Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Salon Columnists
Follow these links for the most recent column by:
Susie Bright
Robert Burton, M.D.
Joe Conason
Sean Elder
David Horowitz
Garrison Keillor
Anne Lamott
Greil Marcus
Joyce Millman
Camille Paglia
Amy Reiter
Mary Roach
Scott Rosenberg
Ruth Shalit
Michael Sragow
Virginia Vitzthum
Sarah Vowell
Cintra Wilson
Burt Wolf

+ Columnists' schedule

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon News

Feature
Unlikely jailbirds
Being in the wrong place at the wrong time gets a duo arrested -- and admired.
By Daryl Lindsey
[04/17/00]

Feature
Three cheers for the brave new activism
Let's hope the tactics that have rocked free-traders can also change the hearts and minds of SUV-driving, overconsuming Americans.
By Bill McKibben
[04/17/00]

Feature
Live from death row
When Benetton used convicted killers as models in its ad campaign, it cost more than the firm bargained for.
By Craig Offman
[04/17/00]

Feature
Prepping for the protests
Washington's mayor and police force get ready to rumble, though they hope they won't have to.
By Harry Jaffe
[04/15/00]

Feature
Not just a Seattle sequel
The protests surrounding this weekend's meetings of the IMF and World Bank are the next step in the backlash to globalization.
By Bruce Shapiro
[04/15/00]

Complete archives for News

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

A recent column by Dick Morris in the New York Post reveals the callous cynicism with which Clinton has approached the lives and well-being of children throughout her political career. In Arkansas, Clinton was the head of Gov. Bill Clinton's education-reform effort. The Arkansas schools were a mess, registering at the bottom of the nation's educational ladder. Since Arkansas is one of the poorest states in the union, a failing school system meant that its disadvantaged children would be denied the only opportunity they would probably ever get to lift themselves out of poverty and into a decent life.

Poor teaching has an obvious relation to poor student performance (though teachers' unions would prefer everyone forget that). A Tennessee study has shown that the quality of a teacher can affect students' performances by as much as 50 percent, regardless of income, ethnicity or class size (within normal parameters). Hillary Clinton's team developed a program to test the basic knowledge and skills of all Arkansas teachers. (Having something to teach would seem to be a reasonable job description for this profession.) Clinton's reform was even moderate. Those teachers who failed the statewide test would be given two years to make up their deficiencies and then would be given the test again. If, after two years of effort, they still could not demonstrate basic skills, they would be discharged.

David Horowitz David Horowitz's column appears on the News site every other Monday. + Biography + Archives

Clinton's education-reform plan received widespread support from parents around the state. But the plan was also fiercely opposed by the teachers unions -- the core of the Democratic political base. Union members picketed her public appearances and the organizations themselves withdrew their political support from Gov. Clinton. How did the Clintons respond?

By screwing the children.

When the test results were tabulated, a large percentage of the teachers had failed. This was obviously a crucial reason why Arkansas children had been performing so poorly. (Their teachers didn't know what they were talking about.) But this grim reality was not uppermost on Hillary Clinton's mind. What she and her husband were concerned about was politics, including damage control.

So they called in Morris. They told him that they were worried that if they failed that many teachers the political reaction from the unions would be too great. On the other hand, since they hadn't released the test scores, there was still time to rig the results.

"What percentage should we fail?" Gov. Clinton asked Morris.

"What percent actually flunked the test?" Morris replied. "It was a disaster," Gov. Clinton said. "It was way too high. If I enforced the passing grade, I'd have to flunk a third or a half of them. I can't do that. We'd particularly have to fire a high percentage of minority teachers."

The solution? Morris was told to poll Arkansas voters and find out what percentage of the teachers they expected to fail the test. As Gov. Clinton had said to Morris, "I can decide what score is passing and what is failing." Morris' polling revealed that Arkansas voters expected 10 percent of the teachers to fail, rather than the 30-50 percent who actually failed. But when the Clinton administration released the "results" of the tests to the public, it reported that only 10 percent had failed. In the end, only a handful of Arkansas' incompetent teachers lost their jobs.

This decision -- to screw the children rather than buck the teachers' unions -- is one that Democrats like Hillary Clinton make every day in America, as they have done for the past 50 years. Since most of the failing schools in America are in urban areas controlled by Democrats, poor and minority children are the principal victims of these decisions.

On Jan. 20, for example, the Los Angeles Times ran an astounding story as the lead article on its front page. The article reported that the Los Angeles Unified School District had decided to drastically scale back a plan to end "social promotion" in the public schools. "Social promotion" is a term for the policy of promoting students who failed to learn anything in the previous year. It's the way an appalling number of American youth -- particularly immigrant and minority youth -- graduate high school although they are functionally illiterate.

Next page | Give real reform a chance