On May 15, 1776, the Virginia Convention instructed its Continental Congress delegation to propose a resolution of independence from Great Britain, paving the way for the United States’ Declaration of Independence.
Even in the darkest and crassest times liberty trembles in the lines of poets and affirms itself in the pages of thinkers and burns, solitary and magnificent, in some men who cannot be assimilated by the world around them.
Benedetto Croce, History as the Story of Liberty, 1938 (1941, Eng. translation).
When I attended a public school — many decades ago, in a galaxy far, far away — teachers told students that cheating was unacceptable and would be punished.
Harshly.
Today, the idea has students laughing — all the way to graduation.
Last year, after DC Public Schools officials breathlessly announced massive improvements in graduation rates, several honest teachers broke ranks, and an investigation uncovered massive fraud: a whopping one of every three graduates across the city resulted from falsified records.
Many students played hooky for a third or even half the school year. Administrators also pressured teachers to improve grades to hike the graduation rate.
“The problem,” Washington Post columnist Colbert King concluded, “is systemic indeed.”*
You see, employment evaluations and cash bonuses for teachers and administrators were — and still are — tied in part to student graduation stats. It turns out that an incentive to good work can also serve as an incentive to cheat. Could it be that government employees grading their own work does not encourage honesty?
Just months after confirmation of the worst fears of public school corruption, new allegations against teachers and administrators at Roosevelt High School more than suggest fudging attendance records is ongoing.
“This growing environment of fear and mistrust,” asserts Elizabeth Davis, president of the Washington Teachers’ Union, “has never been addressed and continues to be a disservice to students and teachers.”
City officials have had plenty of time to address the issue. And of the common sense idea that the best way to avoid fear and mistrust is to follow the rules?
Crickets.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Nor is the fraudulent behavior limited to dishonestly boosting graduation rates. Former DCPS Chancellor Antwan Wilson resigned back in February after it became public knowledge that his daughter jumped 600 other students on a waiting list for her school. A recent Post story about enrollment fraud, whereby non-residents grab spots at prestigious schools such as the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, without paying the non-resident fee, was entitled, “Stop enrollment fraud? D.C. school officials are often the ones committing it.” Two-thirds of pending cases involve a current or past DCPS employee.
On May 14, 1787, delegates convened a Constitutional Convention, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to write a new Constitution for the United States. George Washington presided over the convention.
On the same day a century later, Lysander Spooner — author of several numbered pamphlets titled “The Constitution of No Authority” — died.
O Duty,
Why hast thou not the visage of a sweetie or a cutie?
Why glitter thy spectacles so ominously?
Why art thou clad so abominously?
Why art thou so different from Venus
And why do thou and I have so few interests mutually in common between us?
Why art thou fifty per cent martyr
And fifty-one per cent Tartar?
Ogden Nash, from “Kind of an Ode to Duty,” The Face Is Familiar (1941)
The burgeoning decentralization story is bigger than could be told on Thursday. So click on over to Townhall for more hints at how big this story is.
Then come back here and leap into the issue Big Time. . . .
On May 13, 1888, Brazil abolished slavery with the passage of the Lei Áurea (“Golden Law”).
An excellent conversation with the economist perhaps most widely known for his fantastic letters to the editors of various major publications and for the blog Cafe Hayek:
People who have what they want are very fond of telling people who haven’t what they want that they really don’t want it,
And I wish I could afford to gather all such people into a gloomy castle on the Danube and hire half a dozen capable Draculas to haunt it.
I don’t mind their having a lot of money, and I don’t care how they employ it,
But I do think that they damn well ought to admit they enjoy it.
On May 12, 1943, Axis forces in North Africa surrendered.