Haley begs for national attention in Pennsylvania

Two months ago, Governor Nikki Haley spent two weeks with presidential candidate Mitt Romney in New Hampshire, a state that does not appear among South Carolina's voting precincts.

Then she squired him around her own state, which may have been the kiss of death, as opponent Newt Gingrich cleaned Romney's clock in the South Carolina primary -- a primary, I might add, paid for entirely by South Carolina's taxpayers. What are the chances that precedent will be repeated?

Media noticed that Haley didn't roll out of Columbia when Romney did, that Haley got left behind to refurbish a tattered image with our state's wingnuts. Various reporters speculated that Haley had been ditched because of her rapidly rising unpopularity ratings. After all, Romney has made a quarter-billion-dollar personal fortune from cutting dead weight in the corporate world.

Now, however, comes word that Haley is stumping for her man Romney once again, now in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley tried Friday to lend conservative credibility to Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney in front of a skeptical crowd in Pennsylvania, a moderate state that nevertheless could be a challenge for Romney to win.

Haley told hundreds gathered at the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference, the state's largest annual gathering of conservatives, that Romney has her support because he is a Washington, D.C., outsider, tested in the private sector and committed to keeping a strong military.

But she also fielded pointed questions from the crowd that voiced suspicion over Romney's commitment to conservative positions or his independence. Haley insisted, among other things, that Romney is "absolutely pro-life, he's absolutely going to repeal" President Barack Obama's signature health care law.

"Those are the things I want to know," Haley said. "Are they going to say he's a flip-flopper? They can do that, but politics is all about hurting your opponent. You're not going to hear me say anything negative about the other candidates because I don't have to say anything negative about them to make Mitt Romney look good."

Haley endorsed Romney in December and also campaigned with him in New Hampshire and South Carolina. Romney lost the primary vote in South Carolina to Newt Gingrich and faces a tough April 24 primary vote in Pennsylvania, Rick Santorum's home state.

Haley also said that she wouldn't accept an invitation to be Romney's vice presidential candidate and that she's anxious for Republicans to wrap up the primary.

Poor Nikki Haley, so desperate for the sort of adulation that South Carolinians cannot give her, aware as we are of her numberless shortcomings. Only in far off places does she still seem new, does her ideological intransigence resemble steadfastness.

What does it say of her psyche, that she so craves to see and hear her name in print and her image broadcast nationwide, that she abandons so blithely her responsibilities to the people whose chief executive office she occupies?

Back here at home, where legislative neglect ensures that most children won't ever be able to achieve their greatest potential, and where the machines of governance that serve the purposes of our corporate elite guarantee that most working South Carolinians are doomed to shoulder the greatest economic burden for the least economic reward, Haley likely chafes.

Her novelty had an unfortunately short shelf-life, as did the high-minded principles on which she campaigned. Having no new tricks to pull from her bag, Haley likely feels like the emperor without clothes, in constant fear of being discovered a fraud. What will happen when her memoir is released in two weeks, draws cursory light and heat from her Tea Party constituency, and fades from public attention before the next full moon?

The new HBO film "Game Change," based on the book of the same name, posits that during the 2008 presidential election, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin fell so deeply in love with the idea that her overweening ambition could yield national fame and fortune, she told John McCain's campaign manager Steve Schmidt that she didn't want to go back to Alaska. Indeed, history shows that Palin resigned her office eight months after the McCain-Palin ticket lost the election. She served as governor for a grand total of two and one-half years.

Inexplicably, Haley's name is still floating around the conservative-to-libertarian end of the political spectrum as a potential running mate to Mitt Romney. Conventional wisdom and common sense suggests it's a pipe dream, but stranger things have happened; Palin herself is the greatest example of this.

If Haley doesn't want to be governor of South Carolina, that's fine, but she should level with her state, tell us so, and resign. Lieutenant Governor Glenn McConnell, a man of tremendous sagacity, will make a fine -- probably much finer -- governor for the remainder of the term, and Senator John Courson will make as fine a Lieutenant Governor as we need. Perhaps a restoration of experience and wisdom is what South Carolina needs.

As for what Haley needs -- escape from scrutiny and expectation, the adoration of millions for whom entertainment and novelty is paramount -- only a career at Fox News Channel can provide.

Palin was governor of Alaska for 30 months, yet before her selection as McCain's running mate, she hadn't been out of her state to support him or any other candidate's campaign.

In contrast, Haley's been governor of South Carolina for less than half that time -- 14 months so far -- and has made been as his side in New Hampshire, here in South Carolina, and now in Pennsylvania.

These facts lead to only two safe conclusions: (1) Despite her insistence that she's not begging to be Romney's vee-pee, she's begging for that AND a national spotlight.

And (2) Rick Santorum's chances of winning the Pennsylvania primary are suddenly improved.

Optional reading: "Can't Is Not An Option"

Google "Sentinel HC", or plug that into the internal search engine at Amazon.com, and you'll find what resembles the right wing's secret library. Imagine a Bizzaro-world catalog of Thomas Jefferson's treatises on democracy, perverted.

You'll find titles like "She's the Boss: The Disturbing Truth About Nancy Pelosi," which posits the frightening question "Why Is Nancy Pelosi the Most Dangerous Woman in America?" For those interested, a brand-new hardback edition is available at Amazon for $1.67.

A crisp new hardback copy of "The Secret Plot to Make Ted Kennedy President: Inside the Real Watergate Conspiracy" can be had for $3.19, one of the publisher's more expensive offerings.

How about this one: "The Dirty Dozen: How Twelve Supreme Court Cases Radically Expanded Government and Eroded Freedom," which calls itself "a non-lawyer's guide to the worst Supreme Court decisions of the modern era." Oddly, the dozen doesn't include Bush v Gore (2000).

This one's a page-turner, I suspect: "The Persecution of Sarah Palin: How the Elite Media Tried to Bring Down a Rising Star." It promises to tell "the real story of the Republican vice presidential nominee and her collision with the elite liberal media," but I wonder if, like the new HBO film "Game Change," it discusses Palin's collision with high-school world history?

This is too much fun:
"Co-ed Combat: The New Evidence That Women Shouldn't Fight the Nation's Wars"
"A Field Guide to Left-Wing Wackos: And What to Do About Them"
"Your Teacher Said What?!: Defending Our Kids from the Liberal Assault on Capitalism"
"Rush Limbaugh: An Army of One"

And then you get to the autobiographies, or "memoirs": Here you'll find Donald Rumsfeld's book "Known and Unknown" (Amazon price, new hardcover, $3.33); Michele Bachmann's "Core of Conviction: My Story" (Amazon price, new hardcover, $4.00); disgraced former Congressman Tom DeLay's "No Retreat, No Surrender: One American's Fight" (Amazon price, new hardcover, one red cent).

And this insider biography: "A Matter of Character: Inside the White House of George W. Bush" (Amazon price, new hardcover, $1.85).

Scratch a little more, and you'll learn that Sentinel HC was created as a subsidiary of Penguin Group, the mega-publisher, in 2003 to tap the market of conservative book-buyers. (Paging Stephen Colbert for a ruling on this. Stephen?)

That year, Penguin assigned Adrian Zackheim to helm the new offshoot, and they celebrated his assignment with this announcement:

He has a long track record of publishing books by notable conservatives, including Margaret Thatcher, Newt Gingrich, and Bob Dole.

Capable pedigree, to be sure.

Perhaps it was destiny, then, that Sentinel HC would become the publishing home to South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley.

And, given Amazon's markdown of so many of Sentinel HC's master works, perhaps we now better understand Haley's opposition to locating an Amazon distribution center in her adopted county of Lexington. How embarrassing it will be to find her new book, "Can't Is Not An Option," remaindered so close to home.

Still, Amazon is doing its part to spray pretty colors on this situation. Haley's book will be available in stores April 3, but it's available to pre-order on Amazon.com already, and the promotional text is breathy. Let's read it together:

A rising star in the Republican Party shares her inspirational memoir of family, hope, and the power of the American Dream.

Decades before their daughter surprised the nation

The nation? She shocked the nation? I'm not sure the entire nation was paying such close attention to who South Carolina's installed in their governor's office in 2010 -- after all, could the average American name five of the last ten South Carolina governors? For that matter, could Haley herself name them?

...by becoming governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley's parents had a dream. Ajit and Raj Randhawa were well-educated, well-off Sikhs in the Punjab region of India. But despite their high social status, the Randhawas wanted more for their family-the opportunities that only America could offer.

So they left behind all they had known and settled in Bamberg, South Carolina (population: 2,500).

Clearly, this promises to be a heart-warming story that celebrates America's liberal immigration policy. I'm hooked already.

As the first Indian family in a small Southern town in the early 1970s, the Randhawas faced ignorance, prejudice, and sometimes blatant hostility.

Uh-oh. Trouble in paradise. If only the Randhawas had spent a few minutes reading about South Carolina history before buying their tickets, they might have discovered that South Carolina has had a three-hundred-year-old love affair with ignorance, prejudice, and sometimes blatant hostility toward anyone who's not a white male, including white females. So the Randhawas weren't exactly discovering virgin territory. An ounce of prevention, as we say...

Nikki remembers stopping at a roadside produce stand with her father, who always wore his traditional Sikh turban. Within minutes, two police cars pulled to make sure they weren't thieves.

Sadly, poor white children got that treatment, too, not to mention African-Americans of every economic stripe.

But the Randhawas taught their children that they should never think of themselves as victims. They stressed that if you work hard and stay true to yourself, you can overcome any obstacle. The key is believing that can't is not an option.

Admirable lesson. However, it seems strange that a book about eschewing victimhood begins with examples of victimhood.

But this is a pattern, isn't it? After all, Sarah Palin was victimized by the liberal media and by Senator John McCain's evil campaign staff. Michele Bachmann was victimized by the liberal media and Newsweek magazine. I haven't read Margaret Thatcher's book, but I wonder if she was victimized by anyone on her climb to ruthlessness?

The family struggled to make ends meet while starting a clothing business in their living room, eventually growing it into a multimillion- dollar success. At age twelve, Nikki started to do the bookkeeping and taxes after school.

Really? A multi-million-dollar success, but it couldn't afford an accountant? And as recently as the mid-2000s, it couldn't afford to pay her a salary more than $25,000, according to her IRS filing?

Well, okay. It's a book. James Frey wrote a book, too, called "A Million Little Pieces," and his was non-fiction too. Oprah Winfrey said so.

After graduating from college and entering the business world, she watched business owners like her parents battle government bureaucracy and overregulation.

Most college graduates are watching foreign want ads for high-paying jobs, because there aren't any here to fill. But when Haley graduated college, she watched battles with government bureaucracy and overregulation. Okay.

Her frustration inspired her to get into politics and run for the state legislature. That first campaign, against an entrenched incumbent, led to racial and religious slurs and threats-but Haley, like her parents, refused to back down.

She refused to back down! South Carolina demanded a young woman with meager qualifications to take charge and lead, and Haley refused to back down from its demand! She fit the bill!

She won on a promise to fight for reform, lean budgets, and government accountability, which is exactly what she did-much to the dismay of South Carolina's old guard politicians.

That, and Larry Koon's re-election campaign was lackluster to the point of being non-existent.

Soon she had a reputation as a conservative leader who could get things done. In the same state where her family was once ridiculed, she inspired a diverse grassroots following. In November 2010 she was elected South Carolina's first female governor and first nonwhite governor,

Um, I feel strange mentioning this, but didn't Haley herself mark government documents declaring herself "white"?

I'm sure I read that somewhere, like Mother Jones magazine in July 2011, in a note by reporter Siddhartha Mahanta, maybe:

For the children of immigrants, the road to acceptance in America can be a bumpy one. There will be pain. There will be embarrassment. There will be relentless, cruel accusations from your brethren that you are assimilating at the expense of your true cultural heritage. And the stories of the children of immigrants who rise to positions of influence and power are especially inspiring given the challenges before them.

Not so inspiring? Lying about where you're from, like South Carolina Republican Gov. Nikki Haley (R-SC), the American-born child of Indian parents, might have done. The Associated Press reports that in 2001, Haley listed her race as "white" on her voter registration form.
...
For Haley, voter fraud is a big deal. She recently signed a new law requiring that voters present photo identification at the polls that, she says, will "improve South Carolina in terms of integrity, accountability and transparency." Voter ID laws, of course, don't actually decrease voter fraud (which is virtually nonexistent). Instead, they mostly keep Democratic voters away from the polls.
...
But even though she didn't exactly commit voter fraud, her self-race-mis-classification seems to undermine her credibilty as someone who wants to prevent people from lying on their way to the voting booth.

Yes, I'm sure it was Siddhartha Mahanta's item in the July 2011 edition of Mother Jones magazine. I knew I read it somewhere.

I suspect someone from Haley's office will call up Sentinel HC and Amazon to have that corrected posthaste.

Now, to continue:

...and only the second Indian American governor in the country.

Haley's story, as told firsthand in this inspiring memoir, is a testament to the power of determination, faith, and family. And it's proof that the American Dream is still strong and true in the twenty-first century.

I was sure it was going to say, also, it's proof that, thanks to our hyper-targeted marketing culture, anyone can write a book and get it published these days.

The Washington Post, not to be outdone, weighed in with a mini-review eight months ago:

Nikki Haley’s memoir, “Can’t Is Not an Option: My Story,” will be published in January 2012. So will the two negatives in the title produce a positive outcome for the South Carolina governor?

Even negative press is good press, right?

PLThomasEdD: South Carolina defies education reform myths

I discovered today a great new voice being published at the mega-blog, Daily Kos. Daily Kos has a left-leaning reputation, which simply means that the people who post there rely heavily on facts, figures, rational thought and reasonable solutions. That's certainly true of the blogger PLThomasEdD, whose essays I spent the morning reading.

I commend his work to South Carolina's education professionals for several reasons, in addition to its reliance on facts, figures, rational thought and reasonable solutions. He's a South Carolinian himself, with a career rooted in public education. His essays are heavily noted and linked to external primary sources. And he communicates his perspectives clearly and forcefully.

This isn't to say that I agree with all of his assertions or perspectives, but his is a voice that should be included in conversations around public education and its so-called reforms (or de-forms), around South Carolina's cultural attitudes toward education and around directions forward.

His most recent essay, for instance, takes on our just-concluded Republican presidential primary and the hardline positions taken by education reformers/deformers, finding each to have benefited from "popular assumptions and stereotypes."

In The New York Times, Charles Blow has documented both the pervasive racism and classism coming from the Republican candidates for president (inequality, anti-black rhetoric, and envy) and the lack of credibility of their narratives. Yet, polls in SC during the primary season show that refrains about free markets, an equitable America, and deficit views of people and children living in poverty work among the majority Republican electorate.

As I noted, PLThomasEdD's text at Daily Kos is heavily-linked to primary sources, so I urge readers to read him there and take advantage of the research links.

The release of Waiting for "Superman" as well as the popular reaction to the documentary revealed that charges about "bad" teachers, corrupt teachers' unions, "miracle" charter schools, and the "missionary zeal" of Teach for America (TFA) recruits are as compelling as the race and class baiting among Republican candidates—again despite ample evidence that the documentary and its central claims are misleading at best.

Republican candidates for president depend on assumptions and stereotypes to drive their agendas and candidacies just as "no excuses" education reformers require several narratives to remain robust in the public in order for their agenda to control education policy in the U.S.: (1) poverty is not an excuse (success and failure are earned, lying in each person and not social mechanisms), (2) teacher quality is the most powerful element in student learning, (3) teachers' unions are preserving a failed status quo, and (4) accountability built on standards and testing are central to sustained education reform.

While SC is the crucible de jure for the 2012 race for presidency in the U.S., let's test (again) as well the claims from "no excuses" reformers in the context of SC.

Here is where being a veteran educator, being a South Carolinian, being familiar with the research literature and contemporary viewpoints, and being capable of synthesizing multiple conclusions into a rational whole proves useful in addressing these topics. Most of the voices given attention in South Carolina on matters pertaining to public education and reform don't combine any two or more of these characteristics.

PLThomasEdD takes apart four grand claims in grand style:

(1) If poverty is not an excuse, then how do we explain the powerful and persistent correlation between poverty/affluence and tests scores? Consider that a recent ranking of the 100 worst schools in the U.S. included over 70 schools from SC. Setting aside the egregious problems with ranking, this list is notable since it reflects what we can safely say about nearly all designations of failing or "bad" schools -- a high rate of poverty. To offer context, I paired with this listing the poverty indices from the SC department of education, revealing that nearly all of the schools labeled "worst" had poverty rates above 90 (out of 100). While suggesting that anyone is using poverty as an excuse is essentially a strawman argument, we must confront that "no excuses" reformers are stating that all of these schools, nearly three-fourths of the list, are filled with students and teachers who simply aren't trying hard enough. That defies logic, but does mask what these correlations between test scores and poverty show: Education alone is not enough to overcome the varied and extensive consequences of poverty.

I would add that much of the data entered into evidence by Carl Epps and Steve Morrison in the ongoing Abbeville v South Carolina case reflected this very conclusion; some of their powerpoint presentations are still available online for review.

The "Corridor of Shame" that Speaker Newt Gingrich referenced during a (misleading) debate response in Myrtle Beach exists because poverty as a determinant factor in student achievement in that region has not been addressed.

(2) If teacher quality is the most powerful element in student learning, then how do we explain the impact of National Board Certified teachers in SC (just one of many initiatives implemented in SC over three decades to address teacher quality) since the state has lead the nation in numbers of teachers gaining national certification, and how do we explain, as identified above, the persistent correlation with student and school success with poverty levels, and not with teachers (SC SAT scores, for example, remain low and correlated with socioeconomic conditions despite those students having the best teachers in the state)? SC proves to be the ideal setting refuting the misleading claim that teachers are the most important aspect of student learning. This mantra by the "no excuses" reformers is factually misleading (out-of-school factors dwarf teacher influence) and a tremendous distraction. As long as time, money, and dialogue are spent on weeding out "bad" teachers and rewarding high-quality teachers, we are not confronting the greatest weight on student learning -- the inequity in their lives. But, again as I asked above, are we to believe that all of the schools labeled as failures and highly correlated with poverty are staffed by "bad" teachers who are collectively and across the state simply not asking enough of their students?

Attend legislative committee meetings on such topics and you'll find that this is, in fact, the belief most widely-held by lawmakers: Leadership is paramount, faculty compliance is key, and giving superintendents and principals the sole and unquestioned authority remove and replace a classroom professional with the least obstruction and disruption will free them to hire the best, brightest and most compliant.

Ask a lawmaker, especially one who has studied closely the wisdom of the American Legislative Exchange Council, to identify the biggest impediment to optimal student achievement outcomes, and he or she will tell you it's the inability to remove and replace bad teachers, who must occupy the largest number of teaching positions in the state. Which leads directly to the third mistaken claim in PLThomasEdD's list:

(3) If teachers' unions are preserving a failed status quo that protects "bad" teachers who are, inexplicably, the primary forces behind low student outcomes, then how do we explain that SC remains low-achieving and is an at-will (non-union) state? No teachers in SC work under contracts, pay scales, or tenure negotiated by a union since unions have no power in the state. And very few teachers even bother to join NEA or SCEA as a result. If the claims embedded in Waiting for "Superman" and nearly every proposal endorsed by "no excuses" reformers are true, then are we to accept that teachers' unions in other states are so powerful they are collapsing education in SC in the same way that every teacher in high-poverty schools is the cause of low achievement? Both claims about the influence of poverty and the singular power of teachers defy logic as well as collapse against the same data the "no excuses" reformers appear to embrace.

In fact, I would argue, do argue, have argued, that our sad state of affairs in South Carolina exists because too few or our education professionals will and do organize themselves.

Rooted in our culture is a misguided individualist ethic that ridicules collective action by the working class.

Events in our civic history warn against collective action by the working class: The Honea Path massacre of 1934, the imposition of "right-to-work-for-less" by the legislature in 1954, the closing of the Darlington Manufacturing Company in 1956 when workers voted to organize.

Our persistent, aggressive resistance to the intervention of federal authority provokes in South Carolinians the very behaviors that defy their best interests: Attempts to establish public schools during Reconstuction failed when those who most needed them rejected the stigma they represented. In the twentieth century, the Segregation Commission led by Senator Marion Gressette during most of the 1950s and 1960s focused on strategies to delay as long as possible implementation of the Brown v Board of Education decision and its subsequent orders, in open defiance of the law. Most recently, our state leaders have taken great pride in defying intervention by the National Labor Relations Board into matters clearly under its purview regarding the decisions and motives of corporate interests.

All of these historical events have fed a psychology of oppression that continues to infect our discourse.

And I, for one, do not hesitate to include education professionals in the definition of South Carolina's working class. So long as professionals have no rights to govern their own profession, so long as their wages and benefits are dictated by a legislature that doesn't regard them as professionals, and so long as the rhetoric of the powerful seeks constantly to keep professionals in a submissive position, we are all working-class subjects of a tyrannical authority.

The situation brewing today in Sumter is reflective of this psychology; organizing for collective action is the clearest solution, but cultural and historical factors weigh so heavily against it. If organizing under the banner of NEA and The SCEA will lead even incrementally toward better conditions for professionals there and elsewhere, it behooves professionals to do it. Else, the cycle continues another generation, and another, and another.

Finally,

(4) If accountability built on standards and testing are central to sustained education reform, then how do we explain that SC remains trapped today in the same charges of failing schools as we did in 1984 when the state was one of the first and most aggressive states embracing the accountability paradigm of standards, high-stakes tests, and accountability for students, teachers, and schools? Throughout the accountability era since 1983's A Nation at Risk, think-tanks and the media have examined and assessed various states' accountability systems. While many conclusions have identified too much variety among the states, SC has, ironically, often been identified as both a low-achieving state and one of the most challenging states based on our standards and tests. SC, like 49 other states, have not found accountability to be effective for raising student outcomes; thus, why should we think that national standards and testing will accomplish something different?

Here's a radical notion to test: Public schools as they exist in South Carolina today -- and as they've evolved since passage of the Education Finance Act in 1977, 34 years ago -- work precisely as they are designed to work, and produce precisely the results they are designed to produce.

Consider this: What if a state designed a system of public instruction to benefit a particular class or stripe of students, and defied overtly and covertly any attempt to revise that system to include any other classes or stripes of students? In such a case, "accountability" serves as a check to ensure that the fundamental goal is being met, and as a stick with which to ridicule and punish those not meeting the standard, thereby reinforcing the system as useful and effective over time?

In my view, this goes far toward explaining our circumstance. Costs of achieving successful student outcomes across all strata of students are identifiable -- and high. But isn't the intent of those who control our government and its systems of raising and appropriating the funds necessary to meet those costs, in large part because it isn't the intent of those who control our government and its systems to achieve successful student outcomes across all strata of students. In sum, those who are meant to do well receive the necessary support -- both from the state coffers and through the happy devices of "local control" -- while those who aren't meant to do well, and who never have been meant to do well, are left to hang by the same devices of "local control."

The system, therefore, produces precisely what the system is designed to produce.

Newt Gingrich has stood on a caustic claim about children living in poverty, as reported by Mail Online:

"Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and nobody around them who works," Mr Gingrich told fundraisers Thursday night at a dinner outside Des Moines, Iowa.

"So they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of 'I do this and you give me cash'... unless it's illegal."

This stereotype of people trapped in poverty being inherently lazy and prone to criminality is a base cousin to the claims being leveled at students and teachers by the "no excuses" reformers—all of which are false but all of which remain effective.

U.S. politics and education would do well to listen and look carefully at SC during this primary season. Our democracy and children deserve better than the attacks being leveled on the powerless by the powerful whether the context is politics or education. SC remains the state of vivid lessons needing our attention.

Here, here.