Thanks for the transparency, Nick.

By the way, did anyone else catch Jeff Merkley's bald-faced lie on KPOJ this morning, where he claimed Novick recently supported Ralph Nader.

"There was a difference of opinion that had come up recently, in which Steve was saying how much he liked Nader and how disappointed he was in Barack Obama and in Clinton. And I just have exactly the opposite point of view. hen Nader put himself forward saying that democrats and Republicans are exactly the same, that Gore is exactly the same as Bush, that Clinton is exactly the same as Dole, to me that was just completely erroneous, completely about Nader, not about the truth, not about the facts because of vast differences on trade issues on health care issues on education issues. Huge differences. And so I have the reverse. I was very disappointed in Nader.

Merkley was referring to a 10-year-old letter Novick wrote about a 12-year-old ('96) election that Bill Clinton easily won, and he tried to tie Novick to Nader's disastrous 2000 run. Unfortunately Novick vehemently supported Al Gore in that race. The Merkley campaign knows that.

It was A BAld-FACED LIE that rolled off Merklye's tongue with a George-W-Bush-like ease.

Boy, that's some change he's offering, 'cause there sure aren't enough politicians in DC willing to lie about their opponents.

I refuse to vote for liars.

Moreover, is it really that smart to go on liberal talk radio and bash Nader backers or lie about a candidiate who most of the station's listeners support.

Lying is wrong and stupid. And the setting in which Merkley lied just another example of how politically tone deaf he really is.

Gordon Smith would dispose of him faster than you can flush a stinky turd down a toilet.

Not sure I trust the author, and a huge block of salt in my mind to anything Kremer said.

I wonder if Backlund and the other legislators at the time would see things the same way.

With regard to KPOJ this morning. I didn't hear what Jeff said (and yes, heard the whole interview, after waking up in the middle of the Novick interview earlier this morning) as saying Steve supported Nader recently.

I heard the language more as "recently, Steve and I were arguing about Nader". There have been times when Nader made the "not a dime's worth of difference between the parties" argument. Which is why people got angry at him--did Nader really believe Gore would have been a copy of Bush had Florida gone the other way?

Does the statewide primary really hang on statements made on a Portland radio station? How many people in the audience at the Eugene debate tomorrow are likely to have heard KPOJ this morning at 8:30?

It's abundantly clear from the transcript that Merkley was trying to smear Novick with Nader's 2000 run.

That's a lie, and Merkley knows it.

Novick vehemently supported Gore in 2000.

"There was a difference of opinion that had come up recently, in which Steve was saying how much he liked Nader and how disappointed he was in Barack Obama and in Clinton. And I just have exactly the opposite point of view. hen Nader put himself forward saying that democrats and Republicans are exactly the same, that Gore is exactly the same as Bush, that Clinton is exactly the same as Dole, to me that was just completely erroneous, completely about Nader, not about the truth, not about the facts because of vast differences on trade issues on health care issues on education issues. Huge differences. And so I have the reverse. I was very disappointed in Nader.

No I'm not, you are.

The CIM/CAM debacle is just one of many examples from the Goals 2000 disaster spear-headed by Vera Katz. Goals 2000 was a very expensive and totally unnecessary effort to re-invent the wheel. It's a big part of why Oregon is spending more per student than every western state with the possible exception of California. It's not surprising that someone like Novick, without any kids in the public schools, wouldn't have a clue.

For those of us who are not plugged into the personalities, can someone clarify something in the original post? If Steve Novick, attorney, is working as somebody's legislative director, and that somebody supports the CIM/CAM, how do we know that Steve Novick supports or did support the CIM/CAM? He may have, but that story does not make the point.

One of the reasons I use a pseudonym (the late George Seldes is a hero of mine): There are a number of areas where having and expressing my own opinion would be career limiting, quite probably for good in certain sectors. Public officials are funny that way -- they expect and demand that policy statements coming out of their shop be their policy. Attorneys, who sometimes have to defend odious guilty people or prosecute people under laws they don't support, get this.

So, I ask again, do we know that Steve Novick has the opinions being ascribed to him above, or are we just imputing his boss's views to him, the guy who was paid to advance her views in Salem?

Jenni,

You missed the point. I never said we were spending too much money. We're just not getting our money's worth, thanks in no small part to the misguided efforts of Goals 2000.

And don't forget that the numbers to which you refer are before the recent 18% increase in Oregon.

Torridjoe:

"Then why did the thousands of teachers who make up OEA not have a clue either--since they supported it when he did?"

Great question. If you try to find the answer (and I have) what you learn is that the vast majority of high school teachers despised the CIM/CAM as a bureaucratic waste of time, but would never dare say so publicly for fear of being branded as "trouble-makers."

I have a problem with this in the story:

To make sure Kremer and his cronies lost their battle to kill CIM/CAM, Rep. Vic Backlund (R-Keizer) introduced a compromise bill, House Bill 2744. That measure purported to limit CIM/CAM, but its purpose was to shift the discussion around CIM/CAM from the testing system’s deathbed to its recovery room, Kremer says. <<

Was this bill rushed through with just one hearing, as sometimes happens? Or did it have hearings inside and outside the capitol (which also sometimes happens)? Was Kremer (not an elected official) outspoken on this bill as if he is more important than any legislator?

Also, was Kremer part of the effort to oust Backlund and replace him in the next primary with Kim Thatcher? Many people were angry about that result, from friends of Backlund to some legislators and staff.

Folks, the political universe is more than Novick vs. Merkley. By June we will know the result of that primary.

But reporting a WW story using what sounds like Kremer as an authoritative source should raise questions about the story and the publication---no matter who anyone supports for US Senate.

Torridjoe--CIM is now used as the 10th grade benchmark test in No Child Left Behind statewide assessment. It's used to measure school performance, and has been since the early 00's (since my son was in high school and since I got my own teaching certificate).

It is one of the measures used to assess AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress for a school; others being attendance, behavior citations, etc), and whether a school is at risk.

If it wasn't being used as a measurement tool, then the problems with Marshall, Jefferson, et al losing state/Federal funding and being taken over simply wouldn't be an issue. The schools are being measured on the performance of their 10th grade students, but the measure is not on how the student performs or grows from year to year--it's a comparison between school classes. Those of us who teach in small schools (and even big schools) know that the academic performance of a grade varies from year to year, depending upon its makeup. CIM has never been devised as a growth model. If it had been, there'd be yearly achievement testing in high school--and there isn't.

Take a look at any special ed Individualized Education Plan. CIM matches the Federal testing. It's included in the Federal mandate.

(Disclosure: I've been a special education teacher since 2004, and my son attended a Portland Public high school from 2001-2005.)

"CAM was a less widely implemented vocational training program."

CAM was originally intended as a requirement that kids emerge from high school with marketable skills. That was how CIM/CAM was sold to many people, especially vocational teachers, in order to gain their initial support. However, it morphed into something completely unrecognizble to those of us in vocational/technical education. It became nothing more than basic skills testing at the 12th grade level. That's one of many good reasons why it never was implemented.

pam ... "then the Bush program rolled in with No Child Left Behind when the CIM/CAM became a disaster."

CIM/CAM was an epic disaster long before Bush became President. It wasn't concurrent. CIM/CAM was an expensive, poorly-conceived example of reinventing the wheel, and many of us teaching at the time knew it right away. Many of us tried to suggest, as best we could without incurring the wrath of administrators, that it would be better if we didn't lose our focus on students by committing ourselves to courses of action that would be difficult to undo later. I will agree that the idiotic and shortsighted NCLB (even if fully funded) needs to be at least radically changed if not tossed on the scrap heap altogether. However, if Novick was still truly behind CIM/CAM as late as 2003, he ought to have his head examined. This definitely calls his judgment and knowledge of education into question.

However, it morphed into something completely unrecognizble to those of us in vocational/technical education.

And this is the core of what went wrong with CIM/CAM. As a former student of a successful CIM pilot program (Beaverton's) I can tell you that what killed CIM and CAM was educator resistance.

Across the state teachers and administrators banded together and flat out refused to consider trying anything new. Just ask the parents from Cottage Grove what happened - their children's education was held hostage by a staff that didn't want to put in the effort.

And so the CIM/CAM standards were twiddled with - first by ODE, then by the Legislature, and then ODE took another shot, trying to make them more palatable. They only succeeded in making them incomprehensible and toothless.

The plug should have been pulled a long time ago.

Pliny ... Lots of staff time and effort went into trying to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse. It wasn't "educator resistance" that did in CIM/CAM; it was doomed from the beginning because it was little more than a bunch of glory-seeking, resume-building politicians and other "leaders" trying to slam a bunch of political and educational junk down the throats of professional educators at the building level -- with no regard for what had or had not worked in the past. Even with all the baggage the program carried with it, teachers and administrators spent more time than they ever should have attempting to create standards and instructional approaches that were good for kids.

If you look at Cottage Grove, the school held up as the guiding light for the rest of the state to follow, you'll find out that it wasn't a lack of support. It was the nature of the beast -- standards that couldn't be met given the timelines and a huge percentage of students who weren't going to earn high school diplomas because of it. Parents finally saw the light and demanded that the standards not be enforced so their kids could graduate.

Finally, it was that "twiddling" by the legislature and ODE that told teachers and administrators that 1) Oregon's leadership didn't really believe their own malarkey about educational change; and 2) that the original justifications for the program rested on philosophical quicksand. When you're trying to help each individual student succeed on a day-to-day basis, you just don't have time for "leaders" who aren't committed to their own program.

We really don't know. And that's actually an important factor here. The two central themes of Steve Novick's campaign are his "strong left hook" and that he's supposedly "a little different" kind of politician. Where's the evidence to back up either theme? Certainly not in his tenure with the ODE. Which is probably at least part of why he prefers not to mention it. The reality is that Novick's job with the ODE was a very senior position. He had plenty of opportunity to influence his boss behind the scenes. Either he was unable to ("strong left hook"???) or he agreed with her ("a little different"???).

Ok, this seems like an attempt to have it both ways in order to slam Novick.

You start by conceding that you can't conclude anything about Novick from his boss's positions and then you add a dig about a "very senior position" and imply that he is either a wimp or that we actually can infer that we know something about his views.

But that's bunk. For one thing, his seniority was at least one level below that of a very important person in the story, his boss. And, Lord knows, there are plenty of people in politics who make boneheaded decisions that they refuse to reconsider all the time, and their staffers then have to defend and advocate for very positions.

I think you have to look at his entire professional record to answer the question about whether the themes of his campaign are supported by his actions -- it's cherrypicking to select one incident and saying "See, he's just a phony," especially when he was not acting as a principal but as an aide.

I know very little about the merits, but I care even less, because I know that there's very little you can say fairly about someone's suitability for a Big Kahuna job (such as a US Senator) because of the positions that they had to take while serving as a deputy/assistant/no. 2/legislative director/chief-of-staff/etc.

What would be of interest to me are the opinions of people who worked with him or on the same issues, regardless of whether they were on the same side or not. HOW he operated during the debate on CIM/CAM, for example, is much more indicative of who he is than whether his boss was for or against it.

No regard for what had or had not worked in the past? You're kidding right? Outcomes based education was an idea kicked around since at least the '50s.

CIM/CAM was pushed mainly on the strength of things being done in Vermont if I remember right.

The failure in Cottage Grove was a self fulfilling prophecy. I met some of those people in the midst of their implosion. I remember thinking that if you say from the outset something isn't going to work, you shouldn't be surprised when it doesn't.

I'll grant you your gripes about the Legislature though. I remember being in the audience on Town Hall back in '94 or '95 listening to a Legislator just baldface lying about a bill that was going to be the magic fix for CIM/CAM. I can't remember what the lie was about, but I might still have the highlighted copy of the bill I was franticly waving at the time...

All I'm really saying is that CIM had a lot to offer when implemented by people who wanted to get the job done. When it became obvious that wasn't going to be the case statewide, losses should have been cut.

<h2>Well, it appears the teachers are fine with how Novick handled himself with regards to CIM/CAM.</h2>