Is Donald J. Trump a competent person?

TUESDAY, APRIL 30, 2019

The craziest "obstruction" of all: Is Donald J. Trump a fully competent person? Or is it possible that our commander in chief is acting out a dangerous version of The Madness of King George?

The Madness of King George is a 1994 British biographical historical comedy-drama film directed by Nicholas Hytner and adapted by Alan Bennett from his own play, The Madness of George III. It tells the true story of George III of Great Britain's deteriorating mental health, and his equally declining relationship with his eldest son, the Prince of Wales, particularly focusing on the period around the Regency Crisis of 1788–89. Modern medicine has suggested that the King's symptoms were the result of acute intermittent porphyria, although this theory has more recently been vigorously challenged...

Whatever! In our current circumstance, does Donald J. Trump suffer from some form of mental illness? Such questions come to mind when we see reliable cable stars like Barbara McQuade speak as she did to TV's Brian Williams last night.

McQuade agreed with a long line of others concerning Trump's most clear-cut cases of obstruction of justice. We'll highlight one of the episodes which many others have cited:

WILLIAMS (4/29/19): Hey, Barbara, I want you to listen to 16 seconds of Sally Yates, and on the other side I'm going to ask you if you agree.

YATES (videotape): I've been a prosecutor for nearly 30 years. And I can tell you I've personally prosecuted obstruction cases on far, far less evidence than this. And yes, I believe if he were not the president of the United States, he would likely be indicted on obstruction.

WILLIAMS: You're both former feds. Barbara, do you concur with your fellow former fed?

MCQUADE: I do. You know, the elements of obstruction are an obstructive act, some connection to an official proceeding, and a corrupt intent. And there are about ten episodes in that report of obstruction of justice. Some Robert Mueller finds substantial evidence for, some less so. But there's about three episodes in there with substantial evidence for each and every element of the offense.

The asking McGahn to fire Mueller, asking McGahn to lie about that, and asking Corey Lewandowski to get Jeff Sessions to narrow the scope of investigation to only future elections—for those three, I am confident that if anyone else were charged with that offense or had that evidence against them, they would be charged with obstruction of justice.

WILLIAMS: Our great thanks tonight to two of our favorites. Shannon Pettypiece, Barbara McQuade, thank you both so much for helping us with our conversation tonight.

Brian thanked two of his favorite, and perhaps most reliable, reporters and friends.

A long list of former feds have agreed with what McQuade said. According to McQuade, Trump's instruction to Corey Lewandoski represents one of the most obvious matters in which he committed an obstruction of justice.

We're always surprised when we see people say this. To us, that ridiculous episode seems to be one of the most striking incidents which suggest 1) that Donald J. Trump is out of his mind, and 2) that everyone around him can see this.

(Not counting Stephen Miller.)

Think what happened here! As explained in the Mueller report, this is the way it started:

During a June 19, 2017 meeting with Lewandoski, Trump dictated the text of a crazy speech he wanted Attorney General Sessions to deliver. According to the Mueller report, the dictated speech would have gone like this:

I know that I recused myself from certain things having to do with specific areas. But our POTUS ... is being treated very unfairly. He shouldn’t have a Special Prosecutor/Counsel b/c he hasn’t done anything wrong. I was on the campaign w/ him for nine months, there were no Russians involved with him. I know it for a fact b/c I was there. He didn’t do anything wrong except he ran the greatest campaign in American history.

According to the Mueller report, "The dictated message went on to state that Sessions would meet with the Special Counsel to limit his jurisdiction to future election interference."

It's hard to know how Sessions could investigate future acts of interference—acts of interference which hadn't yet occurred. At any rate, in the crazy speech whose text Trump dictated, Sessions would crazily explain his behavior like this:

Now a group of people want to subvert the Constitution of the United States. I am going to meet with the Special Prosecutor to explain this is very unfair and let the Special Prosecutor move forward with investigating election meddling for future elections so that nothing can happen in future elections.

According to the Mueller report, "The President said that if Sessions delivered that statement he would be the most popular guy in the country. Lewandowski told the President he understood what the President wanted Sessions to do."

In fact, if Sessions had ever delivered that speech, he would have been widely regarded as the craziest person in the country. Apparently, Lewandoski understood this awkward fact. After making one attempt to speak with Sessions, an attempted hand-off occurred:

MUELLER REPORT (Volume 2, page 92): Following his June meeting with the President, Lewandowski contacted Rick Dearborn, then a senior White House official, and asked if Dearborn could pass a message to Sessions. Dearborn agreed without knowing what the message was, and Lewandowski later confirmed that Dearborn would meet with Sessions for dinner in late July and could deliver the message then. Lewandowski recalled thinking that the President had asked him to pass the message because the President knew Lewandowski could be trusted, but Lewandowski believed Dearborn would be a better messenger because he had a longstanding relationship with Sessions and because Dearborn was in the government while Lewandowski was not.

Did you follow that chronology? Trump dictated the lunatic speech on June 19. Lewandoski arranged for Dearborn to deliver the as yet undescribed message to Sessions in late July—roughly six weeks later!

How determined was Trump to effect this action? According to the Mueller report, Trump raised the topic with Lewandoski again on July 19, exactly one full month after the initial directive. According to the Mueller report, "Lewandowski recalled that the President told him [on that occasion] that if Sessions did not meet with him, Lewandowski should tell Sessions he was fired."

Lewandoski held no government position. Except in the world of Crazy Dreams, there is no apparent way he could have fired Sessions.

We'll guess that Lewandoski was once again able to see the lunacy he'd been handed. That same day, he finally gave Dearborn a copy of the crackpot speech he was supposed to deliver to Sessions.

Presumably, Dearborn was also able to see that this proposal was nuts. According to the Mueller report, "he [Dearborn] recalled later telling Lewandowski that he had handled the situation, but he did not actually follow through with delivering the message to Sessions, and he did not keep a copy of the typewritten notes Lewandowski had given him."

Is this manifest lunacy really an obstruction of justice? Can this possibly be one of the most obvious obstructions Trump is supposed to have committed?

Forgive us, but out here in the actual world, that whole episode reads like the conduct of a madman. It seems fairly plain that Lewandoski and Dearborn each understood that fact.

Let's summarize what happened:

On June 19, Trump dictated the text of a crazy speech he wanted Sessions to give. Presumably for obvious reasons, Lewandoski and Dearborn each failed to pass the assignment on to Sessions.

A full month passed before King George asked Lewandoski what had happened. At that time, he crazily told Lewandoski that he, a private citizen, should "tell Sessions he was fired" if he refused to meet.

Presumably, Dearborn could see the assignment was crazy too. It sounds like he didn't even want to keep a copy of the dictated speech.

McQuade and many others agree. This is supposed to be one of the clearest cases of obstruction in Mueller the God's "binder full of obstructions."

In our world, that judgment seems rather odd. This entire episode strikes us as the work of a very powerful person who seems to be out of his mind. Brian, who's been canned for crazy behavior himself, didn't seem to parse it that way last night.

Can a crazy person commit an obstruction? This strikes us as an obvious question. Why won't corporate peacocks like Brian Williams ask?

LEADERSHIP DOWN: Disordered president reaches a milestone!

TUESDAY, APRIL 30, 2019

As does Morning Joe: This morning, the Washington Post's official fact-checker announced that Donald J. Trump has reached an auspicious milestone.

The fact-checker in question is Glenn Kessler. His rise to prominence started right here, during Campaign 2000, when we announced that he was the answer to a widely-voiced question of that era, namely "Who Da Man?"

In response to something he'd written, we announced that Kessler was "Da Man." Today, he announces Trump's achievement in a cool, clear, nuanced manner, one which respects the wisdom of the ages and the somewhat limited reach of the human mind.

Hard-copy banner headline included, this is the way he and two colleagues begin:

KESSLER, RIZZO AND KELLY (4/30/2019): Fallacy in five figures: Trump blusters past 10,000 false or misleading claims

It took President Trump 601 days to top 5,000 false and misleading claims in The Fact Checker’s database, an average of eight claims a day.

But on April 26, just 226 days later, the president crossed the 10,000 mark—an average of nearly 23 claims a day in this seven-month period, which included the many rallies he held before the midterm elections, the partial government shutdown over his promised border wall and the release of the special counsel’s report on Russian interference in the presidential election.

According to the Post's admittedly subjective census, Trump has made more than 10,000 false or misleading claims since becoming president.

Some of these "faulty claims" (we're quoting the Post again) have been genuine dillies. This well-known fact becomes even more clear as today's report proceeds.

Indeed, Trump has made so many false and misleading claims that Kessler can no longer handle the fact-checking all by himself. Trump has issued so many howlers that it now takes a trio of Post reporters to tote his groaners up!

As far as we know, Trump is the most disordered person who has ever served in the Oval Office. Since early 2016, we've been saying that his disordered statements and weird behavior raise obvious questions of possible mental illness.

That said, leadership cadres within the mainstream press decreed that this obvious possibility mustn't be discussed. We're inclined to list that judgment under an award-wining rubric:

"Leadership Down."

(According to the so-called "Goldwater rule," journalists have long agreed that they shouldn't introduce discussions of psychiatry or mental illness into the political discourse. This is a truly outstanding rule—until such time as a sitting president seems to be some version of mentally ill!)

In our view, the current sitting president seems severely disordered. Then again, we have the various leadership groups which shape the public discussion about this dangerous fact.

Let's forget about Donald J. Trump for one minute! How well do those leadership cadres function? Consider what happened in the first segment of today's Morning Joe.

As was required by Hard Cable Law, Joe and Mika, with Willie's assistance, began their day with reference to the Washington Post's new report. One minute into this guaranteed foolishness, Joe and Willie Geist-Haskell Junior engaged in a mandated sleight of hand.

To enjoy the fun, click here. Here's how the sleight-of-hand started:

JOE (4/30/19): While we were sleeping, Willie, President Trump has now made more than 10,000 lies—more than 10,000 false or misleading claims. The only question is, Willie, what does he become now? Impeached, or autocrat-for-life?

HASKELL-GEIST: Well, 10,000 lies, according to the Washington Post, which has been keeping track since the beginning of his presidency, it's a pretty astounding number, one hard to wrap your head around.

I don't know what that grants him, other than the presidency, I guess, right? Ten thousand lies got him into the White House, and perhaps they'll keep him there. But perhaps not, given what we've seen from Joe Biden in the polls the last couple of days.

As seen in Haskell Junior's statement, the gang has been fawning over Candidate Biden in the past few days, much as they once fawned over Governor Christie, then over Candidate Trump.

By way of background, Morning Joe is one of the many "cable news" shows where Everyone Says The Exact Same Thing The Host or Hosts Just Said. This morning, everyone was saying that the Washington Post had reported that President Trump has now emitted ten thousand "lies."

Instantly, John Heilemann joined the prepackaged fun. "You'd sort of think that maybe, after 10,000 lies, he'd get really good at it?" the journalist-turned-open mike comic now said. "Like maybe that would be the thing, he'd be the best liar of all time?"

At this point, the children all agreed that Trump is a terrible liar. Whatever you want to call his misstatements, that may or may not be the case, depending on one's assessment of what Trump's objectives are.

At any rate, we were struck by this rollicking crew's instant reinvention of what the Washington Post had said. In fact, the terms "lie" and "liar" never appear in this morning's report in the Post.

The Post says it has counted Trump's "false and misleading claims," then leaves the language right there. And as everyone has known for thousands of years, most false statements aren't actually "lies." Meanwhile, the bulk of misleading statements don't even rise to the level of being "false!"

So the people of the earth have known for thousands of years! Our human languages have developed to observe these basic distinctions, which were part of our human inheritance until Mika and Joe came along.

Joe and Junior moved quickly today to "improve" what the Post had said. That said, does it actually matter that our leadership cadres routinely behave in such ways? Does it matter when corporate millionaires cast off the distinctions and points of nuance which have been created and observed down through the ages?

It only matters if accuracy matters. It only matters if human life matters. It only matters if intelligence matters. It only matters if you'd prefer to live within a culture where "rational" conduct prevails.

Are Donald J. Trump's false statements "lies?" Putting that a different way, how many of his endless misstatements might this disordered man believe?

Is it possible that the commander in chief is so disordered that he believes the bulk of his twaddle? We don't have to worry our pretty heads about that when we watch the silly, semi-Trumpian morning program known as Morning Joe, where the story line is kept so simple that even we liberals can grasp it.

All across this morning's major mainstream newspapers, we saw other manifestations of this wide-ranging intellectual disorder. Donald J. Trump is the worst of all time, but our corporate leadership cadres aren't necessarily all that far behind.

Indeed, many of the individuals in those cadres were rather clear versions of "Trump-before-Trump" not that long ago. Most liberals have never heard anyone say that because such discussions aren't allowed, and Everyone On Morning Joe Is Fully Aware of That Fact.

Future Anthropologists Huddled in Caves (TM), a disconsolate group of future scholars, has already endorsed our reports of the next few weeks. Those reports will examine the mental traits and public behaviors of our various leadership cadres, not those of Trump himself.

These reports may eventually lead to Professor Horwich's discussion of the shunning of the later Wittgenstein's work. That later work explored the way rational conduct has long tended to break down even on the western world's highest academic platforms.

Down here on the darkling plain, many of us liberals want to hear about the anthropology of Donald J. Trump, and of course of The Others as well. Given our basic human traits, we're inclined to leave our anthropological explorations right there.

Over the course of the next few weeks, we'll look instead at the anthropology of our own tribe's struggling thought leaders. Our reports will run under a series of award-winning rubrics, starting with "Leadership Down."

For today, let's tip our hat to the Washington Post! Inevitably, its census of "false and misleading claims" is a bit subjective. But the Post has insisted on discussing those many "faulty claims" by Trump without pretending to chronicle which of the groaners are "lies."

At Morning Joe, predictable fun held sway. For perhaps the ten thousandth time, the carefully selected panel agreed to let The More Stupid prevail.

Everybody Said The Same Thing as they dumbed the Post's report down. It's the way they previously played it, first in pimping the straight-shooting Christie, and after that in dumbly pimping their old pal Herr Trump himself.

This is the way these cadres play. Through a series of nocturnal submissions the hater like to refer to as "dreams," we've been instructed to talk about this as a form of Leadership Down.

Tomorrow: Comic relief! Recent adventures of cable TV's second most popular star!

Tracking the wild San Diego schools!

MONDAY, APRIL 29, 2019

As seen in The Atlantic: It's sad, but it's true:

When it comes to issues of gender and race, there's nothing so improbable or odd that our liberal tribe's intellectual leaders won't be willing to go there. In these ways, we rack up votes for the disordered Donald J. Trump.

Consider an essay which appeared last week in The Atlantic, one of the mainstream/liberal world's most venerable publications.
Inevitably, the essay concerned a matter of "segregation" in the nation's public schools.

Such language sets liberal hearts aflutter, but may cloud liberal thinking.

Did The Atlantic's essay make sense? Inevitably, it started at Stuyvesant High. Headlines included, the essay started like this:

PIRTLE (4/23/19): The Other Segregation/
The public focuses its attention on divides between schools, while tracking has created separate and unequal education systems within single schools.

The segregation of America’s public schools is a perpetual newsmaker. The fact that not even 1 percent of the incoming freshman class identifies as black at New York City’s elite Stuyvesant High School made national headlines last month. And New York isn’t unusual. The minority gap in enrollment at elite academic public schools is a problem across America.

But more troubling, and often less discussed, is the modern-day form of segregation that occurs within the same school through academic tracking, which selects certain students for gifted and talented education (GATE) programs. These programs are tasked with challenging presumably smart students with acceleration and extra enrichment activities. Other students are kept in grade-level classes, or tracked into remedial courses that are tasked with catching students up to academic baselines.

The essay was written by Whitney Pirtle, a very good person and a professor of sociology at the University of California Merced. In that opening passage, Pirtle notes a basic fact about modern-day public schooling:

Within many schools, higher-achieving students—students who are "presumably smart"—are placed in "gifted and talented" programs, otherwise known as GATE.

"Other students are kept in grade-level classes," Pirtle somewhat oddly notes. Or they're enrolled in remedial courses—classes which are tasked with catching students up to academic baselines.

This type of practice is commonly known as "tracking." Mayor de Blasio is suspicious of the practice, or so we were told on the front page of last Saturday's New York Times.

The mayor doesn't like "tracking!" As she continues, Pirtle notes a common artifact of this amazingly unremarkable educational practice—an artifact she describes as a "modern-day form of segregation."

Below, you see the way Pirtle describes the situation. She ends this passage with a statistic about gifted and talented programs in San Diego's public schools:

PIRTLE (continuing directly): Black students make up nearly 17 percent of the total student population nationwide. Yet less than 10 percent of students in GATE are black. A shocking 53 percent of remedial students are black. This disparity across tracks is what social scientists commonly call “racialized tracking”—in which students of color get sorted out of educational opportunities and long-term socioeconomic success.

The level of disparity varies across the nation. A Department of Education Office for Civil Rights report from 2014 called attention to a Sacramento, California, district where black students accounted for 16.3 percent of the district’s enrollment but only 5.5 percent of students in GATE programs. At the other end of the state, in San Diego, 8 percent of students are black, but just 3 percent of GATE students are.

At present, black kids are disproportionately represented in "gifted and talented" programs on a nationwide basis. The situation in San Diego is offered as an example.

In San Diego, Pirtle says, "8 percent of students are black, but just 3 percent of GATE students are." Assuming those numbers are accurate, it might be worth exploring the reasons for that disparity in enrollment.

Pirtle doesn't identify the range of grade levels she is discussing. That said, here's a set of fourth-grade scores from the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (Naep), our most reliable domestic source of educational data:

Average scores, Grade 4 math
San Diego Public Schools, 2017 Naep
White students: 253.60
Black students: 223.22
Hispanic students: 225.24
Asian-American students: 254.19

According to a standard but very rough rule of thumb, the average white and Asian-American kids in San Diego are roughly three years ahead of their black and Hispanic counterparts by the spring of fourth grade. Or so those data from the Naep would seem to indicate, based upon a familiar but very rough rule of thumb.

The gaps defined by those data would seem to be very large. Presumably, this would help explain the enrollment patterns in San Diego's GATE programs.

That said, those are average scores for those four groups, and GATE programs are generally intended for higher-achieving kids. With that in mind, here are the 90th percentile scores for San Diego's fourth graders:

90th percentile scores, Grade 4 math
San Diego Public Schools, 2017 Naep
White students: 287.96
Black students: 253.66
Hispanic students: 262.46
Asian-American students: 297.08

The achievement gaps are even larger at this achievement level.

Presumably, this data set would help explain the disparity Pirtle describes. So might a third set of statistics, in which we see how many fourth graders from each group scored at the "Advanced" level (282 or higher) on this Naep math test:

Students scoring at "Advanced" level, Grade 4 math
San Diego Public Schools, 2017 Naep
White students: 15.2%
Black students: ("rounds to zero")
Hispanic students: 2.3%
Asian-American students: 20,0%

Apparently, fewer than 0.5 percent of San Diego's black fourth-graders scored at the "Advanced" level. Presumably, this helps explain the enrollment pattern in that city's GATE programs.

It also helps define "the problem we all (quite irrationally) live with." (Also, rather uncaringly.)

Why do black kids seem to be doing so poorly by the fourth grade in San Diego's schools? Pirtle would be performing a public service if she explored that question in a competent manner.

Instead, she did what our tribe's thought leaders much more typically do. She made it sound like those GATE enrollment patterns are some sort of mystery, and she linked those patterns to one of the ugliest terms which comes to us from our brutal racial history.

The Atlantic, a venerable publication, ran to put this in print. This is the way we currently play within our self-impressed tribe.

Why are black kids doing so poorly by the spring of fourth grade? That's an important question! But the fact that black kids seem to do poorly isn't really up for debate, until people like the New York Times' Eliza Shapiro offer ridiculous and disgraceful explanations like the one shown below:

CHANG (3/19/19): So what have been the explanations for why these stark racial disparities exist at these eight elite schools?

SHAPIRO: Yeah, so I think there's two things. The biggest issue here is test prep. We've seen the same debate with the SAT and ACT, certainly, in light of the college admissions scandal. There is a huge test prep industry in New York that prepares kids who are aware of the test to master it. So test prep is one. The other, which is related, is awareness. Some kids know about these schools from the minute they're in kindergarten. Some kids learn about the existence of the specialized high school system and the test to get into them a few months before they can sit to take the test.

That was Shapiro, on All Things Considered, reporting from the stupid side of the modern upper-class moon.

What explains disproportional enrollment patterns in the nation's GATE programs and in our most competitive high schools?

It's all test prep, Shapiro said. It's test prep all the way down!

No sane person would credit or believe such a ridiculous claim. But publications like the New York Times and the Atlantic adore this stunningly stupid tale, and rush to put it into print. Obedient hosts on NPR pretend that such statements make sense.

(Shapiro's easily-satisifed host holds degrees from Stanford, Oxford, Columbia and Stanford Law School.)

We upper-class pseudo-liberals! We insult the interests of black kids when we behave this way. Also, through this obvious public lunacy, we are busily winning votes for the disordered Donald J. Trump!

We act like clowns when we act this way. On the brighter side, we avoid two difficult questions:

Why are black kids so far behind? And what might San Diego do to wipe those gaps away?

In truth, we pseudo-liberals don't much seem to care about questions like that. Few things are much more obvious in this dumbest of all possible worlds.

In fairness to Shapiro: In fairness to Shapiro, she comes from superior stock. The leading authority on her life spells it out like this:

"Eliza's dad Michael Shapiro teaches at the [Columbia] J-school, while her mom Susan Chira is an assistant managing editor of The New York Times. Her uncle, Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro, and aunt, biology professor Jill Shapiro, also teach at Columbia."

Such better people pretend to care in the manner described.

THE EXTRAORDINARY RESULTS FILE: Digest of reports!

MONDAY, APRIL 29, 2019

Starting tomorrow, Leadership down: Is it true, what we told you last year? Is it "all anthropology now?"

By that, we meant the following. We meant there was no reason to think that we modern Americans were going to be able to find our way out of current mess.

As a species, we simply aren't built for that task! After all, consider what Professor Harari has said in a best-selling book which has been endorsed by Bill Gates and Barack Obama:

As it turns out, we humans aren't "the rational animal" after all!

According to Professor Harari, our species took control of the planet when, through a set of chance mutations, we developed the capacity for "gossip" and the ability to promulgate and march behind sets of compelling group "fictions."

And not only that! "Tolerance is not a Sapiens trademark," Professor Harari has said.

Does it make sense to believe that a species like that will find its way out of our current mess? Or will we continue to gossip and create fictions about The Others, as we now typically do? Is it all anthropology now?

We ask, you decide! That said, we spent last week examining the highly non-rational which routinely prevails within our own "liberal" tribe.

We discussed the way the New York Times reported on a thrilling new public school in Akron. The silly newspaper's front-page reporting was novelized narrative all the way down.

Had the new school's students really recorded "extraordinary results" on their first set of district assessments? The Times' reporting was pleasing group fiction, full stop.

How extraordinary were those results? Our reports went exactly like this:

Tuesday, April 23: How good were the children's actual scores? How bad was the adults' reporting?

Wednesday, April 24: Achievement gaps (in Akron) are real! But how many kids were excluded?

Thursday, April 25: How extraordinary were those test results? Lack of clarity all the way down!

Friday, April 26: Why haven't they all been frog-marched away? Extraordinary misreporting!

Again and again, it's nothing but fiction when the New York Times pretends to discuss public schools!

Starting tomorrow, it's "Leadership down!" As we assail our disordered commander'in-chief, how sharp are our own tribal leaders?

Professor Harari's gloomy theories have been endorsed by Future Anthropologists Huddled in Caves (TM), the disconsolate yet trademarked group which reports to us from the aftermath of the global conflagration they glumly describe as Mister Trump's Once-Predictable War.

They report to us in nocturnal submissions which the haters refer to as "dreams." Their views should be attributed to their official future news organ, FAHIC NEWS.

The Times is almost at it again!

SATURDAY, APRIL 27, 2019

The concerns of the top two percent: This very morning, right on its front page, the New York Times could almost be said to be at it again.

We refer to the latest front-page report by education reporter Eliza Shapiro. Inevitably, the report is built around the question of who gets to go to Stuyvesant High, the city's most elite public high school.

At the Times, few things matter except for Stuyvesant High. Shapiro's report starts like this:

SHAPIRO (4/27/19): Ronald S. Lauder, the billionaire cosmetics heir, and Richard D. Parsons, the former chairman of Citigroup, have for decades had their hands in New York City affairs. Mr. Lauder ran a failed bid for mayor and successfully led a campaign for term limits for local elected officials. Mr. Parsons has been a prominent adviser to two mayors.

Now, they are teaming up to try to influence one of the city’s most intractable and divisive debates: how to address the lack of black and Hispanic students at Stuyvesant High School, Bronx High School of Science and the other elite public high schools that use a test to determine admission.

You could say that Shapiro, and with her the Times, is just reporting the news. You could say that the Times is simply reporting an attempt "to influence one of the city’s most intractable and divisive debates"—an attempt by two public figures who "have for decades had their hands in New York City affairs."

In saying that, you'll want to ignore that slightly peculiar choice of words on Shapiro's part. You might also be looking past a basic question concerning what sorts of "debates" go on the front page of the Times.

In this instance, the New York Times has once again given a chunk of its front page to the question of why gets to go to the city's most elite public high schools. This involves a tiny handful of students—the most talented two percent.

The New York Times cares about kids and concerns of that type—but trust us! As we've told you before, we'll tell you again:

You'll never see the New York Times mar its front page with this:

Average scores, Grade 8 math
New York City Public Schools, 2017 Naep
White students: 290.71
Black students: 255.63
Hispanic students: 263.56
Asian-American students: 306.03

90th percentile scores, Grade 8 math
New York City Public Schools, 2017 Naep
White students: 337.79
Black students: 299.75
Hispanic students: 309.51
Asian-American students: 355.63

Those brutal data define the giant achievement gaps which exist within the New York City Public Schools. (Also, within public schools across the nation.)

Those data define the plight of the hundreds of thousands of black and Hispanic kids who will never get a sniff of Stuyvesant High, or of its demanding curriculum. Those kids aren't part of this lofty "debate." Again and again, they simply aren't part of the world of the New York Times.

Those brutal data define the interests of the vast majority of New York City kids. It's abundantly clear that the New York Times doesn't care about those kinds of kids.

The New York Times cares about the elite. The rest of those kids can go jump in the Hudson—and sure enough! Tragicomically, Shapiro is soon writing this:

SHAPIRO: [Lauder and Parsons] are trying to make their mark on the future of the system, the nation’s largest, with 1.1 million students.

Their effort amounts to a new challenge to Mr. de Blasio’s education agenda from people whose ideas are more reminiscent of former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s vision. They are seeking to forge connections to leaders in Albany who are skeptical of the mayor’s philosophy.

They are championing a range of educational ideas that include more gifted and talented programs, more test preparation, better middle schools and more elite high schools. Mr. de Blasio’s administration, on the other hand, is skeptical of high-stakes testing and academic tracking in the school system.

Mr. de Blasio is seeking to replace the test for the eight so-called specialized schools with an approach where top performers from each middle school would be offered spots.

A person could say that Shapiro is simply reporting the news as it exists. That assessment wouldn't exactly be "wrong."

That said, go ahead! You're permitted to laugh out loud at what Shapiro has written.

According to Shapiro, Lauder and Parsons favor "better middle schools" in New York City! We're left to assume what's probably true—that Mayor de Blasio doesn't.

The mayor favors getting more black kids into Stuyvesant. That certainly isn't the world's worst idea, but that seems to be where this ridiculous mayor's educational vision ends.

Why do so few black kids currently get into Stuyvesant? The answer to that question starts with those achievement gaps—the giant gaps which have emerged by the end of Gotham kids' years in New York's middle schools.

Those data suggest that something isn't happening in those middle schools. (Earlier gaps in Naep data suggest the possible need for "better elementary schools" too!)

Lauder and Parsons seem to think that New York City should try to improve the middle schools from which those data emerge. Do Lauder and Parson have any idea how to accomplish that task?

We'd be surprised if they did. But here's the choice the reader is offered on the front page of the Times:

Lauder and Parsons want to improve Gotham's middle schools. There's no obvious sign that they know how to do that, and it seems that the mayor doesn't share this goal.

That's the way this clownish discussion goes down in the Times. The dumbness of this clownish discussion emerges from a basic fact:

The New York Times refuses to publish or discuss the data which define those crushing achievement gaps. Last month, Shapiro even went on NPR's All Things Considered and seemed to say that the gaps don't really exist—that they're just an artifact of "test prep," full and complete total stop.

Truly, you can't get dumber than that. But that's what Shapiro said.

The New York Times deeply cares about who gets into Stuyvesant. After all, such kids may later get into Yale and go on to get invited to high-end cocktail parties.

By way of contrast, the Times refuses to discuss the basic facts about the vast majority of Gotham kids. At the Times, that extremely wide range of good decent kids can just go live in the park.

Those brutal data define "the problem we all [uncaringly] live with." But at the Hamptons-based Times, the front page belongs to one central question:

Who will get sent to Stuyvesant High, and perhaps move on to Yale?

Another flight of fancy: Let's consider a different part of Shapiro's nugget presentation:

SHAPIRO: [Lauder and Parsons] are championing a range of educational ideas that include more gifted and talented programs, more test preparation, better middle schools and more elite high schools. Mr. de Blasio’s administration, on the other hand, is skeptical of high-stakes testing and academic tracking in the school system.

The mayor "is skeptical of academic tracking!" With that in mind, consider one additional set of data from the Naep:

Scores by percentile, Grade 8 math
New York City Public Schools, 2017 Naep
90th percentile: 329.72
75th percentile: 303.23
50th percentile: 272.76
25th percentile: 245.27
10th percentile: 222.66

For all Naep data, start here.

In the most recent Naep testing, ten percent of Gotham's kids scored above 329.76 on the Grade 8 math test. Ten percent of Gotham's kids scored below 222.66.

Based on standard rules of thumb, the gap between those two groups of kids is several light-years past enormous. But so what? Gotham's extremely peculiar mayor thinks those kids should all be taking the same Grade 8 and Grade 9 math!

Here too, Shapiro's childish report is operating "on first grade level." This dumbness persists because the upper-class New York Times refuses to report, analyze or discuss the most basic educational data.

You currently live in a very dumb world. The dumbness starts at the New York Times, where only the talented two percent even seem to exist.

Jonathan Alter remembers the past!

FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2019

The code of silence prevails: Was the impeachment of President Clinton actually bad for Republicans?

In the short run, probably yes. In the slightly longer run, we'd say it's hard to say.

On Monday evening's All In, Jonathan Alter discussed this matter with Joy Reid, who was guest-hosting for Chris Hayes. When Alter recalled where the Clinton impeachment led, he maintained the code of silence while simultaneously "bring[ing] the eternal note of sadness in:"

REID (4/22/19): Bill Clinton was a very popular president. [His approval rating] was in the 60's. The Republicans had been making it pretty clear they were looking for a reason to impeach him. And they went hunting and hunting and hunting until he found—until he wound up in the affair with Monica Lewinsky, and having Betty Currie, his secretary, lie about the Lewinsky affair. They [said], "Aha, obstruction of justice!"

Why is it that Democrats have taken from that experience that impeaching Bill Clinton was great for Bill Clinton and terrible for Republicans?

ALTER: Well, I think people are fighting the last war without having learned the actual details of the last war.

REID: Right.

ALTER: So there is an assumption that Clinton was impeached, and then the Democrats did very well in the 1998 midterm election. That was actually not the sequence. They did very well in the 1998, in the midterm elections, in part because people realize that the Republicans were off the rails. They should not be going down this path.

Elections take place, then after the elections in 1999. Clinton is impeached. He's tried and acquitted in the Senate.

So according to the logic, the conventional wisdom now, this was then sort of good for Bill Clinton, the backlash. But there actually wasn't a backlash at that point. Clinton's numbers went down. And having prosecuted the case against Bill Clinton actually helped Republicans in the next election in 2000. And they will tell you that, because what they did is they kept the heat on Bill Clinton, and that hurt his Vice President Al Gore when he was trying to succeed him.

According to Alter, "having prosecuted the case against Bill Clinton actually helped Republicans in the next election in 2000." Alter says the impeachment of President Clinton actually helped defeat his chosen successor, Candidate Gore.

We think that could be true. But Alter is completely misstating the way the subsequent attacks on Candidate Gore went down.

In the main, the attacks which defeated Candidate Gore were not driven by "Republicans," or by the RNC, or by the George W. Bush campaign.

The attacks which defeated Candidate Gore started in March 1999 and continued for the next twenty months. Those attacks were driven by Alter's own mainstream press corps, as Alter knows perfectly well.

Those attacks came from the New York Times and the Washington Post and from NBC News and its cable arms. Jonathan Alter knows all this, but your mainstream upper-end press corps maintains a strict code of silence about awkward matters like that.

The attacks which defeated Candidate Gore didn't come from the Bush campaign. They came from Ceci Connolly and Katharine Seelye and Maureen Dowd and Chris Matthews, and also from a ship of (mainstream) fools over on CNN.

(Margaret Carlson, come on down! Bring the mocking impression of Gore you loved to do on the air! Carlson was a major player on CNN during the years in question—years when the Fox News Channel had barely begun to matter.)

With lesser consequence, the attacks also came from Brian Williams and Lawrence O'Donnell. Modern-day MSNBC is crawling with the careerist climbers who worked to send Bush to the White House, thereby pleasing their corporate owner, GE titan Jack Welch.

(On the bright side, Williams ended up in the NBC anchor chair. Until he made up so much sh*t that they had to bump him back down!)

Matthews was much more influential at that cable-poor time than he is today. He savaged Gore for twenty months, often in utterly ludicrous ways, at a time when his Hardball program helped inform the rest of the droogs as to what a careerist insider should obediently do and say.

Did impeachment play a role in this? Here's the way the history went down:

By the fall of 1998, Establishment Washington was united it its loathing of Clinton; incredibly, he'd engaged in ten acts of oral sex without first getting permission. Sally Quinn documented this important history in this very important overview in the Washington Post.

When Clinton escaped removal from office, Establishment Washington trained its sites on Candidate Gore, his chosen successor. At the time, it seemed that Candidate Gore would be their last shot at Clinton. Children are dead all over Iraq because of the way these establishment figures behaved.

Clinton's was acquitted in his Senate trial in February 1999. Three weeks later, Gore began to campaign in New Hampshire, and Establishment Washington—the mainstream press corps—instantly landed on his head, skillfully reinventing him as The World's Biggest Liar.

They kept it up for twenty months. Have you heard that some children are dead?

Jonathan Alter knows all this. He just isn't willing to stand up in public and tell you. As liberals, you aren't encouraged to know such things. A code of silence prevails concerning the way Alter and "his favorite reporters and friends" sent all those kids to their graves.

This is the way the story went down. Jonathan Alter knows all this, but he also knows that a code of silence prevails within the guild.

What did the mainstream press corps do? You aren't allowed to know that! Neither Joy Reid, nor anyone else, will ever jump up to tell you.

Darling Rachel says Chris is the best! It's the way our species' craziest beasts have always played the game.

You're allowed to laugh: How are we supposed to know that Alter's account is right? Republicans "will tell you that," he said. Go ahead! You're allowed to laugh!

For the record, Alter's the nicest guy in the world. But the code of silence prevails!

EXTRAORDINARY RESULTS: Why haven't they all been frog-marched away?

FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2019

Extraordinary reporting: As you can probably tell, we could talk about Erica Green's front-page report for weeks.

We refer to Green's recent report in the New York Times about the latest Little Low-Income School That Could—the new I Promise School in Akron, an experimental elementary school which is being substantially (and generously) funded by NBA star LeBron James.

Green's report was so instructively awful that we could discuss it for weeks. For today, let's focus on a basic question:

Why haven't they all been frog-marched away?

We probably refer to Green herself, but we definitely refer to her editors. It was Green's editors who waved paragraph 3 into print, perhaps rewriting it as they did. That paragraph seems to contain a very large, loudly howling misstatement:

GREEN (4/13/19): This time last year, the students at the school—Mr. James’s biggest foray into educational philanthropy—were identified as the worst performers in the Akron public schools and branded with behavioral problems. Some as young as 8 were considered at risk of not graduating.

According to that paragraph, the students at the I Promise School "were identified [last year] as the worst performers in the Akron public schools." This apparently bogus claim sets up the narrative arc of Green's "news report," in which, in familiar old fashion, The Bad News Bears Knock It Out of the Park at Their Amazing New Low-Income School.

People like Green have been typing that story since the day time began. There's probably a version of this tale in The Iliad, though our analysts haven't been able to take the time to check.

Last year, the students at the I Promise School were Akron's worst performers! Green's editors waved that claim into print, even though it seems to be blatantly wrong. We base that upon the statement which appears much later, in paragraph 23:

GREEN: I Promise students were among those identified by the district as performing in the 10th to 25th percentile on their second-grade assessments. They were then admitted through a lottery.

Twenty paragraphs later, we seem to be told that kids performing below the 10th percentile were excluded from the lottery for this new school. For reasons we explained yesterday, we'll guess that means that as many as the bottom twenty percent of Akron's "worst performers" were excluded from this exciting new school.

This would mean that the kids at this school weren't the worst performers! It would mean that they weren't even close.

Based on paragraph 23, last year's "worst performers" were excluded from the lottery for this new school. There's nothing "wrong" with creating a new school in that way, though it does seem to represent a type of "tracking"—a type of tracking the New York Times claims to loathe when it appears in Gotham.

That said, as a general matter, the New York Times only pretends to write about public schools. At the Times, it's childish narrative all the way down, in which our achievement gaps are caused by "test prep" (full stop) and our Bad News Bears Knock It Out of the Park as soon as they get half a chance.

To relocate that pleasing old fable to Akron, Green's editors waved that opening claim into print, in which the kids at the I Promise School were Akron's "worst performers." They also allowed a fraudulent fairy tale to appear at the end of Green's lengthy report:

GREEN: Lining the walls of the school’s vast lobby are 114 shoes, including those worn during the 2016 season when Mr. James led the Cleveland Cavaliers to the N.B.A. championship, a reminder that he once walked a path similar to these students. Mr. James was also considered at risk; in fourth grade, he missed 83 days of school.

Nataylia Henry, a fourth grader, missed more than 50 days of school last year because she said she would rather sleep than face bullies at school. This year, her overall attendance rate is 80 percent.

“LeBron made this school,” she said. “It’s an important school. It means that you can always depend on someone.”

Truly, that's extraordinary! Everyone knows that a novelized "news report" of this type must end with some heartwarming story about some deserving kid who has Quickly Turned It Around at Her Thrilling New School.

In this case, the editors published a suspiciously jumbled presentation about a fourth-grade girl who is missing twenty percent of school—a rate which doubles the state of Ohio's criterion for "chronic absenteeism."

That passage constitutes an act of fraud committed against Times subscribers. This leads us to our obvious question:

Why haven't the editors who waved that into print already been frog-marched away?

Why haven't they been frog-marched away? Also, why hasn't Times "education reporter" Eliza Shapiro been frog-marched away for making this astonishing statement on NPR's All Things Considered?

CHANG (3/19/19): So what have been the explanations for why these stark racial disparities exist at these eight elite schools?

SHAPIRO: Yeah, so I think there's two things. The biggest issue here is test prep. We've seen the same debate with the SAT and ACT, certainly, in light of the college admissions scandal. There is a huge test prep industry in New York that prepares kids who are aware of the test to master it. So test prep is one. The other, which is related, is awareness. Some kids know about these schools from the minute they're in kindergarten. Some kids learn about the existence of the specialized high school system and the test to get into them a few months before they can sit to take the test.

There are "two things," Shapiro told Chang. Enrollment patterns at Gotham's most demanding high schools are caused by "test prep" and by test "awareness," full stop.

Gotham's giant achievement gaps apparently play no role in this undesirable phenomenon! According to the Times, achievement gaps are real in Akron, but they play no role in the lives of public school kids in New York.

Do we have any idea why nonsense like that is tolerated at the Times, and at NPR? After all, why hasn't Chang been frog-marched away for letting Shapiro's manifest nonsense go unchallenged?

Despite her degrees from Stanford, Oxford and Stanford Law School, Chang allowed that perfect nonsense to stand. Why hasn't she been frog-marched away and told that she's finished too?

We ask these questions to highlight a basic point. Much of what we liberals read or hear from our upper-end news orgs are novelized accounts of the world.

They aren't "news reports" at all. At their heart, they're novelized feel-good tales, told by the functional equivalent of a gang of idiots.

Such tales are fed to our self-impressed tribe on a regular basis. As a group, we swallow them down. Elsewhere, people roll their eyes and decide to vote for Trump.

Sometimes, the foolishness of our upper-end "journalists" provides a bit of amusement. So it was in this comical passage from Green's front-page tale:

GREEN: The 90 percent of I Promise students who met their goals exceeded the 70 percent of students districtwide, and scored in the 99th growth percentile of the evaluation association’s school norms, which the district said showed that students’ test scores increased at a higher rate than 99 out of 100 schools nationally.

Yes, you're allowed to laugh.

According to Green's report, the I Promise students "scored in the 99th growth percentile of the evaluation association’s school norms." Instead of simply telling readers what that meant (or assuming that readers already knew), Green was apparently forced to report what "the district" said it meant!

The district said that scoring in the 99th percentile showed that the I Promise School had outperformed 99 out of 100 schools nationally? Simply put, that's what it means to score in the 99th percentile! Why would anyone have to rely on "the district" to explain what it meant?

We'll guess that Green's editors inserted that amusing construction into her text. Why haven't these editors been frog-marched away? How long will foolishness of this type be allowed to persist?

There are other topics we haven't been able to get to this week. We still haven't explored the instructive incompetence of the indecipherable "School Report Cards" used by the Ohio Department of Education to report on that state's schools and school districts.

Here's the School Report Card for the Akron Public Schools. Prepare yourselves to be confused, then perhaps depressed.

That bungled bureaucratic maze makes it very hard to evaluate Akron's schools as a whole. It does help us ponder the part of the I Promise story which truly is "extraordinary:"

It's much too early to determine how things are going at the I Promise School. The students at the I Promise School haven't even taken their first set of the state of Ohio's annual tests. No one but the New York Times would be silly enough to step in at this point and make a thrilling assessment.

That said, the Times' assessment isn't a real attempt at reporting. It's the latest silly, heartwarming version of a long-standing feel-good fable, in which The Bad News Bears Hit It Out of the Park as soon as they're given a chance.

This tale has been written again and again over the past fifty years. Future Psychologists of the Savanna (TM), a pipe-puffing group of future scholars reporting from the aftermath of Mister Trump's War, tell us that this familiar story was told and retold, year after year, for two major reasons:

According to these future psychologists, the silly tale was told and retold to let us liberals pretend that we actually care about the nation's black kids.

Also, to let us feel there's no real problem we have to struggle to solve within our nation's low-income schools—to let us pretend that the kids are really all right in those schools as soon as they get half a chance.

Are the kids at the I Promise School all right? Not necessarily, no.

According to the end of Green's report, children who are chronically absent are the big break-out stars in that school! Green's editors waved that passage into print, seeming to commit an act of deliberate deception.

Just a guess! Assuming the absence of cheating, there will be no "extraordinary results" when those good, decent Akron kids take their statewide tests this spring. That said, Akron's new school has already produced one "extraordinary result:"

We refer to Green's front-page report! It seems to be an act of bad faith and technical confusion from its third paragraph on.

Are the kids all right at the I Promise School? Not necessarily, no.

That said, many adults at the New York Times are doing substantially worse. They're churned these fables for many years. When they do, we self-impressed liberals just swallow them whole. According to those future psychologists, we like the heartwarming stories we're told, and we aren't able to see that they're silly.

We liberals! We love to say how bright we are, but there is no child at the I Promise School who's under-performing to the extent that our upper-end journalists are.

As a rank and file, we gobble their tribal porridge down. Other people decide they'll just vote for Trump, who was saying "fake news" all along.

Perhaps some time next week: A look at those indecipherable "Ohio School Report Cards"

Barbara Res describes Donald J. Trump!

THURSDAY, APRIL 25, 2019

We thought this was worth preserving: Long ago and far away, Barbara Res worked for Donald J. Trump.

She worked for Trump in a high capacity within a rather small organization. For that reason, she is sometimes invited to come on TV and describe her former boss.

On Monday night, Res appeared with Brian Williams for the first time. We thought the following remarks by Res were worth preserving:

WILLIAMS (4/22/19): What's it like for you? It's been two years plus to watch this...I mean, for you to watch this guy who was in your head and in your life, and the center of your work universe for so long, what's it been like?

RES: It's something that was really quite hard to—because, you know, I have very mixed feelings about, and we were closer at a point in time. And as it evolved, I couldn't believe some of things he was doing, to be honest with you. I didn't think he was quite like this. I'm surprised at him.

He's not human. He does terrible things. He's destroying the environment. He's hurting families. He's doing terrible things.

WILLIAMS: Did he know he had that in him?

RES: I did not know he had that, and I knew he was mendacious. I know that there was, you know, trickery. I knew that there was that kind of thing, but not like he is now. No.

[...]

WILLIAMS: Well, it must be interesting to be you. I mean, starting with tonight's Twitter fuselage. He was always verbal. He worked here for 14 years and—

RES: He communicated better in the older days. He's more childish now. He speaks like a kid almost. He doesn't have a good vocabulary. And he doesn't seem to focus, so he's changed in a lot of ways.

WILLIAMS: Thank you very much for coming in.

RES: My pleasure, thank you for having me.

WILLIAMS: It's a pleasure, great to get to know you. Our thanks to Barbara Res for joining us here in the studio tonight.

Res is not a pathologist. That said, she described an apparent change in cognitive capacity, and an apparent change in values. She isn't the first past associate of Trump who has described such changes.

Has something happened to Donald J. Trump? At the start of 2018, the New York Times told the world that the press corps shouldn't discuss such questions.

Please don't discuss these life-and-death matters! This peculiar request lies at the heart of our failing upper-end culture.

EXTRAORDINARY RESULTS: How extraordinary were those results?

THURSDAY, APRIL 25, 2019

Lack of clarity all the way down: If we might adapt a mocking rubric, Erica Green's front-page report was driven by claims which were apparently "close enough for New York Times public school work."

Green was discussing Akron's I Promise School, an experimental new elementary school which is being substantially funded by NBA star LeBron James. As is common when the Times pretends to discuss public schools, Green's extraordinarily deceptive claims came thick and fast.

She opened with a flat misstatement, claiming that the new school's students "were identified as the worst performers in the Akron public schools" before being assigned to I Promise.

Based on something Green reports in paragraph 23, it seems that claim is flatly false. Based on what Green wrote, we'll guess that the lowest-performing twenty percent of Akron's public school kids were excluded from the lottery which sent kids to the I Promise School.

Green opened with that flat misstatement about the I Promise kids. She closed her report with this astonishing feel-good tale:

GREEN (4/13/19): Lining the walls of the school’s vast lobby are 114 shoes, including those worn during the 2016 season when Mr. James led the Cleveland Cavaliers to the N.B.A. championship, a reminder that he once walked a path similar to these students. Mr. James was also considered at risk; in fourth grade, he missed 83 days of school.

Nataylia Henry, a fourth grader, missed more than 50 days of school last year because she said she would rather sleep than face bullies at school. This year, her overall attendance rate is 80 percent.

“LeBron made this school,” she said. “It’s an important school. It means that you can always depend on someone.”

Astonishing! If that fourth grader is missing school 20 percent of the time this year, that doubles the rate the state of Ohio defines as "chronic absenteeism!" Unless you're reading the New York Times, where a (deliberately?) jumbled presentation makes it sound like her attendance rate is cause for jubilation.

What can anyone say about a newspaper which published work of this type? We'd say the paper is "Trump-before-Trump"—that Green's report is an example of the rolling moral and intellectual disorder now widely described as "Trumpism."

The Times has behaved this way forever, though very few liberals know this. Over Here in our self-impressed tribe, we're told that the dummies are all in the other tribe, and that the New York Times is our nation's smartest newspaper.

Because we're deeply tribal animals, we're unable to see that that's wrong.

Green opened with what seems to be a flatly false claim, closed with a feel-good gong-show. Along the way—early on—she made this extraordinary set of claims:

GREEN: This time last year, the students at the school—Mr. James’s biggest foray into educational philanthropy—were identified as the worst performers in the Akron public schools and branded with behavioral problems. Some as young as 8 were considered at risk of not graduating.

Now, they are helping close the achievement gap in Akron.

The academic results are early, and at 240, the sample size of students is small, but the inaugural classes of third and fourth graders at I Promise posted extraordinary results in their first set of district assessments. Ninety percent met or exceeded individual growth goals in reading and math, outpacing their peers across the district.

These kids—supposedly, they were Akron's "worst performers" last year—have now "posted extraordinary results in their first set of district assessments."

They're "helping close the achievement gap in Akron," Times subscribers were told. This is a familiar old tale, but is any part of it true?

It seems quite clear that these kids didn't start out as their city's "worst performers," or as anything close to that status. It seems quite clear that at least one of the new school's fourth graders is missing a lot of school, though the Times chose to reinvent that situation as an upbeat, feel-good fable.

That said, is Green's overall presentation accurate? Have the I Promise kids "posted extraordinary results" in some set of "district assessments?"

This pleasing claim drives Green's front-page report throughout. But is it actually true?

A savvy reader will note one point—in that first presentation, Green refers to how well these kids allegedly did with reference to meeting some undefined set of "growth goals." She doesn't tell us how well they did in meeting some set of objective academic standards.

That presentation in paragraphs 3-5 is rather murky. Later, in paragraphs 12-14, Green defines, or attempts to define, the nature of the "extraordinary results" which form the heart of her report:

GREEN: The students’ scores reflect their performance on the Measures of Academic Progress assessment, a nationally recognized test administered by NWEA, an evaluation association. In reading, where both classes had scored in the lowest, or first, percentile, third graders moved to the ninth percentile, and fourth graders to the 16th. In math, third graders jumped from the lowest percentile to the 18th, while fourth graders moved from the second percentile to the 30th.

The 90 percent of I Promise students who met their goals exceeded the 70 percent of students districtwide, and scored in the 99th growth percentile of the evaluation association’s school norms, which the district said showed that students’ test scores increased at a higher rate than 99 out of 100 schools nationally.

The students have a long way to go to even join the middle of the pack. And time will tell whether the gains are sustainable and how they stack up against rigorous state standardized tests at the end of the year. To some extent, the excitement surrounding the students’ progress illustrates a somber reality in urban education, where big hopes hinge on small victories.

In that passage, we learn that these "extraordinary results" really involve "small victories." So it goes when the New York Times pretends to talk about schools.

To call that overall presentation "fuzzy" is to be unfair to fuzz. Meanwhile, Green notes that the I Promise kids haven't even taken their first set of annual Ohio statewide tests.

The notion that such statewide tests are "rigorous" may be Green's latest stretch. But why on earth would a major newspaper present a front-page evaluation of a brand-new school before its kids had taken their first set of annual statewide tests?

Presumably, the Times did that because it likes a certain type of feel-good story about miracle cures in low-income schools—and because a famous celebrity was part of the mix.

Otherwise, this whole undertaking makes almost no sense. That said, let's try to see how "extraordinary" those results actually were:

Achievement by percentile:

Green reports that she's describing results from the Measures of Academic Progress assessment, a relatively obscure new test battery. She says the kids at I Promise School have achieved these results:

Grade 3 reading: 9th percentile
Grade 3 math: 18th percentile
Grade 4 reading: 16th percentile
Grade 4 math: 30th percentile

Might we talk? To the naked eye, those don't exactly look like "extraordinary results."

Though Green never quite explains, these data seems to mean that 91 percent of schools nationwide outscored the I Promise third-graders in math. If we average the I Promise School's performance in those four measures, we see that the average result places I Promise kids in the 17th percentile nationwide.

On average, 83 percent of the nation's schools outperformed the I Promise kids! Does a familiar phrase come to mind? "The soft bigotry of low expectations?"

Claims of improvement:

Truth to tell, those achievement levels don't look all that great. But hold on! The point, says Green, is the massive amount of improvement the I Promise kids have recorded!

Once again, here's the relevant passage:

GREEN: The students’ scores reflect their performance on the Measures of Academic Progress assessment, a nationally recognized test administered by NWEA, an evaluation association. In reading, where both classes had scored in the lowest, or first, percentile, third graders moved to the ninth percentile, and fourth graders to the 16th. In math, third graders jumped from the lowest percentile to the 18th, while fourth graders moved from the second percentile to the 30th.

"In math, third graders jumped from the lowest percentile to the 18th." That certainly sounds like an improvement—but as with almost everything in this report, we're not entirely sure what that means.

Does that mean that the I Promise third-graders scored in the first percentile when they were in second grade? That's what we initially thought this passage meant—but since the I Promise kids were in various schools last year, the claim wouldn't fit any standard type of before-and-after assessment.

Today, it occurs to us that Green might mean something different. She may mean that the I Promise third-graders took a Measures of Academic Progress "pretest" at the start of this school year, then moved to a higher percentile on a recent re-testing.

As with almost everything in this report, it's hard to know what Green is talking about in this passage. But just for the record, there's a possible problem with that pretest/re-test model.

As we'll note below, this possible problem which didn't bark involves a naughty vocabulary word—a word which starts with a "C."

Claims of attainment of "goals:"

As Green continues, she makes an even murkier statement about the "extraordinary results" produced by the I Promise kids. This involves the number of kids who "met their goals:"

GREEN: The 90 percent of I Promise students who met their goals exceeded the 70 percent of students districtwide, and scored in the 99th growth percentile of the evaluation association’s school norms, which the district said showed that students’ test scores increased at a higher rate than 99 out of 100 schools nationally.

According to Green, 90 percent of the I Promise kids "met their goals," apparently on the poorly-described Measures of Academic Progress assessment.

She doesn't explain who set these goals, or how rigorous these goals might have been.

Anyone can meet a goal if the goal is easy enough! According to Green, a certain near-paradox obtains:

Something like 90% of the I Promise third graders managed to land (as a group) in the 9th percentile nationwide as a group, even while meeting their individual goals!

That said, this too is claimed: While 90% of the I Promise kids met their goals, only 70% of kids met their goals in Akron as a whole.

For better or worse, doing somewhat better than Akron kids as a whole may not be a massive achievement. On its largely indecipherable "Ohio School Report Card," the Akron Public Schools currently receive a D for Achievement and an F for Progress.

That's based on scores from last year's "rigorous" statewide tests, which haven't been given yet this year.

As noted, this lets everyone blather about how "extraordinary" these early I Promise results have been. A cynic would say that the Times may be blathering while the blathering's good.

We mention a terrible word:

It's very, very hard to know what kinds of "extraordinary results" Green is discussing in this report. It's amazing to think that a major newspaper would go "front page" with piddle like this before a new school's first year is completed—before the amazing new school has administered its first set of statewide tests.

That said, Green began her report with an outright falsehood, then ended it with a scam. Along the way, she also quoted a range of school and foundation officials lavishing praise on themselves, a standard component of miracle press corps reports of this heart-warming type.

A range of officials praise their own greatness. Along the way, one district official is quoted making a slightly awkward remark:

GREEN: “It’s encouraging to see growth, but by no means are we out of the woods,” said Keith Liechty, a coordinator in the Akron public school system’s Office of School Improvement. The school district, where achievement and graduation rates have received failing marks on state report cards, has been trying to turn around its worst-performing schools for years. “The goal is for these students to be at grade level, and we’re not there yet. This just tells us we’re going in the right direction,” he added.

But Mr. Liechty, who has been with the district for 20 years, said that the students’ leaps would not be expected in an entire school year, let alone half of one. “For the average student,” he said, “your percentile doesn’t move that much unless something extraordinary is happening.”

To Leichty's credit, he tries to put the brakes on the premature celebrations. But then, he makes an awkward remark:

He says you wouldn't expect this much improvement in an entire year, let alone in half a year. “For the average student,” he says, “your percentile doesn’t move that much unless something extraordinary is happening.”

For the record, Green hasn't cited percentiles for any individual students. She only seems to be citing percentiles for the I Promise School as a whole.

That said, Leichty makes a slightly scary remark. Across the country, again and again, when "extraordinary results" have appeared, the apparently extraordinary improvement has involved the C-word:

Cheating.

Is anyone cheating at this new school? We have no idea. We have no reason to think so.

That said, if these results are built on a pretest/re-test model, were both sets of tests administered in an appropriate way?

We can't answer that question either. We can tell you this:

When "extraordinary results" occur, journalists should trust but verify. In other words, they should be suspicious.

They should remember the giant cheating scandals in Atlanta and Washington. But expecting our "journalists" to behave that way is like expecting the overweight cow to leap over the moon.

Erica Green should have asked hard questions about this school's testing procedures. The re-test percentiles are still so low that any possible cheating would apparently have been minimal. But the "pre-test" percentiles were rock-bottom.

A real reporter might have wondered where those rock-bottom initial scores came from. If a misadministered pretest produced rock bottom scores, that might explain why the I Promise test scores "increased at a higher rate than 99 out of 100 schools nationally."

The New York Times, a Trumpian guild, will never behave in such ways. If Trump is dumb, the Times is dumber. This famous newspaper has been behaving this way for a very long time.

In this case, Green's report began with a blatant false claim and ended with an act of journalistic fraud. Along the way, her various claims were poorly explained and very hard to follow.

Our liberal world just sat and smiled. We've been this way for years.

Tomorrow: Columbus, we have a problem!

The president never admits a mistake!

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 24, 2019

Neither, of course, does the Times: Should Donald J. Trump be charged with obstruction of justice, whether by the House of Reps or by some prosecutor?

In our own book of ledgers, it seems like a shaky idea.

For one thing, you don't charge 3-year-olds with committing obstruction of justice. You also might not be inclined to charge someone who's mentally ill.

With those thoughts in mind, Trump strikes us as someone who may not have the capacity to commit an obstruction of justice. Consider:

In the renditions of the Mueller report, Trump is constantly issuing orders which he then ignores for a month or, in the occasional case, until the end of time.

No one pays any attention to what he says; he doesn't do so either. In the moment, he rants and storms upon the moors, but he doesn't seem to notice or care when nobody does what they're told.

That doesn't mean that Donald J. Trump isn't disordered and dangerous. It means that many of Mueller's accounts strike us as peculiar and perhaps as a bit underwhelming.

In this morning's New York Times, Charlie Savage evaluates six of the episodes which are listed in the Mueller report as possible obstructions. The resulting assessments are Savage's and no one else's, of course.

That said, Savage's assessments are notable for the absence of smoking guns and the presence of mountains of nuance. Consider his first example:

Did Donald J. Trump commit an obstruction when he allegedly told Don McGahn to tell Rod Rosenstein to fire Mueller the Great? Savage runs through Mueller's account of the three criteria which must be present to establish a crime. What follows is Savage's account of the "bottom line:"

Bottom line: While Mr. Mueller hedged a bit on the first of the three criteria, the report suggests there is sufficient evidence to ask a grand jury to consider charging this act as illegal obstruction.

In Savage's view, after Mueller finished his hedging, he suggested that that a prosecutor could ask a grand jury to consider charging Trump's conduct as a crime.

That's amazingly soft. What follows is the strongest "bottom line" Savage was able to muster in any of the six episodes he reviews:

Bottom line: The report suggests there is sufficiently plausible evidence to ask a grand jury to consider charging Mr. Trump with attempted obstruction.

The report suggests that you could ask a grand jury to consider charging Trump! After all, there's plausible evidence!

(For the record, Savage says what others have said about Trump's most widely-discussed act of this type. He says that Mueller doesn't think that the firing of Comey the God could plausibly be charged as a crime.)

The liberal world has been pleasured for two years by claims that Trump was going to be frog-marched off in chains. He could still be impeached, of course; that decision lies with the House. If he gets defeated for re-election, he could then be charged with some crimes.

It seems to us that our liberal world would be better served learning how to persuade our fellow citizens to vote in the ways we prefer. That said, we're almost completely hapless when it comes to matters like that. Tribal dreams of "locking them up" have become our back-up approach.

Might we note one last point about the alleged order to McGahn? In the Mueller report, we're told about a front-page error by the New York Times, one we discussed in real time:

MUELLER REPORT: There is some evidence that at the time the New York Times and Washington Post stories were published in late January 2018, the President believed the stories were wrong and that he had never told McGahn to have Rosenstein remove the Special Counsel. The President correctly understood that McGahn had not told the President directly that he planned to resign. In addition, the President told Priebus and Porter that he had not sought to terminate the Special Counsel, and in the Oval Office meeting with McGahn, the President said, “I never said to fire Mueller. I never said ‘fire.’” That evidence could indicate that the President was not attempting to persuade McGahn to change his story but was instead offering his own—but different—recollection of the substance of his June 2017 conversations with McGahn and McGahn’s reaction to them.

Oof. "The President correctly understood that McGahn had not told the President directly that he planned to resign?"

That's a reference to a widespread false impression created by a bungled or deliberately deceptive New York Times front-page report—a bungled report which was instantly ballyhooed wherever "corporate cable" was sold.

In the passage posted above, the Mueller report notes that Trump was correct in thinking that a major part of the Times report was wrong. (And that our favorite cable stars were pimping a bogus claim.) By the time this passage appears, the Mueller report has already made two references to the front-page bungle, or act of deception, by the glorious Times.

As you can see, the Mueller report also says that "there is some evidence that...the President believed the stories were wrong and that he had never told McGahn to have Rosenstein remove the Special Counsel." Remembering that the person in question seems to have a mental age of 3, should prosecutors try to get that perp locked up for his role in this peculiar event?

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. Our liberal world has long since lost the ability to speak to wide swaths of the public. Instead, we dream of "locking them up." We're not sure we see a good way out of this cultural impasse.

A final familiar note:

In today's report, Savage becomes the second Times reporter in as many days to discuss the episode in question without mentioning the fact that a bungled New York Times front-page report played a significant role in what happened.

(For yesterday's more egregious dodge, see this report by Michael Schmidt.)

The president never admits a mistake; neither, of course, does the Times. If we might borrow from Don Corleone, this is the culture we've chosen!

EXTRAORDINARY RESULTS: Achievement gaps are real, Green says!

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 24, 2019

How many kids were excluded? Acolytes, riddle us this:

Just how "extraordinary" were the "results" from that "first set of district assessments?"

We refer to the first set of "test scores" to emerge from Akron's new I Promise School. The school is being substantially funded by NBA star LeBron James.

That said, how extraordinary were the first test scores to emerge from the school? At that start of a recent front-page report in the New York Times, education reporter Erica Green set the stage for our exploration in the manner shown below.

Below, you see Green's nugget presentation. For today, we'll highlight a point we haven't discussed in the past:

GREEN (4/13/19): This time last year, the students at the school—Mr. James’s biggest foray into educational philanthropy—were identified as the worst performers in the Akron public schools and branded with behavioral problems. Some as young as 8 were considered at risk of not graduating.

Now, they are helping close the achievement gap in Akron.

The academic results are early, and at 240, the sample size of students is small, but the inaugural classes of third and fourth graders at I Promise posted extraordinary results in their first set of district assessments. Ninety percent met or exceeded individual growth goals in reading and math, outpacing their peers across the district.

So cool! This time last year, the kids who now attend I Promise School "were identified as the worst performers in the Akron public schools," Green falsely reported.

But so what? "Now, they are helping close the achievement gap in Akron!"

Right at the start of her front-page report, Green outlined a heartwarming story. We'll discuss that last remark in passing—her remark about the achievement gap—while making a valuable point:

Just a few weeks ago, the New York Times seemed to be saying that the giant achievement gaps in New York City's public schools were mere illusions. They were artifacts of "test prep" and test "awareness" and of nothing else.

Enabled by NPR's Ailsa Chang, education reporter Eliza Shapiro spewed that nonsense on All Things Considered. Times board member Mara Gay was aggressively pimping the same ideas, repeatedly slandering Gotham's Asian community as she did.

In a slightly more rational world, Shapiro and Gay—and Shapiro's hapless editors—would have been frog-marched out of the New York Times Building and told they should never return. Unfortunately, this is the world of the New York Times, where "reporting" about public schools is narrative all the way down.

And so, of course—how typical! The achievement gap wasn't real in New York City, but it exists in Akron! So it goes when this fraudulent newspaper pretends to discuss public schools.

Earlier nonsense to the side, "achievement gaps" do seem to exist within the Akron schools. The state of Ohio's reporting system is almost wholly indecipherable, but it looks to us like 76.8% of Akron's white kids in grades 3-8 passed their grade's annual statewide math test last year, as compared to 52.8% of Akron's black kids.

(Just click here, then click "Math" above "Performance Index by Subgroup." You're on your own from there.)

We haven't been able to find comparable statewide data. We haven't been able to find comparable data for particular grades within the Akron system.

We aren't even entirely sure that we're interpreting the data from Akron's "Gap Closing" page correctly, so incoherent is the bulk of the state's reporting system. More on that matter to come.

That said, we do congratulate the New York Times for suggesting that the nation's achievement gaps are real, at least in the state of Ohio. That highlighted sentence from Green's report represents a reversal for the Times—a return to an important part of the actual public school world.

Green seemed to say that achievement gaps really do exist! On the brighter side, The Bad News Bears of the I Promise School were helping wipe them out!

That said, Green's claim that the I Promise students had been "identified as the worst performers in the Akron public schools" turned out to be blatantly false. Or at least, so it seemed if you read all the way to paragraph 23 of her persistently novelized "news report:"

GREEN: I Promise students were among those identified by the district as performing in the 10th to 25th percentile on their second-grade assessments. They were then admitted through a lottery.

Based on that passage, it seems that the I Promise students weren't the "worst performers" after all! Kids who scored below the tenth percentile had been excluded from the lottery from which the I Promise kids were selected. Or at least, so it seems from that part of Green's report, which seems to contradict the pleasing claim she made at the start of her report.

We mention this again for a reason. Last week, we may have misunderstood the meaning of the paragraph we've just posted. We wanted to set the record straight before we continued this week.

What did Green mean when she said that the I Promise kids had been "identified as performing in the 10th to 25th percentile on their second-grade assessments?" Last week, we assumed she meant that they had scored in the 10th to 25th percentile among all kids in Akron.

That would have meant that roughly ten percent of Akron kids were excluded from the I Promise lottery on the basis of low academic performance. Kevin Drum even followed us down this road to perdition when he lowered the boom on Green's report.

For the record, would there be something wrong with excluding Akron's "worst performers" from this experimental new school? In our view, no—not at all.

In principle, we applaud James and his associates for attempting a new approach, in which an entire school focuses on a relatively narrow range of lower performers. This might provide certain instructional advantages within this new school's classrooms. In principle, we favor giving such novel approaches a try.

Having said that, we also favor accuracy in news reporting, and we favor clarity. For that reason, we'll offer a second possible reading of what Green reported.

Did the kids at the I Promise School score in the 10th to 25th percentile among all kids in Akron? Or did they score in the 10th to 25th percentile as compared to all kids nationwide?

Last week, we assumed she meant that they were in those percentiles among all kids in Akron. This would have meant that Akron's lowest-performing ten percent were excluded from the new school.

Later, it occurred to us that she probably meant that these kids had scored in the 10th to 25th percentile as compared to all kids nationwide on some national measure. This could mean that something like Akron's lowest-performing twenty percent were excluded from the lottery.

Here's why:

In an average school system, roughly ten percent of the system's kids will score below the tenth percentile. In a low-performing school system, more than ten percent of the kids will perform at those lower levels.

Since Akron is a lower-performing school district, we'll guess that something like the lowest-performing twenty percent were excluded from this new school. In our view, there's nothing "wrong" with adopting that approach, but it means that a substantial chunk of the system's "worst performers" were excluded this school, Green's representations notwithstanding.

Green should have explained what she meant with appropriate specificity. Also, the sun should start to rise in the west, at least on alternate Wednesdays.

At any rate, achievement gaps in Akron are real! It's also true that a substantial slice of Akron's "worst performers" were apparently excluded from this new school, Green's instant false statement notwithstanding.

That said, how extraordinary were the results when this new school's kids took their first assessments?

Tomorrow, we'll run through everything Green reported. Novelization to the side, prepare to be underwhelmed.

Tomorrow: There's no way to know what this means

Ruminations on the Russian lawyer!

TUESDAY, APRIL 23, 2019

What if Vlad had been blackmailing Don? At the risk of beating a bucking bronco, we want to take a look at Pareet Bharara's first Q-and-A with Jake Tapper on Sunday's State of the Union.

We offer a few basic frameworks:

For ourselves, we think our system is built on elections, not on impeachments. On balance, we're not in favor of the "criminalization of politics."

As a general matter, we're not in favor of the rise of the carceral state. Watching a legion of former federal prosecutors on "cable news" in the past two years, we've been struck by their skill at finding tortured legal rationales for locking disfavored parties up.

Also this:

As far as we know, accurate information is accurate information, no matter where it comes from. We aren't talking about stolen information, for which different rules may apply.

With those frameworks in mind, here's that first Q-and-A. In our view, guests who offer "answers" like this should be frog-marched away:

TAPPER (4/21/19): Preet, I want to get your reaction to—well, there was a whole lot in that Giuliani interview.

[LAUGHTER]

Let's start with when I asked him to respond to Senator Mitt Romney criticizing the president's team for being willing to accept help from Russians during the campaign, including the stolen documents.

And again, we should underline insufficient evidence of any criminal conspiracy by Mueller was found by about the Trump campaign.

Anyway, when asked about that, Mayor Giuliani said, quote, "There's nothing wrong" with taking information from the Russians. What's your reaction?

BHARARA: ...On the question of whether or not it's OK to take information from the Russians, I appreciate that Rudy Giuliani's role in this is to defend the president, I guess at all costs, no matter what argument he can put forth, whether it makes sense or not—[I think] that he should pause and think about what he's saying, not just as an advocate for a president who he claims was exonerated in a report that he's nonetheless attacking vociferously.

The idea that it is OK, separate and apart from it being a criminal offense—that we should be telling future candidates in the run-up to an election in 2020 that if an adversary, a foreign adversary, is offering information against a political opponent, that it's OK and right and proper and American and patriotic, it seems he's saying, to take that information, that's OK, that's an extraordinary statement.

And I would hope he would retract it.

That was Bharara's full response. At that point, Tapper moved on to another question. Our own questions would be these:

Do you see Bharara making any attempt to explain his position? To explain why it wouldn't be "proper and American" to take accurate information from "a foreign adversary," however that fuzzy term might be defined?

Sad! He seemed to say that it wouldn't be patriotic. He also seemed to say that Giuliani's stated position didn't "make sense."

But he made no attempt to explain these heartfelt claims. Instead, he just offered dogma. Many of our prosecutors have come to reason in this way.

This is the way the lock-them-up crowd has always functioned. Since Giuliani and Tapper had mainly discussed the Russian lawyer, we'll once again ask you to consider some questions we've asked in the past:

Suppose the Russian lawyer had hired the National Press Club and given a speech in which she stated some accurate information about Hillary Clinton, with documentation. Should patriotic Americans have ignored that accurate information, based on the person who revealed it?

Suppose the Russian lawyer had written an op-ed column with some accurate information about Clinton. Should patriotic Americans ignore that information too?

Also this:

Suppose the Russian lawyer had reported, with documentation, that Candidate Trump was being bribed or blackmailed by Vladimir Putin. Should patriotic Americans have pretended that they hadn't heard?

Bharara played the patriotism card and the deference-to-prosecutorial-authority card. He didn't play the "here's the explanation for what I'm saying" card!

He seemed to feel no need to explain his views; Tapper seemed to think this made perfect sense. For ourselves, we think it's proper, American and patriotic for big shots to explain their tribally pleasing views.

A debate may begin, at some point, about the proper flow of information during a political campaign. Should patriotic Americans expect the Bharara types to explain the things they say, or should such tribunes feel free to propagandize and issue dogma suitable for repetition?

It seems to us that accurate information is accurate information, no matter the source. We're amused, yet not amused, by an instinct which clogs the work of the rational animal—the instinctive avoidance of information, an instinct which dominates vast amounts of our mainstream press corps' work.

Bharara's non-answer answer was an example of memorized dogma. Meanwhile, what's wrong with accurate information? We're just asking for clarity's sake, but please consider this:

As Giuliani noted on Sunday, the Post and the Times reported all sorts of stolen information about Candidate Clinton, including utterly pointless email "information" designed to entertain their readers while ridiculing the candidate. (CNN did the same.) Should these utterly heinous dopes start making high-minded rules for themselves before they start looking for ways to lock everybody else up?

Should our journalists consider healing themselves? Given the way we rational animals works, don't hold your breath waiting for that!