The real Common Core conflict

Common Core cover cutoutBy Steve Brawner
© 2015 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

The Governor’s Council on Common Core Review didn’t drop any bombshells when it announced its recommendations July 30. It had already made its mark when it pre-recommended in June that Arkansas join the many states exiting the year-end PARCC exam, which Arkansas has since done.

But while the Council may have calmed the waters, which was part of its purpose, the conflict will continue. That’s because the Common Core debate isn’t just about what schools teach, which would be important enough. It also reflects the country’s fundamental divisions.

The Common Core is a set of math and language standards adopted by most states – standards meaning “what students should know” but supposedly not “how teachers should teach.” It was originally proposed by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers as a way to create consistency and comparability among the nation’s schools. The State Board of Education adopted the standards in Arkansas in 2010 without much public discussion, which is part of the problem.

The Common Core partly was a reaction to No Child Left Behind, signed by President George W. Bush in 2002. That law gave the federal government the ability to punish schools if their students weren’t proficient but then let states create their own definitions of proficiency – and their own tests. Because states had a financial interest in their students being “proficient,” the result was a wide variety of standards that often weren’t very rigorous.

The 17-member Council, chaired by Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin, commendably held more than 40 hours of hearings and also hosted public meetings in nine cities. It eventually produced six pages of findings and recommendations. Among the council’s assertions is that “a significant majority of educators generally approve” of the Common Core and that educators “are almost unanimous” in the belief that the Common Core is better than Arkansas’ previous standards.

So what are the problems? Among them are a lack of communication between policymakers and the public, and uneven implementation among the state’s school districts. The Council reported that common criticisms of the standards ranged from “well-founded to completely baseless” and often pertained to issues not actually mandated by the Common Core. For example, those weird math problems that have frustrated so many parents are part of a teaching method that complies with Common Core but isn’t required by it.

Among the Council’s recommendations is that the Department of Education continue studying the issue, which it was already doing, that the standards remain under Arkansas’ control, and that they be fluid and changeable.

Will 40 hours of hearings, nine public meetings, and the slaying of PARCC turn down the heat on this issue? Probably some. A public discussion finally has been had. The longer these are the standards, the more entrenched they will become.

On the other hand, the Common Core controversy isn’t just about the Common Core. Instead, the controversy is really about the country’s division, dysfunction and distrust. These days, any national policy effort, even one originating outside the federal government, will be treated skeptically by many. That’s understandable because power tends to centralize. What begins as a voluntary effort by states could become a federal government mandate.

So the divide over Common Core is about educational standards, but it’s also about Obamacare and President Obama, who had little to do with the Common Core until he expressed support for it and his Department of Education unfortunately started handing out grants to encourage it. It’s about the Confederate flag and Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner and all the other things we’re fighting about. Really, if there’s been a federal school takeover, it happened when Bush signed No Child Left Behind. But that occurred early in his administration, a few months after the September 11 attacks, when the country was relatively unified and its attention focused on external enemies.

The Council has finished its work. We still have the Common Core standards, which are probably better than what we had. We have a less intrusive year-end test. We still have a lot of distrust.

And we still have educators trying to do their jobs in the midst of an ongoing education controversy that’s about a lot more than education. School starts this month.

The attention-based democracy

By Steve Brawner
© 2015 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

You’re probably familiar with the concept that ours is now an information economy. That concept isn’t entirely correct.

In a 1997 article in Wired magazine, former theoretical physicist Michael Goldhaber argued persuasively that economies traditionally have assigned value to tangible goods based on scarcity, but there’s no scarcity of information in the information age. In fact, consumers are overwhelmed by it. Instead, what’s really valuable these days is attention. There’s always another link on which to click, but people only have one brain.

If we’re living in an attention-based economy, then we’re definitely living in an attention-based presidential campaign, as these past few weeks have demonstrated. With 22 announced major party candidates (at last count), what really matters is who can stand out from the crowd. And who’s standing out right now is Donald Trump, leader (by far) in the Republican Party polls.

In the spirit of Trump, a master of hyperbole, I’ll make a somewhat hyperbolic statement: Donald Trump has the most liberal track record of any candidate to run for the Republican presidential nomination in a long time. He has donated a lot of money to Democrats (including Hillary Clinton, who he’s praised). And while he argues that was just the cost of doing business, he also was a registered Democrat and did not register as a Republican until 2009. Also in the past he has said that the economy does better under Democrats, that he supported nationalized health care, and that he was pro-choice on abortion.

Some of this occurred long ago, and he has changed his positions. That’s fine by me, because I also change my positions sometimes. But usually political candidates pay a price if people think they’re flip-flopping.

Trump is not paying that price, in large part because he’s the master of getting attention, and he’s used that ability to tap into some prevailing political undercurrents like no information-based candidate can hope to do. His statement that Mexico is sending rapists and other criminals across the border cost him a lot of business but gained him a lot of attention. Attention is more valuable, especially since a lot of Republican primary voters agree with what he said and will ignore his past political dealings and statements. Those things are mere information.

Eventually, the 17 Republican candidates will be winnowed to five or six, Trump included. The others are fighting for survival using whatever tools they can to stand out from the crowd. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said on the Senate floor that his own majority leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, had lied. The speech did not help Cruz’s standing in the Senate power structure, but it got him some attention. Arkansas’ former governor, Mike Huckabee, said that President Obama’s Iran deal was akin to marching Israel to “the door of the oven.” The Holocaust reference was condemned by many pundits, which was good for Huckabee – who, it should be pointed out, has always been a strong supporter of Israel. But he really struck gold when President Obama criticized him by name, saying his remarks were “part of just a general pattern that we’ve seen that … would be considered ridiculous if it weren’t so sad.” You can bet the staff members in Huckabee’s Little Rock headquarters were exchanging high fives after that.

The glass-half-full perspective is that, in the end, hyperbole only gets a candidate so far. Once the field has shrunk, then this will become more of an information-based campaign, and if Trump, Huckabee or Cruz wins the nomination, it will be because Republican primary voters have focused on their beliefs, their histories, and which one of them can best beat Clinton.

The glass-half-empty perspective – and I’m trying not to engage in my own hyperbole, because the media works the same way as politics these days – is how vulnerable modern campaigns are to demagoguery. It’s not healthy when political viability comes from mere attention-getting, especially when that’s accomplished by riling people up. That’s probably always been the case to a degree, but the dangers are magnified when the country is so culturally divided and when candidates can use unlimited campaign funds to divide us even further.

In other words, these conditions may make it more possible for a candidate to be elected who’s really bad at governing but really good at standing out from the crowd. How can voters combat that? By gathering information, and paying attention.

Is having more choices at the ballot box worth all the trouble?

By Steve Brawner
© 2015 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

The unspoken question in Judge James Moody’s Eastern District courtroom Monday was, how much trouble should the election process undergo to accommodate candidates who aren’t going to win anyway, and also to accommodate Arkansans who want to vote for them?

The case, Moore v. Martin, involves two Marks. One is Mark Moore of Pea Ridge, an independent candidate – not a member of any party – who collected 39 percent of the vote in a two-person state legislative race in 2012 and wanted to run for lieutenant governor in 2014. The other is Mark Martin, who as secretary of state is the official in charge of elections, thereby making him the defendant.

The case concerns Act 1356 of 2013, which requires independent candidates to submit their required number of signatures when they file for election. In 2014, that meant they had to qualify by March 3, two months before the Republicans and Democrats held their primaries to choose their candidates. Under previous law, independents could file and then had until May 1 to collect their signatures – 3 percent of qualified voters with a maximum of 10,000 in state races and 2,000 in others. Because the Legislature moved the 2016 primary elections to March, independents this time must collect signatures by November. That’s November 2015, for an election that will occur in November 2016.

Moore says Act 1356 is unfair and unconstitutional. In non-2016 years, independent candidates must collect signatures door to door long before the election in the dead of winter. As a result, argued his attorney, James Linger of Tulsa, the number of independent legislative candidates dropped from seven in 2012 to one in 2014. Court precedent is largely on Moore’s side. In 1976, a three-judge district panel ruled in another Arkansas case, Lendall v. Jernigan, that an April signature deadline for independents was unconstitutional. That decision was affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Martin’s attorney, A.J. Kelly, argued that Moore doesn’t have standing – he can’t sue – because he didn’t try to collect signatures in 2014. He pointed out that one legislative candidate did qualify, so the law doesn’t restrict access for those who really want it. Finally, he said an early deadline is justified because it takes time to review signatures to make sure overseas Arkansans can be mailed a ballot before the election.

Watching the proceedings were the chairmen of the Libertarian Party and the Constitution Party. Act 1356 also gives third parties early deadlines. The Libertarians already have submitted their signatures and plan to hold their convention in November to nominate candidates – again, for an election that won’t occur until the next November.

Judge Moody said he’ll render a decision within a couple of weeks. If he bases it on the merits, it’s hard to see how Moore loses. There’s too much court precedent on his side, and there’s no reason to have such an early deadline for submitting signatures. According to Richard Winger, publisher of Ballot Access News, between 1891 and 1955, Arkansas independent candidates needed only 50 signatures for any office, and the petition deadline was 20 days before the general election. I don’t know why legislators voted for Act 1356, but the practical effect is to reduce the chances of anyone challenging their two big parties. But Moody could decide for Martin based on a procedural or technical matter.

A Gallup poll released in July found that 46 percent of Americans consider themselves to be independents. However, the reality is that many who say they are independent reliably vote for one party or the other. Even though the Constitution doesn’t mention political parties, for many structural and psychological reasons, our system gravitates toward having two of them. And so this case is about opening up the process for candidates who probably aren’t going to win.

On the other hand, at one time, the United States had two major political parties, and the Republican Party wasn’t one of them. Our society values giving people choices, in letting ideas flourish, in freedom of speech, and in giving the little guy a chance. Some candidates want to run as neither Republicans nor Democrats. Some voters would like the chance to vote for them. In a nation where consumers have dozens of choices in the cereal aisle, why pass laws that reduce the choices at the ballot box?

So is having more candidates and a more robust debate worth the trouble? We ought to lean toward saying yes, regardless of what a judge decides in this particular case.

Steve Brawner is an independent journalist in Arkansas. Email him at brawnersteve@mac.com. Follow him on Twitter at @stevebrawner.

Kasich, the anti-Trump

By Steve Brwner
© 2015 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

The newest candidate to announce for president is among those I’d most want to see win. Which means he probably won’t.

The reason for both is that Gov. John Kasich, R-Ohio, has a record of doing what I want the next president to do, but which the political system doesn’t reward a candidate for doing: work with others to balance the budget.

Kasich has done it twice, actually. In the late 1990s, he was the chairman of the House Budget Committee when, for all of the other nonsense that was occurring at the time, Congress and President Clinton actually sort of balanced the budget. For a brief time, the national debt wasn’t growing much, and Kasich is a big reason why. Kasich flirted with running for president in 1999 but dropped out and endorsed George W. Bush, who as president failed to keep the nation on a fiscally responsible path.

Kasich was out of office for a while but then returned to public life to run for governor of Ohio in 2010. At the time, Ohio was $8 billion in debt. Today, it has a $2 billion surplus and lower state taxes, though some say this was accomplished at the expense of local governments. In a purple state that can go either Republican or Democrat, Kasich was re-elected with 64 percent of the vote.

Kasich is hard to define and doesn’t always toe the party line, which means he’ll have a tough time winning the Republican nomination. He’s the only candidate who can say he had anything to do with balancing the federal budget, and he did it at the state level as well. But, to many Republicans’ chagrin, he accepted Medicaid money for Ohio – the same money Arkansas turned into the private option – and he talks openly about helping the poor being not just a national moral responsibility, but a personal, spiritual one. He’s changed his position on immigration – but unlike other Republican candidates who’ve also changed their positions, he’s moved toward endorsing a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants. In interviews and public appearances, he openly calls himself a flawed human being. In other words, he’s the anti-Donald Trump. Who’s currently leading the Republican polls.

Kasich can be personally combative but also politically cooperative. In his 45-minute announcement speech this week, he never once mentioned Hillary Clinton or President Obama. Instead, he talked about his own biography, the family members who inspired him, and what he would do if he’s elected. So if you want a candidate who at least wants to debate the issues rather than sling mud, here’s your guy.

He’s starting near the bottom of the polls, from which it will be difficult to emerge. The Republicans’ first debate is in Ohio Aug. 6, and because so many (16) have announced, only the top 10 candidates in the national polls will be on stage. It’s probable that Kasich will not reach that plateau in time to qualify for that first debate in his home state.

But if Republicans want to win this next election, they’ll give him a look. Perhaps the most oft-quoted political fact each election cycle is this: No Republican has ever been elected president without winning Ohio. Kasich has won it statewide twice, the second overwhelmingly.

Why is Ohio so important to Republicans? First, it’s a big state with 18 electorate votes, each of which will be precious in an election when so many states are so reliably red or blue.

Second, Republicans who appeal to Ohioans also appeal to other Americans in the middle, like Pennsylvanians, Iowans and Wisconsinites. The state is a microcosm of America – red and blue, Midwestern and urban, home to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and also the only state north of the Mason-Dixon Line with a college football national champion since 1997.

So far, the presidential campaign has offered a lot of what’s not so good about modern American politics – an avalanche of money, political family dynasties, candidates pandering to the base, and Trump’s celebrity-based candidacy. Kasich, as he himself admits, is a flawed man, but he offers three important and sometimes overlooked qualities – competence, sincerity and empathy – along with the chance for Republicans to win the states they must have.

That doesn’t necessarily mean he should be the next president. But surely, in this Republican field, he belongs in the top 10.

Steve Brawner is an independent journalist in Arkansas. Email him at brawnersteve@mac.com. Follow him on Twitter at @stevebrawner.

Clinton, Trump: Some things are inevitable

By Steve Brawner
© 2015 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

This past week in politics was all about the inevitable: a gaffe by Donald Trump, and Hillary Clinton’s march to the Democratic nomination.

Trump spoke before a crowd of 1,000 at the Republican Party of Arkansas’ annual Reagan-Rockefeller Dinner, where he exceeded my expectations. His speech was funny and entertaining, and he handled the media well in a press conference. I left thinking he would be a factor until the crowded GOP field shrinks and the party’s support coalesces around a more acceptable candidate.

Then on Saturday, Trump said that Sen. John McCain, who spent 5.5 years as a prisoner of war in Hanoi, is not a war hero. His explanation – “I like people who weren’t captured” – was an insult to all prisoners of war. Trump later said he didn’t serve in Vietnam because he had bone spurs in his heels.

You don’t insult veterans, especially if you did not serve. The reaction was swift. Many Republican candidates condemned the remarks. So did the Republican National Committee, which indicates it was waiting for the opportunity.

So that’s probably enough about Donald Trump.

Clinton did not say anything particularly memorable Saturday speaking before 2,500 Arkansas Democrats at their Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in Little Rock. She also did not put her foot in her mouth, which is why, come next spring, she’ll still be in the race.

Because we all want campaigns to be interesting, there’s some talk about Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont socialist who is making Clinton work a little for the nomination.

That’s a temporary flirtation. Some Democrats want to send a message to Clinton, the former member of Walmart’s board of directors whom they believe also is too close to Wall Street. She’s the party’s nominee.

She is not, inevitably, the next president. Republicans have some advantages going into the 2016 election. The country tends to swap parties every eight years. Republicans are raising a lot of money. And of course, Clinton has a long public record they can attack.

But there are at least three reasons why it’s more likely she’ll win than lose.

One is that Democrats have an advantage in the Electoral College. It takes 270 votes to win the election, and in each of the last six of them, Democrats have won at least the same 18 states and the District of Columbia, a coalition worth 242 votes. If that trend holds – and it won’t necessarily – then Clinton needs only to find 28 votes elsewhere. Republicans, meanwhile, have won the same 13 states six straight times for a total of only 102 votes. That’s a big gap, though it narrows when only the last four elections are included.

Another Clinton advantage comes from the Democrats’ long-standing lead among minorities, and Republicans’ failure to change that – or lately, even to try. According to the University of Connecticut’s Roper Center, President Obama in 2012 won 93 percent of African-Americans’ votes and 71 percent among the fast-growing Hispanic population. Mitt Romney won among whites, 59-39.

Those percentages are not that different from 1984, when Ronald Reagan won 49 states. But in 1984, whites made up 86 percent of voters, compared to 72 percent in 2012, and that number will continue to shrink. No wonder Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican presidential candidate, once said his party is in a “demographic death spiral.”

Republicans must win more votes among minorities. If they don’t, they’ll still compete well in mid-term elections, when older white Americans compose a disproportionate share of the electorate. But they’ll lose a lot of presidential elections. And frankly, they’ll deserve to.

Clinton’s final advantage is that the United States is in the midst of a major cultural shift. Voters have elected and re-elected the first black president. The Supreme Court legalized gay marriage with the support of six in 10 Americans. Many Americans even expressed support for Caitlyn Jenner’s gender identity switch. If the election is seen as a choice between breaking the glass ceiling with a female nominee and voting for yet another guy named Bush, the trend would favor Clinton.

There’s a significant percentage of voters who don’t merely oppose Obama, but despise him, and they spend a lot of time thinking and talking about how much they despise him. Many of those people feel the same way about Clinton.

They should reconsider their perspective lest they spend 16 years of their life mad all the time. Clinton’s election is not inevitable, but it’s more than half likely.