originally published in The Herald

On education policy, Washington’s push-the-envelope M.O. — forehead slapping at times — throws light on a federal law that needs to be overhauled or given the heave-ho.

Last week, Washington became the first state in the nation to have its conditional waiver of the No Child Left Behind Act denied. The bugaboo is that Olympia won’t hitch teacher evaluations to student testing.

It’s more nuanced than a teachers-union uprising against a culture of standardized testing. The required use of poorly vetted tests to measure student achievement and linking those results to teacher performance is unworkable over the short term, however much it creates the illusion of accountability.

“There is widespread acknowledgment that NCLB isn’t working,” Superintendent of Public Instruction Randy Dorn said. “Congress has failed to change the law at the federal level, so states are forced to come up with workarounds.”

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originally published in The Herald

From its inception, the Senate Majority Coalition Caucus was a coalition of convenience. Two defecting Democrats gave Republicans control of the state’s upper chamber. But neither Rodney Tom nor Tim Sheldon were willing to jettison the Democratic label. And, so, the coalition with Tom as chief, and the patina of a moderate, third-way agenda, was conceived.

It seemed an inspired experiment for a population repelled by partisan clatter. But Tom, who announced that he won’t run for re-election, was a weathervane. A Republican. Then a Democrat. Then a leader by way of a power-sharing canoodle. There always was the subtext of a coalition in name only.

Tom was paired with Republican Leader Mark Schoesler, R-Ritzville, the de facto message enforcer. It was a humbling, paradoxical job. Tom personally advocated for a range of policies, but his hands were tied, he said.

Tom worked hard. He deserves credit for shepherding issues controversial among Republicans, such as the Real Hope Act. While the Senate punted on a capital budget, it passed an operating budget by a coalition-burnishing 48-1. But not moving on a transportation-finance package was a step backwards.
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originally published in The Herald

Daylight Saving Time is an anachronism that should have gotten the heave-ho 70 years ago. Northwesterners understand that sunlight is an indulgence, a dissipating scourge that weakens resolve and elevates sin. Give us dishwater skies and, around midday, a square of filtered light.

Why Daylight Saving? Benjamin Franklin figured it would save on candles (he just might have been joking, Twain-like.) When DST finally was implemented during World War I, the mission was to boost the war effort by curtailing coal consumption. Less artificial light at night, more resources to fight Kaiser Wilhelm II.

Cooler heads prevailed after the war, and DST was ditched until the attack on Pearl Harbor, when the same thinking took hold. “War Time” continued through 1945. There was fiddling off and on, until the Uniform Time Act of 1966 which, other than the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, was the most notorious misstep of Lyndon Johnson’s career. Prior to the law, states could do what was in their best interest.

Do Northwesterners crave less morning light in March? We who ride out “June-uary” (and March-uary?) As Philip Larkin wrote in his poem, “Aubade:” Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare./In time the curtain-edges will grow light./Till then I see what’s really always there:/Unresting death, a whole day nearer now.

So, more time in the soundless dark to see unresting death. Or even, say, to experience it.
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originally published in The Herald

George Hugo Boldt. Forty years ago today, the federal judge’s name became a touchstone, celebrated and cursed.

The Boldt narrative traces from the first tribal “fish-ins” in 1964 to protest the violation of indigenous treaty rights, to a (yes) farsighted 1970 Nixon Justice Department lawsuit against the state of Washington, to the Feb. 12, 1974 ruling that reaffirmed the federal treaties of 1854 and 1855. Tribal members, Boldt ruled, have the right to fish in their “usual and accustomed” places, with half of the annual catch going to treaty tribes.

The treaties shepherded by Washington’s first territorial governor, Isaac Stevens, were a horror, demanding mass resettlement and the de facto genocide of Washington’s first inhabitants. Stevens, an imperious spirit, figured tribal members would die from imported diseases or be absorbed into the larger Euro-American population. Stevens never anticipated a vital community of First Nations.

The only trouble with Boldt, it seems, was that he actually read the treaties.

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