded in thinking they can shape the world, whereas the blowhards don’t really even try to shape the world so much as describe those who do.
With all that in mind, I nominate Paul G. Kirk, Jr. for the Higgy, for inventing the “free speech zone,” also known as the “First Amendment area.”
As you can see from the image above, the basic idea of free speech zones is that “constitutional first amendment rights” are only to be exercised in government-designated areas. They are now used in virtually all major events, such as national political conventions; they are also set up anywhere something controversial is happening that attracts protests. They’ve been in the news lately in connection with the Bureau of Land Management’s dispute with the Bundy family in Nevada. As Mark Steyn comments, “The ‘First Amendment Area’ is supposed to be something called ‘the United States.'”
Gone is the old idea of America as the one country on the face of God’s earth where literally anyone can just stand there on the sidewalk talking to anyone who will listen, or where people can organize to protest the actions of the powerful in genuinely public spaces. The pseudo-genius of the free speech zone is that government doesn’t forbid you from speaking per se, it simply designates the zone in a secluded, out of the way place, destroying the public nature of your speech.
Yes, everyone agrees that there have to be some limits on the use of public space; if ten different groups all want to have huge rallies in the town square at the same time, you’ll run into problems. But, again, the pseudo-genius of the free speech zone is that it shifts us from dealing with that kind of coordination problem to the removal of free speech from public spaces entirely. It’s a transition from “speak as you will, unless your activities get in other people’s way, and then we have to find some accommodation for competing claims,” to “you may not speak in public places, lest you get in other people’s way.”
But of course the real motive behind the creation of free speech zones is not to avoid coordination problems. It is to prevent protests from besmirching the public image of big events and other things that powerful officials want to run smoothly. These zones are intended to isolate “free speech” from actual public participation, in order to create the appearance that all is smiles and unicorns in the sun-kissed lands of modern America, under the benevolent rule of our lords and masters, whose benevolence is proven by the fact that they generously grant us free speech zones.
Kirk’s actions in inventing the free speech zone exemplify the core value of the Higgy exceptionally well. He was chairman of the Democratic party during its 1988 national convention, which seems to be generally agreed upon as having pioneered the use of these zones. And it’s pretty clear that Kirk’s goal was to silence free speech in public places. Consider this contemporary account:
But even those groups that are cooperating with the system are upset that the official “free-speech zone” is too far from the convention arena (in fact, it’s about 500 yards away, down a hill, around a corner and hidden by a hotel-and-shopping complex). “You can’t be seen by delegates in the ‘free- speech zone,’ ” complained Peterson.
“The city keeps telling us that the buses bringing delegates will let them off right across from the protest area, so they’ll have to see us,” said Paul Cornwell, chief organizer of Alternative ’88. “But you know how that’ll go. It’s going to be about 100 degrees out there and all the delegates are going to zoom into the air conditioning as fast as they can.”…
Protesters also were angered to learn – during a hearing on the suit – that the city plans to use the street that separates the “free-speech zone” from the Omni Center to park the delegates’ buses.
“In addition to putting us out of sight, they’re going to form a barricade of parked buses,” Peterson said.
Kirk seems to have drawn his inspiration from the Planning Office in Hitchhiker’s Guide:
The tradition has continued in the use of free speech zones ever since.
If this were effective in silencing speech, Kirk might not qualify for the Higgy on grounds that he’s a case of BSDD. But in fact free speech zones don’t silence free speech. Protestors ignore them; note that the quote above begins with “But even those groups that are cooperating with the system . . .” There were a number of groups that didn’t cooperate with Kirk’s system in 1988. The public image of the event was even more effectively spoiled than it would have been by a peaceful public protest.
By contrast, when Communist authorities in China copied our model of free speech zones (read those words again: Communist authorities in China copied our model of free speech zones) during the 2008 Olympics, it had few difficulties. Over in China, free speech zones are BSDD. Here in America, they’re PLDD.
True to form, today the rallies in Nevada were not held in the designated free speech zone, and protesters got into nasty conflicts with authorities. Ultimately the authorities – who were actually in the right as regards the merits of the case, but who had blown everything out of proportion and were more concerned with swaggering around with guns than with settling the dispute in a reasonable way – had to back off in humiliation.
Huge shock: people who are highly motivated enough to turn out for a protest do not simply bow their heads and do as they’re told when they’re told that free speech is no longer allowed in genuinely public spaces. If you deny them a legitimate opportunity to make their voice heard, that only makes them more angry and more determined to make their voices heard. So even when the lawful authorities are in the right, their efforts to silence dissent only make them look wrong and undermine their ability to enforce the rules.
Talk about arrogant delusions of shaping the world! I’m proud to nominate Paul G. Kirk, Jr. for The Higgy.
Matt complains about “coming chaos in student testing” because opponents of Common Core don’t agree on what should replace it. As I’ve been arguing in the comment thread, the American political system is designed to allow messy, chaotic coalitions to form quickly among people who don’t agree about much but want to oppose something that they all dislike, even if they don’t agree about why they dislike it or what should replace it.
You want to know why that’s happening in the case of Common Core testing? Stuff like this:
I’d like to tell you what was wrong with the tests my students took last week, but I can’t. Pearson’s $32 million contract with New York State to design the exams prohibits the state from making the tests public and imposes a gag order on educators who administer them. So teachers watched hundreds of thousands of children in grades 3 to 8 sit for between 70 and 180 minutes per day for three days taking a state English Language Arts exam that does a poor job of testing reading comprehension, and yet we’re not allowed to point out what the problems were.
Imagine how that sounds to parents. Jim Geraghty comments in his email blast:
We live in a world where Ed Snowden’s revealed all of our biggest national-security secrets, but parents in New York State can’t know what’s on the tests the kids are taking. What, are they trying to design a system with as little accountability as possible?
Yes, they are.
You would not have this huge anti-CC coalition drawing together people who agree about nothing else if CC were not being done in such a way as to generate huge opposition from a very diverse set of constituencies. And the CC coalition has proven that it is not willing to bend even an inch to accommodate those concerns.
As long as the CC coalition behaves the way it does, no one has any right to complain about the coalition that has formed against it. They are right to work together to oppose CC without waiting for consensus to emerge on an alternative.
I will keep on saying it and saying it: The core issue is trust. Nothing else matters. The system has lost the trust of parents, not because the parents are paranoid but because the system actually does not deserve their trust. Nothing else is going to go right until the system earns back the parents’ trust.
Update: More analysis of testing concerns from Rick Hess: “Four years after these testing consortia launched, I still can’t get answers to practical questions about whether the results will provide the kind of valid, reliable data needed to support transparency, accountability, and informed competition.”
Shorter Yuval Levin: The Feds couldn’t make the Obamacare website in three years, then they outsourced the job to the private sector, which did it in six weeks, and are now bragging this proves Big Government can do the big jobs after all. So the obvious thing to do is outsource the actual provision of the health care to the private sector, declare victory and go home. The Gordian Knot of Big Government, cut at last!
Yes, that glorious time of year has come once again – it’s time to post or send in your nominations for the William Higinbotham Inhumanitarian of the Year award. As the notorious younger twin to JPGB’s prestigious Al Copeland Humanitarian of the Year award, “The Higgy” recognizes outstanding achievement in the field of petty crapulence.
Nominate someone who worsens the human condition in a way that meets the judges’ criteria for the award:
Higinbotham’s failing was in mistaking self-righteous proclamations for actually making people’s lives better in a way that video games really do improve the human condition. So “The Higgy” will not identify the worst person in the world, just as “The Al” does not recognize the best. Instead, “The Higgy” will highlight individuals whose arrogant delusions of shaping the world to meet their own will outweigh the positive qualities they possess.
This year we’re inaugurating a new tradition of launching The Higgy on April 1. It’s a very fitting practice, given the emphasis in the judges’ comments last year on the role of foolishness in evaluating the merits of a nominee. The ideal Higgy nominee is not just someone who makes the world worse, but who has “arrogant delusions” that “self-righteous proclamations” improve the world. But don’t worry, the ancient custom – established by our forefathers in a distant age now lost to history – of announcing the winner on the only appropriate day (April 15) shall not change.
Last year saw a spirited competition that made the judges proud. I nominated David Sarnoff, who ruined the lives of the inventors of television and FM radio. Jay nominated Louis Michael Seidman, who provided spurious legitimization that helps officeholders get away with disobeying the supreme law of the land in the pursuit of their selfish ends. But Matt’s nomination of the winner, Pascal Monnet, surpassed all our fondest expectations for The Higgy. As Matt relates:
UX is a clandestine group of Parisians who make use of the underground tunnels to break into museums in order to restore neglected pieces of art. Pascal Monnet is a museum administrator who did everything in his power to shut them down…The group invests their time, effort and money into restoration projects neglected by the state, and even gives pointers to museum administrators regarding the flaws in their security. Armed with a map of the underground tunnel networks beneath Paris, UX members set up workshops in order to conduct late night restoration projects. In 2006, they decided to fix a large clock within the Pantheon…After fixing the clock, UX notified the administration of the Pantheon, whereupon the story started to go wrong…[Bernard] Jeannot’s then-deputy, Pascal Monnet, is now the Pantheon’s director, and [on top of Jeannot’s huge lawsuit] he has gone so far as to hire a clockmaker to restore the clock to its previous condition by resabotaging it. But the clockmaker refused to do more than disengage a part—the escape wheel, the very part that had been sabotaged the first time. UX slipped in shortly thereafter to take the wheel into its own possession, for safekeeping, in the hope that someday a more enlightened administration will welcome its return.
In the face of such Higinbothamesque behavior, the mind simply boggles. But does Monnet stand alone, or are there more Higgy-worthy scoundrels out there awaiting our discovery? Dear readers, it’s up to you to bring further vile offenders to light so we can dishonor them!
Posted by Greg Forster 
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