If you're looking for meaning in last night's Wisconsin recall election, you should read Nate Silver's take. The New York Times blogger says that Republican Governor Scott Walker's victory isn't necessarily bad news for President Barack Obama.
Walker stripped away union rights for most public employees and the subsequent backlash led to the recall election.
Silver, the New York Times blogger who blends statistical analysis with political commentary, compared the presidential and Wisconsin races in recent posts. And he's reiterated a simple point: "I don't really think WI will tell us much about November. The same polls that have Walker ahead have Obama winning, too."
Steve Kornacki at Salon makes a similar point in an article posted this morning.
Silver's blog post from last night is also worth a read. He makes the case that governor's elections aren't good indicators of how presidential elections will play out.
"The politics for a governor's campaign are often subject to different currents than presidential ones, and historically the party identification of a state's governor has said little about how presidential candidates will fare there," he wrote.
It was good to see Michael Winerip's column in yesterday's New York Times, on media compilations of "best" schools. Several national magazines do these lists. So do lots of local newspapers.
As Winerip notes, the lists are popular - and they are powerful. "Nobody in his right mind would take these lists lightly," he writes. "Property values rise near best high schools. Parents will fight to the death for best high schools. Best teachers and best principals want to work in best high schools."
That might be fine if the lists really did tell us which schools are "best." Instead, as Winerip says, they tell us which students and which communities are "best."
The list Winerip focuses on Newsweek's, a survey that includes regular public schools, magnet schools, and charter schools. The characteristics of the "winners" in the Newsweek assessment show us exactly what's wrong with this kind of list.
Most of Newsweek's top 50 have selective admissions criteria; not everybody can get in. Eight of the 50 are charter schools, and the two best charters are Arizona schools with a disproportionately high percentage of Asian students, a disproportionately low percentage of Hispanic students - and "no children who qualify for subsidized lunches or who need special education," Winerip writes.
The others on the list are suburban schools, in areas with higher than average family incomes.
Coincidentally, yesterday my e-mail brought a notice from the Rochester Business Journal, announcing its 2012 "RBJ Schools Report Card." RBJ's annual publication provides extensive data about schools and school districts throughout Monroe and Ontario counties: taxes, budgets, student demographics, graduation rates, student achievement....
The Report Card, RBJ's promo piece says, "is helpful for families who are new to the area and those looking to move."
Yep. And my hunch is that it has the same effect that similar publications have: it convinces many readers that from it, they can draw conclusions about which schools and which school districts are "best."
I'm not picking on RBJ; RBJ doesn't bill this as a list of "best" schools. And all of this information is available on the New York education department's website. RBJ simply compiles it in an easy-to-read (and easy to compare) format.
Yes, the information is important for families. I consulted Chicago school stats when our daughter and son-in-law were deciding which neighborhood to move to as their children approached school age.
But we need to draw accurate conclusions from lists like these. They don't give us a picture of where the best teachers and principals are. They give us a picture of growing segregation - economic, and yes, racial. They give us a picture of a large group of children being walled off together, separated from children whose families have more money and a better education and whose school districts have more resources.
Read the lists. Think about what you're seeing. And then you might want to wrestle with this fact: this is a national problem, and we still haven't figured out what to do about it.
A report from the state Comptroller's Office says Monroe County didn't break any laws when it sold a power plant to a quasi-governmental local development corporation. The county did, however, skirt borrowing laws via the sale, it says.
In 2002, Monroe Newpower Local Development Corporation bought the former Iola Campus power plant from the county for $7 million. The LDC borrowed $33 million to cover the combined cost of the purchasing and upgrading the facility. As part of the deal, the county entered into a 32-year agreement to buy energy from the LDC.
The report says the county used the proceeds to help plug a budget gap and in doing so subverted laws prohibiting it from borrowing to fund operating expenses. The report says that the county's only benefit from the transaction was a quick, one-off cash infusion. The Comptroller's Office has criticized the county's use of and relationship with LDCs in previous audit reports. (The office's report on the county's relationship with Upstate Telecommunications Corporation is one example.)
County officials have repeated the Newpower approach several times since 2002, selling assets to an LDC or company and then contracting for the service. Critics, including county Democrats, say it obscures county borrowing and spending. But the approach is not illegal, a fact the county seized on in its response to the audit report.
"Rather than offering conjecture in the guise of an audit report concerning a transaction from a decade ago, the Comptroller's Office would be better served convincing the State Legislature to amend existing law concerning LDCs to accomplish this political agenda," writes Scott Adair, the county's Chief Financial Officer. "The controller's dislike of existing legislation is not a valid reason to burden taxpayers with endless audits that rarely if ever offer productive recommendations for the governments that abide by said law."
When I think about five more months of the partisan attacks both presidential candidates will launch and the millions they'll spend doing it, it's harder to respect our political system.
But there was an unusual moment yesterday that gave me some assurance. President Obama hosted George W. Bush and his family at the White House for an unveiling of the former president's official portrait. Watching the ceremony and seeing how the two presidents interacted with wit and humor was unexpected treat.
Bush joked about how Dolley Madison once rescued the portraits when a fire broke out. Turning to Mrs. Obama while pointing to his portrait, he said, "Just in case it happens again, I'm your guy."
And he teased the president, telling him that now, whenever he is confronted with a difficult decision, he can look at the portrait and ponder, "What would George do?"
Both presidents seemed relaxed. Despite their opposing political views, they still share a lot in common. That's something that gets overshadowed in the daily rounds of rhetoric and fiery criticisms.
And for a brief moment, it sent a powerful message: we share a lot in common, too.