I’m in an airplane, flying from NYC to L.A., where I will attend the annual dinner of LAANE, the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy. This group fought for and won a battle to raise the minimum wage. I believe and hope they will join the struggle to support public schools and save them from the clutches of the billionaires.
As I fly, I’m watching the state funeral of President George H.W. Bush. The services are very moving. People speak of his decency, his sense of honor, his humility, his dignity, his loyalty to friends and family, his patriotism, his sense of duty and courage (he volunteered for combat duty in World War II right out of high school). Trump is sitting in the front row, scowling and looking uncomfortable. It’s not about him.
The former Prime Minister of Canada spoke about Bush’s devotion to improving the environment, assuring that we have clean air to breathe and clean water to drink. Others spoke of his support for the Americans with Disabilities Act. Still others referred to his steady hand as the Soviet Union dissolved and the Cold war ended. I broke down and cried when his son George W. said that he takes comfort in knowing that his dad is now hugging Robin (the daughter who died of leukemia at age 3) and holding Barbara’s hand. Because I hope sometime I’ll meet Steven, who died of the same disease at age 2.
I won’t pretend that I saw a lot of him when I worked in his administration. I did not.
When I was Assistant Secretary of Education for the Office of Research and Improvement during the administration of President George H.W. Bush, I made only one trip to the Oval Office.
I was invited to join Secretary Lamar Alexander and Deputy Secretary David Kearns (former CEO of Xerox) to brief the President on our progress in promoting voluntary national standards.
I joined the administration in the summer of 1991, which meant that I spent only about 18-19 months in the federal government. The Democrats on the Hill told me that nothing we proposed would be enacted, so I had to settle in to the idea that whatever we accomplished would be done without any new legislation.
To those who think that President George H.W. Bush was the architect of the test-and-punish regime that has afflicted our schools since the passage of NCLB, let me assure you that this is not true. The truth is that he wasn’t very interested in education policy. His field was foreign policy, and he left education to others. If he had one lodestar in education, it was that the federal government should not mandate anything. He understood that the states were in charge. So did Lamar Alexander, who opposed anything that smacked of a “national board of education.”
The reality is that there was a bipartisan consensus around the ideas of standards-testing-accountability. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush and Barack Obama were on the same page. In 2015, when ESSA was in the birthing stage, Senator Lamar Alexander was ready to discard all the federal mandates, but the Gates-funded Education Trust lined up the civil rights groups that got millions from Gates to demand the mandate of annual testing. Yes, they insisted, children have a civil right to be tested every year!
The Democrats, led by Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, wanted to preserve the punishments of NCLB in the new ESSA law, but the Republicans voted them down. Warren and Sanders supported the Murphy Amendment. Fortunately, it was defeated. Ask your Democratic senators—if you have one—why they are in love with the GWB/NCLB punishments.
When I worked for the first Bush administration, we awarded grants to national professional groups to write voluntary national standards. Not much remains of that effort, other than bad memories of how the history standards went wrong after the UCLA team in charge avoided heroes and left out major figures in U.S. history, thereby outraging Lynne Cheney, who was at the time the head of the National Endowment for the Humanities. (That’s a story for another day.)
Anyway, I went over to the White House with Lamar and David. I had decided after a year on the job that the best thing I would do while in Washington was to get some great photos. We sat down facing President Bush. We talked amiably, and I inched closer to him, then closer, then closer, so that I could get a picture alongside him. Eventually I was almost behind the desk with him. This is the picture taken that day. The back of the head of Lamar, a profile of David, but President Bush and I sitting almost side-by-side behind the desk, facing the camera. My mission accomplished!
A good man, not perfect, flawed as we all are, but a man who had a sense of duty. Perhaps his funeral was his last effort to unify us in a time of deep division.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I listened to G,W.’ s tribute to his dad. It was a moving tribute to a decent, patriotic American and family man. After listening to #45 for two years, even G.W. sounded coherent and intelligent. It was a moving eulogy, and G.W.’s sentiments were sincere.
The contrast between 41 and 45 is stark.
Looks like another candy handoff happened at the funeral.
Thanks Diane for this first hand description of HW and also of how education policy is made, or not. Your unique perspective has set the course for so many of us who value public schools. Yes, the man had dignity and seemed to care for the rest of the nation, unlike what we are battling today. Safe trip and have fun getting the well deserved award.
I would say the contrast between 45 and any human being is stark.
GregB, agreed!
Thank God I know no one as low level as him.
The entire service was moving. I hope Trump was listening. Many criticisms of him were implicit. He sat as if in a funk, not participating in the service, not showing any emotion. I loved when it was said that Bush’s service dog got mote press than the president this week. It’s sad that we will have to go back to business as usual in the next day or two.
I’m not sure, but I think that W was the only one to shake the hand of 45
Barack and Michelle Obama also shook his hand.
They were seated next to the Orange Man who denied Obama’s citizenship. They had no choice
I have not yet plumbed the depth of my contempt for the man that Putin chose as our president.
I can’t even capitalize the word.
He degrades the office.
Michelle Obama Shakes Donald Trump’s Hand Despite Vow to ‘Never Forgive’ his Birther Lies
People
When Donald Trump took his seat in the front pew at the state funeral of George H.W. Bush on Wednesday, Michelle Obama looked at Trump with raised eyebrows, shook his hand and quickly looked away after her husband, former President Barack Obama, also gave his successor a handshake. The awkward moments appear to be the first time both Obamas have interacted with Trump since his inauguration almost two years ago. And it is certainly the former First Lady’s first encounter with Trump since she Read the full story
The orange one is in a funk. The stock market, failing trade war and Mueller breathing down his neck are on his mind. His house of cards is in danger of crashing down, and he cannot stand to lose.
In the back of his head, the refrain: “Loser, Loser, Loser.”
Thanks for sharing your memories of this man, Diane. My memories are somewhat similar and somewhat different.
On the advice of Lamar Alexander, for whom I had worked when he was chair of the Nat’l Governors Association, President George HW Bush appointed me to a Presidential Commission of Education that met with him 5 or 6 times in the Cabinet Room. Other members included Al Shanker, Keith Geiger of the NEA, some college presidents and some business people, plus Jaime Escalante, who I didn’t think came to any of the meetings.
I agree with Diane’s comments about his being gracious and funny.
I also think he was very interested in education policy. HIs questions in those meetings showed a lot of sophistication.
Al Shanker was pushed hard for National Standards in various traditional discipline areas in that group, and elsewhere. For a variety of reasons, I did not think that would be good. So I said so in the meetings, which did not make me especially popular.
As Diane noted, Bush did follow up on Shanker’s suggestions re develop national standards, which ended up being more than 12 feet high, when they were stacked on top of each other.
I also agree with others who have noted that some of the things Bush did in the CIA (and as president) were really bad.
Diane wrote: “A good man, not perfect, flawed as we all are, but a man who had a sense of duty. Perhaps his funeral was his last effort to unify us in a time of deep division.”
Agree.
Thanks, Joseph.
What a great story. Thank you for sharing it with us, Diane.
P.S. I hope you’ll encourage LAANE to work with existing parent leaders rather than only through the union. That is the only promise for strengthening the public school movement in Los Angeles. UTLA fights well for teachers. The movement needs parent partners.
Sadly Karen, it has been my personal experience that LAANE, for all its good goals, tends not to listen to teachers, and certainly did not make some few tickets available to see our venerated friend and mentor Diane as she is honored, by making prices within the reach of our budgets. Their various fund raisers and interviews seem to focus on BH wealthy and those of the corporate and film industry. The least expensive ticket to this event is $400 and thereafter up to about $10,000 a seat. Wow. My experience was one on one with an exec who was my dinner partner at a friend’s home some years ago, Although she heard me out re charters, and she said she would like to interview me for more in depth info, she did not follow up when I called her office. I thought however that they had interviewed you as a parent for I suggested she call you as an activist parent. Did she????.
I wish there were tickets that had a lower price. Not my decision. They did set aside free tickets for educators who asked for them. Remember: it is their big fundraiser and they sold nearly 1,000 tickets.
Yeah, he may have been a racist and a homophobe, but he was a decent and honorable sort of racist and homophobe. At least he did it with aplomb, unlike our Current Occupant.
He hired me, so he can’t have been a true homophobe. I was investigated by the FBI, hoever, and managed to pass their test.
A great story. Thanks. My memory of the idea of national standards goes back to a satirical essay I wrote when I was in college being introduced to behavioral objectives by education professors who genuflected when the name Harold Bloom was spoken. I came to accept the idea that we at least needed some way to compare what was being taught in one county or another.
” All that glisters is not gold”, suggests one of Portia’s failed suitors in Merchant of Venice. That is my present attitude toward standards. I view them as good conversation starters, good places to compare notes with other teachers.
One of the first votes I ever cast was for Lamar Alexander. He seemed like a fresh start when his democratic predecessor had to be removed from office early for corruption that sounds tame compared to modern business as usual. Alexander eventually tried to keep from raising taxes by spending all his money evaluating teachers in a Master Teacher scam that got a lot of people a job evaluating teachers. Two of the level three people I knew would read the newspaper while the kids outlined the text.
All that complaining aside, I always felt we were lucky to have a foreign policy guy in the White House when the Soviet collapse came. It is unfortunate that we presently do not have people there at the time of Putin, Xi, Brexit, the Syrian debacle, the Yemen tragedy, and the general rise of totalitarianism from Hungary to Brazil.
I believe you’re thinking of Educational Psychologist Benjamin Bloom, famous for compiling what became known as Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. (Harold Bloom is a literary critic.)
And Harold Bloom taught literature at Yale.
I remember visiting prof [Harold] Bloom from a series of debates between him & our tart polysci prof Andrew Hacker, held open-air, eves on the arts quad. Cannot for the life of me recall what they argued so vociferously– just the wonder of eatching those brilliant minds at work.
My memories of that time are not so rosy. Following on the trail of the bogus “A Nation at Risk” report which came out when he was Reagan’s VP, I recall George H. W. Bush being the first president who called together an Education Summit where not a single educator was invited to attend. That signaled the beginning of a whole new era in which the expertise of educators was not valued enough for them to be allowed to have any input in determining the course of education in this country, while many politicians and, subsequently, business people, were welcomed with open arms.
I also remember that for Bush’s Goals 2000, the number 1 goal called for “every child to start school ready to learn.” As an Early Childhood Educator, that felt to me like a lofty goal which had no teeth yet put a lot of pressure on teachers, since there was no guidance, no indication of methods, no new programs for addressing out of school factors, nor funding for achieving the goal…
Many might be surprised today to learn that recently Rachel Maddow uncovered evidence indicating that during Watergate, when both Nixon and Agnew were simultaneously implicated in scandals, George H.W. Bush, who was Chair of the Republican Party then, tried to shut down the investigation, as described starting around 27 minutes in this podcast: https://www.nbcnews.com/msnbc/maddow-bag-man-podcast/transcript-episode-7-you-can-t-fire-me-i-quit-n943241
HW was probably not re-elected because it was too much already – 12 yrs of Rep admin. But I remember reading a convincing article by a presidential scholar that described the primary work of his term as [quietly] cleaning up the worst messes left by his predecessor.
Your account of the way educational policy played out, Diane, reminds me of the lyrics to a song by U-2.
“It was a dirty day
Dirty day
You’re looking for explanations
I don’t even understand
If you need someone to blame
Throw a rock in the air
You’ll hit someone guilty” “Dirty Day” by U-2, 1993
Of course, the rock group U-2 was certainly not singing about lawmaking within the Washington Beltway. (Though the song is about leaving a child behind.)
But the phrase, “Throw a rock in the air, you’ll hit someone guilty” has always stuck in my head. It seems appropriate for those situations in life when there is a lot of blame to go around….and many people are at fault.
There are definitely prime culprits for the mess created by No Child Left Behind and Race to the Ridiculous Top. But plenty of people went along with this debacle, turning a blind eye, toadying up to those in power, etc….etc… (Those of you who follow this blog will probably recognize that, yes, here he goes again with that theme.)
I guess what’s really bothered me over the course of my career is not just the lack of true leadership I often see in education, but the fact that so many rank and file teachers just put up with this crap. On a daily basis.
Which leads me to my next point, something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.
What happens the day AFTER Trump?
He will be gone eventually. What happens with that, what, 20 or 30% of the country that seems to buy into whatever hateful nonsense Trump seems to be spouting? What happens with the Republican Party, which has sullied itself and besmirched our nation? What’s left of the social contract that took generations of our ancestors to build up in the United States?
Maybe our country ought to appoint some sort of Truth Commission in the wake of the Trump years, in the same way that South Africa created an organization to reconcile that nation after the end of apartheid? Respected people from both major political parties as well as individuals from all walks of life, who can try to bring some healing to us all. I could think up some names of people I’d nominate for this sort of Truth Commission.
In the meantime, it’s always refreshing to turn on this blog and read voices that carry the same sort of integrity I hear when I listen to U-2’s Bono and company.
Now, off to work. Have a good one!
U-2 Dirty Day:
I’ve followed much of the hype over Hw for the last five days. We are obscuring his true history.
George H.W. Bush was a nicer racist than Donald Trump. But, the bottom line is that his Willie Horton ad was both vile and racist, and he never repudiated it.
It’s also true that HW engaged in a shadow government with former CIA director William Casey to circumvent the will of Congress. As Rolling Stone reported in 1988,
“Bush and Donald Gregg, the national-security adviser for Vice President George Bush, were, in fact, deeply involved in a previously undisclosed weapons-smuggling operation to arm the contras that began in 1982, two years before the much publicized Iran-contra operation run by marine lieutenant colonel Oliver North and financed by the sale of missiles to Iran. This earlier operation, known as Black Eagle, went on for three years, overlapping North’s operation. The idea of both operations was to circumvent congressional restrictions on the CIA and the Pentagon. Although conceived by William Casey, the late CIA director, these operations were not sanctioned officially by the CIA or other government agencies. They were the instruments of a secret U.S. foreign policy carried out by men who constituted a shadow government.”
It only got worse. After the second Boland Amendment prohibited any covert support for the Contras in Nicaragua, HW and Casey and others ignore it, and set up what the illegal support operation that later became know as the Iran-Contra scandal. Bush not only knew about the whole thing, but he withheld his diary from Lawrence Walsh, the Iran-Contra special counsel for more than five years, and refused an interview with the special counsel in 1993. Walsh considered a criminal indictment of Bush, but deferred, largely because – as the special counsel noted in his final report, “the statute of limitations had passed on most of the relevant acts and statements of Bush.”
Lawrence Walsh also noted in his final report that HW Bush
“committed what will likely become his most memorable act in connection with Iran/contra. On December 24, 1992, twelve days before former Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger was to go to trial, Bush pardoned him. In issuing pardons to Weinberger and five other Iran/contra defendants, President Bush charged that Independent Counsel’s prosecutions represented the `’criminalization of policy differences.”… President Bush also pardoned former National Security Adviser Robert C. McFarlane, former Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams, former CIA Central American Task Force Chief Alan D. Fiers, Jr., former CIA Deputy Director for Operations Clair E. George, and former CIA Counter-Terrorism Chief Duane R. Clarridge. The Weinberger pardon marked the first time a President ever pardoned someone in whose trial he might have been called as a witness, because the President was knowledgeable of factual events underlying the case.”
Subversion of the Constitution and explicit violation of American law are not generally considered worthy of plaudits.
As to education, HW announced his intention to be “the education president.” He latched on to ‘A Nation at Risk’ and he campaigned on its flawed premise, that public education threatened American national security. It was a lie.
After he was elected, Bush convened an education summit in Charlottesville, at the University of Virginia, that excluded ”teachers, professional educators, cognitive scientists, and learning experts.”
And then, when research from the Sandia National Labs proved ‘A Nation at Risk’ was untrue, the Bush administration buried the Sandia Report. As Education Week reported in October of 1991, when the Sandia Report first emerged, one of the top Education Department officials said,
“They have chosen to play this out in a political arena, and when you do that, the gloves come off.”
A year later, the Report still had not been released. And Bush administration officials ” angrily attacked the report.”
A director of a federally-funded education research lab said, “it’s clear that the political leadership in Washington doesn’t like this report and has tried to discredit it.’’ Gerald Bracey noted that “The Sandia Report, officially known as Perspectives on Education inAmerica, appeared in published form only after the Bush Administration had left town. In the Reagan/Bush years, bad news about schools got hyped; good news got suppressed when possible and ignored otherwise.”
And the Vice President at Sandia who supervised the Report said, “The report was suppressed. They will deny it, but it was definitely suppressed.”
What got emphasized? Vouchers. More standards and tests. For-profit schools.
However “nice” he was this is the real legacy of George H.W. Bush.
I’m not as sanguine about GHWBush. He laid the groundwork for vouchers and as this Education Week article indicates he was an advocate for the Milwaukee Voucher plan:https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2018/12/01/george-hw-bush-the-education-president-dies.html
I think a case can be made that GHWBush brought about the demise of the moderate Republican. In 1980, George H.W. Bush’s sparkling resume made him a formidable candidate for the presidency, an appealing alternative for those who felt that Jimmy Carter was an ineffective micro-manager who was in over his head as President. A war hero and successful businessman who held several key elected and administrative positions at the Federal level, Mr. Bush was seen as someone who could make the government function more effectively. In the primary campaign, however, Mr. Bush faced an uphill battle against Ronald Reagan, an amiable former celebrity who saw government as the problem and tax cuts as the solution. During the primary campaigns, candidate George H.W. Bush criticized Mr. Reagan’s “trickle down” tax cuts as “voodoo economics”, avoided Mr. Reagan’s anti-Government rhetoric, and avoided the coded language of the “Southern strategy” that Mr. Reagan used. Instead, Mr. Bush campaigned based on his own qualifications and the need for unity in our country.
Ultimately, despite the support of GOP leaders, Mr. Bush lost all but a handful of primaries. But to appease the still sizable moderate wing of his party and the party leadership, Mr. Reagan reluctantly chose Mr. Bush as his running mate. In the years that followed, Mr. Bush embraced Mr. Reagan’s agenda, promoting the tax cuts he argued against as a candidate and supporting the President’s desire to shrink government.
When he ran for President in 1988 Mr. Bush won by adopting Mr. Reagan’s anti-government rhetoric and using the “Southern strategy”; he vowed to never raise taxes and introduced the world to Willie Horton. Mr. Bush’s turnabout between 1980 and 1988 effectively eliminated the existence of the “moderate Republican”. And, as moderates abandon the party, the GOP is left with members who view government as the problem, who reject any government regulation, who reject evidence-based decision making, and who view all taxes as confiscatory.
GHWBush is no Donald Trump and Lamar Alexander is no Betsy DeVos…. but GHWBush’s adoption of the southern strategy and advocacy for vouchers helped make the GOP what it is today.
Yep…
A Tribute to Bush Planting
One Bush down
And two to go
Under ground
And six below
Of course, I am talking about rose bushes.
From historydotcom: This day in history, December 20 – Tensions between Americans in the Panama Canal Zone and Noriega’s Panamanian Defense Forces grew, and in 1989 the dictator annulled a presidential election that would have made Guillermo Endara president. President George H. Bush ordered additional U.S. troops to the Panama Canal Zone, and on December 16 an off-duty U.S. Marine was shot to death at a PDF roadblock. The next day, President Bush authorized “Operation Just Cause”–the U.S. invasion of Panama to overthrow Noriega.
On December 20, 9,000 U.S. troops joined the 12,000 U.S. military personnel already in Panama and were met with scattered resistance from the PDF. By December 24, the PDF was crushed, and the United States held most of the country. Endara was made president by U.S. forces, and he ordered the PDF dissolved. On January 3, Noriega was arrested by U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency agents.
The U.S. invasion of Panama cost the lives of only 23 U.S. soldiers and three U.S. civilians. Some 150 PDF soldiers were killed along with an estimated 500 Panamanian civilians. The Organization of American States and the European Parliament both formally protested the invasion, which they condemned as a flagrant violation of international law.
prior to all of that, Noriega was using CIA planes to ferry drugs into the US….and Poppy Bush knew…and did nothing.
Read my lips
Read my lips
No nude taxes
Cept for hips
And hairy backses
I’m no historian, so feel free to correct me!
It strikes me that Central American policy initiatives during the 12 yrs of Reagan & Bush [& HW bears equal wt to Reagan on this score]– mostly aimed at squelching populist/ socialist uprisings so as to maintain easily-manipulated dictatorships– served to weaken the govts of several Central American countries, helping to create what are now close-to-failed/ rogue states. During the same period, we helped Colombia to slowly begin dousing the cocaine industry [a job barely 1/2-done today]– but meanwhile, our actions in Central America opened many paths allowing the drug industry to bulge northward. It is at our gates today.
Hi Diane, my name is Geoffrey Kearns Young, David’s grandson. Do you have a copy of that picture or a better quality digital image you are willing to share with me? Thank you.
Geoff
I have an excellent photo, Geoff. Get in touch offline an we can work out details. David Kearns was a great gentleman of sterling character.
Thank you. I reached out to Beth. Please let me know if there is a better avenue to get in touch.
Thanks,
Geoff