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 op
quiz: The editors of Harper's Magazine are:
A. Bush-hating
Manhattanite hacks
B. Latte-sipping leftists
C. Dumb as rocks
D. All of the above
If you don't
know the answer, then you aren't reading Harper's. The September
issue assembles a wide-ranging cast of commentators, from John Taylor
Gatto to Jacques Barzun, to weigh in on the "New Hope for American
Education." As a sidebar, the magazine compares questions from
two public-school tests of eighth graders: an 1895 test administered
in Saline County, Kansas, and the 2000 Texas Assessment of Academic
Skills.
It should come
as no surprise that the older test is harder — a lot harder. A century
ago, young Kansans were asked to explain the meaning of "phonetic
orthography." The more recent Texas tests aren't nearly as
ambitious, even though they are, as Harper's notes, "President
Bush's cure for 'the soft bigotry of low expectations.'"
The most outrageous
question cited by Harper's the last one, which supposedly
appeared on the 2000 science test given to Texas eighth graders:
Read each question
and choose the best answer:
Which of
these is alive?
A. A rock
B. A fish
C. A star
D. A pencil
There's only
one problem: No Texas student has ever been graded on this question.
According to Marsha O'Carroll, a science consultant for the Texas
Education Agency, the question does appear on page 91 of the TAAS
— as a sample question. Anyone who's taken a standardized test knows
that the sample question is intended to have a bleeding-obvious
answer, so that test-takers won't have any questions of their own
about how to mark an answer correctly. (The actual science exam
may be seen
here.)
Kim Dennison
of Harper's tell us that the magazine will run a "clarification"
next month. Perhaps it could appear in the Harper's Index:
Number of times
Harper's took a cheap shot at President Bush in its September issue:
1
Number of times Harper's had to eat crow for said cheap shot: 1
Bipartisanship in Action
When Republicans lost 4 House seats from California last year, a
few Washington, D.C., Republicans told us to look at the bright
side: Having hit rock bottom, they couldn't lose many more seats
from redistricting. Dan Walters reports in the Sacramento
Bee that California's House members have struck a deal that
bears out those Republicans' hopes. If the California legislature
enacts the district map to which they have agreed, Democrats would
probably gain one seat, but the Republicans would not lose any.
(California's getting a new one because its population has grown.)
When Gary Condit's
district was safely Democratic, Democrats could contemplate moving
some Democrats from it to the neighboring Republican district represented
by Richard Pombo. But circumstances have forced them to shore up
Condit's seat by adding Democrats to it. In general, Democrats had
to make a trade-off. They could have sought a map that gave them
an opening in more seats-but only by making existing seats less
safe. They opted for incumbent protection.
The map, concludes
Walters, "may doom Democratic hopes of retaking control of
the House next year."
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