Good day, CharterFolk.
I start with a desperate need for intervention.
A fashion intervention.
Last spring, Andy and I had our first live recording of a WonkyFolk discussion. What was my daughter’s only reaction?
She was appalled that I would actually sit in front of an audience wearing pants and socks so short …
… that people could see my bare ankles.
So what did I get from her last week?
A screenshot …
… along with some very stern words:
“Dad, you did it again!”
Which has now led to an earnest family discussion about the desperate need to stage an intervention.
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Fashion transgressions aside, our discussion in DC was one I particularly enjoyed. And WonkyFolk seem to agree — this episode has a listen rate higher than many of our other recordings. I encourage you to check it out.
One of my favorite moments?
Having to apologize to Andy for daring to suggest that he and other BellwetherFolk have a reputation for being smart on all things education.
He then promptly went on to say something that proved I had nothing to apologize for.
Here’s a link to the moment in the discussion I’m referring to. It’s when he described the relevance of Chesterton’s Fence to the moment we are facing in public education.
The principle goes: Before dismantling a fence, one should first understand why it was put up in the first place.
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Barely had we wrapped up the recording when the Administration announced that, despite prior assurances that NAEP testing would not be cut, it has decided to cancel NAEP testing for 17-year-olds.
Then, just yesterday, word came that the Administration has sidelined longtime NAEP administrator and champion Peggy Carr.
Which seems like another level of transgression against the Chesterton Fence principle — going after not just the fence but the fencer before understanding what is being dismantled.
In her article at The 74 yesterday …
… Linda Jacobson brilliantly captured the depth of this unfolding Chesterton debacle, quoting a former Trump appointee attempting to justify the attack on NAEP:
“We’ve been doing main NAEP since the 1990s. Why do we need long-term trend tests?”
As it so happens, Terry Eakin wrote just yesterday at CharterFolk about the insights NAEP provides into the profound changes in public education that have happened in our nation’s capital over multiple decades.
Why do we need long-term trend tests?
That’s exactly what NAEP was designed to provide!
If we don’t want long-term trends, why keep NAEP at all?
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In the grand scheme of things, CharterFolk, with new craziness hitting us every day, I understand how splitting rails over NAEP fencing might seem like splitting hairs.
At the same time, it’s hard to overstate how important it is to understand whether learning in this country is moving in the right or wrong direction.
So, bare ankles or not, I’m steeling myself to resist intervention.
Because I sense that, on this matter — and, unfortunately, on many more matters yet to come — our destiny, both personal and collective, may demand that we get far more comfortable with being simply…
Unfashionable.