Wayne Brightly, An ironically named Bronx teacher paid a homeless man with Asperger's syndrome to take his NY Teacher Certification test for him.

A Bronx teacher who repeatedly flunked his state certification exam paid a formerly homeless man with a developmental disorder $2 [Whoe! ] to take the test for him, authorities said yesterday.

The illegal stand-in - who looks nothing like teacher Wayne Brightly - not only passed the high-stakes test, he scored so much better than the teacher had previously that the state knew something was wrong, officials said.

"I was pressured into it. He threatened me," the bogus test-taker Rubin Leitner told the Daily News yesterday after Special Schools Investigator Richard Condon revealed the scam.

"I gave him my all," said Leitner, 58, who suffers from Asperger's syndrome, a disorder similar to autism. "He gave me what he thought I was worth."

Brightly, 38, a teacher at one of the city's worst schools, Middle School 142, allegedly concocted the plot to swap identities with Leitner last summer. If he failed the state exam again, Brightly risked losing his $59,000-a-year job.

"I'm tired of taking this test and failing," Brightly told Leitner, according to Condon's probe. "I want you to help me."

Along with being much smarter than Brightly, Leitner is 20 years older. He also is white and overweight while Brightly is black and thin. Yet none of those glaring differences apparently worried Brightly.

Hmmm… I guess this falls under “What would Bugs Bunny do?” Except, of course, Bugs Bunny would devise a scheme that would work.

10th amendment and who ratified the constitution

I received the following proposed questions and answers from Mike M:

1) Government under the U.S. system is created by consent; who and by what authority was the federal government established?

Answer by the States and the 10th amendment reserves all powers not so granted to the federal government to the States....No?

2) How many branches of government do BOTH the federal government and the governments of the States have?

Answer three, executive, legislative and judicial. Now, of course, some localities have a non-strong mayor and the legislative body (common council, for example) administers the Executive Function.....but we should concentrate on the State and federal governments......

3) For every wrong is there a remedy in any or all of our governments?

Answer no in a general sense. Just because something is wrong doesn't mean that there is a statutory or constitutional remedy to right that wrong. It was fashionable in the 1960's and 1970 to look for an implied remedy under any law or constitutional provision but that doctrine has been limited by our Supreme Court. So, express remedies in the laws and constitutions of the federal and State governments provide the full existing range of remedies for wrongs. True, many more wrongs are added by statutes to those laws for which remedies are already provided; few remedies are repealed. We also add, but rarely, new Constitutional amendments providing remedies and other requirements for continued consent by the governed both at the federal and state levels.

Question one is OK as it. I guess I will frame question one and it’s answer as follows:

A) What act established the federal goverment?
Answer: the ratification of the constitution.

B) Who consented to the establishment of the U.S. federal government?

Answer: The states.

As a comment: the answer Mike offered for question one conflates the creation of the federal government with the constraints on the federal government created by the 10^th amendment. I’m will get pedantic here, but the ratification of the U.S. constitution, in effect, established the federal government. The first 10 amendments were incorporated into the constitution after the federal government was established. Put another way, 10^th amendment to the constitution didn’t exist until after the constitution was ratified and the federal government established by this constitution amended the constitution.

The 10^th amendment deserves its own set of questions.

C) which amendment reserves all power to the states that the constitution does not grant the government?

Answer: the 10^th amendment.

D) under the 10^th amendment, what powers do the states not have?

Answer: The states have neither powers prohibited to them the constitution nor powers delegated to the United States.

Question two has already been covered with respect to the number of branches of the federal government by proposed test question # 23. I think the part of the question regarding the number of branches of state governments is off topic unless this is address in the constitution.

In my view, question three is eliciting an essay type of answer. In my view we need to specify questions that have a specific, fact-based, answer.

That being said, I also don’t consider myself the final arbiter of what is an acceptable question. I will go with the majority opinion of my fellow FreedomWorkers.

I haven’t conferred with Mike regarding the intent of question three. I have tentative notions regarding two or three things that Mike might alluding to but I think I discuss more with Mike before I offer any more commentary.

the founders and republics

Tim Alvaro suggested the following question: What form of government is granted by the will of the people why was it chosen above other forms in its day?

I desire to frame questions that don't generate multipart questions. There are some advantages to this technique. Primarily I think it makes it easier to grade the question as 100% or 100% right. It complicates the grading when the first part of an answer is correct and the second part is wrong.

With this consideration in mind, I would begin by factoring your question into two questions:

A) What form of government is granted by the will of the people?

B) Why was this form chosen above other forms in its day?

Regarding question A: I’m not sure exactly how I might answer that. I suppose one answer would be “a Republic” but you can shop around and find definitions such as “a government having a chief of state who is not a monarch and who in modern times is usually a president” (see http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=republic) and “a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch.” (see http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/republic?view=uk). If I wanted to prove that a republic might very different than the U.S. I could point to Stalinst states such as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (i.e., North Korea)

In my view, there is a lot of wiggle room in how a student might answer this question. I think this question needs to be reframed before it is suitable for our purposes.

Regarding question B: I suspect you’re asking, “Why the framers of our constitution select a Republic as a form of government?” My answer would be “Because they rejected both Monarchy and pure democracy. The founders regarded a democratic republic was an acceptable compromise.

I believe that this question leads to further questions:

A) Why did the founders reject a pure democracy?
B) Why did the founders reject establishing a Monarchy?

My answers for question A would be that they considered a pure democracy to be too similar to mob rule. Put another way, they considered one of the purpose of government is to provide a buffer between popular emotion and governmental action.

An additional answer to A is that they believed that a pure democracy was unsuitable for a political unit bigger than a large city. (Recall their decision was made in the days before email; it would take to long to coordinate the population for decision-making. Not that email would make a pure democracy any more suitable today. )

Yet another answer for question A is that the small states would most likely have not approved a constitution where they would be at the mercy of much larger states. Put another way, the smaller states demanded equal representation in the Senate, with respect to large states, as a check against democracy before they would approve the constitution.

Now regarding answers to question B: Unfortunately I’ve got to run and I don’t have any more time for this post.

Well, Tim, what are your thoughts? I'm sure that there are a few FreedomWorkers who would like to toss in their $0.02.

Email me at jhendrix58@gmail.com or leave a comment by clicking the "post a comment link". Posting a comment is better as it is public.

Framing questions

We need to design questions such that they don’t provide obvious hints as to either the question’s answer or for the answers to other questions.

There is a lot at stake with the way we frame the questions because we propose that this test be one of the requirements for graduating from high school. Consequently, we need to frame questions such that the answer’s foundation is fact-based and not opinion-based.

Put yourself in the shoes of a high school student who was answering a question phrased such that it elicited an opinion and not a fact. Presumably such a question could be marked wrong if the person grading the test held a different opinion.


Consider, for example, the following question:

Which President arguably illegally suspended the Constitution?

This question, read literally, is eliciting an answer that is “arguable”. I know that I’m being pedantic and I apologize for the nit-pickery, but questions that elicit answers that can be measured against undisputed facts are better. Now consider the following question:

Which President suspended the Constitution?

This question is well framed because the answer is a matter of record.

Also I recommend that we avoid questions with multipart answers. Such questions should be factored into several questions that elicit a single answer.

We also should assume that the teachers might be tempted to simply “teach to the test”. The risk is that students might be taught that Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus without ever teaching the concept of Habeas Corpus. To my way of thinking, unless students understand what Habeas Corpus is they will have no idea what it was that Lincoln suspended.

All of this means that questions that allude to other noteworthy topics (e.g., Habeas Corpus) need to be accompanied by other questions that specifically test students knowledge of these concepts.

Questions

The proposed questions are shown in a table somewhere below this text. For some reason (I suspect a bug in blogger) tables have an unsightly gap above them. This accounts for the blank space between this text and the table of questions. Just scroll down to see the questions.

Also I'd love to know if anywone knows the workaround for this bug.

Ques #	question	Answer	school level
1	What are the colors of our flag?	Red, White, and Blue.	elementary
2	How many stars are there in our flag?	50	elementary
3	What color are the stars on our flag?	White.	elementary
4	What do the stars on the flag mean?	One for each state in the Union.	elementary
5	How many stripes are there in the flag?	13	elementary
6	What color are the stripes?	Red and White.	elementary
7	What do the stripes on the flag mean?	They represent the original 13 states.	elementary
8	How many states are there in the Union?	50	elementary
9	What is the 4th of July?	Independence Day.	elementary
10	What is the date of Independence Day?	July 4th	elementary
11	Independence from whom?	England	elementary
12	What country did we fight during the Revolutionary War?	England	elementary
13	Who was the first President of the United States?	George Washington	elementary
14	Who is the President of the United States today?	Currently George W. Bush	elementary
15	Who is the vice-president of the United States today?	Currently Dick Cheney	elementary
16	Who elects the President of the United States?	The electoral college	middle
17	Who becomes President of the United States if the President should die?	Vice - President	elementary
18	For how long do we elect the President?	Four years	elementary
19	What is the Constitution?	The supreme law of the land	middle
20	Can the Constitution be changed?	Yes	middle
21	What do we call a change to the Constitution?	An Amendment	middle
22	How many changes or amendments are there to the Constitution?	27	high
23	How many branches are there in our government?	3	elementary
24	What are the three branches of our government?	Legislative, Executive, and Judiciary	elementary
25	What is the legislative branch of our government?	Congress	middle
26	Who makes the laws in the United States?	Congress	middle
27	What is the Congress?	The Senate and the House of Representatives	middle
28	What are the duties of Congress?	To make laws	middle
29	Who elects the Congress?	U.S. citizens who are properly registered to vote	middle
30	How many senators are there in Congress?	100	elementary
31	In Federalist Paper Number 78, which branch did Alexander Hamilton identify as the weakest branch of the federal government?	The judicial branch.	high
32	Why did Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist Paper Number 78, believe that the judicial branch would be the weakest branch of government?	Because (a) the judicial branch posses only the power to judge, not to act, and (b) the judicial branch depends the executive branch to carry out its judgments or decisions.	high
33	How were U.S. Senators originally selected?	They were appointed by state Legislatures.	high
34	How are U.S. Senators selected today?	They are popularly elected.	high
35	What was the original purpose of United States Senators?	The Senators were the State governments' representatives in the legislative branch	high
36	What is Habeas Corpus?	A court order challenging the detention of a person. (Is this answer suitable? )	high
37	Which President suspended the Constitution?	No President has suspended the constitution.	high
38	Which President suspended Habeas Corpus?	Abraham Lincoln	high
39	What year was Habeas Corpus suspended?	1861	high
40	What year was Habeas Corpus restored?	1866	high
41	What act established the federal goverment?	the ratification of the constitution.	middle
42	Who consented to the establishment of the U.S. federal government?	The states	middle
43	which amendment reserves all power to the states that the constitution does not grant the government?	the 10th amendment.	middle
44	under the 10th amendment, what powers do the states not have?	The states have neither powers prohibited to them the constitution nor powers delegated to the United States.	middle
45
46
47
48
49
50
51

Commentary
The original answer to question 29 was "The people." At a minimum, the answer should be "U.S. citizens." This is because only American citizens are entitled to vote in American elections.

In my view the answer should be more like "U.S. citizens who are properly registered to vote." I reason that the answer to this question should show an understanding that voting is a conditional right (e.g., felons are denied voting privileges.)

Anybody have any comments?

Credits
The US Citizenship & Service Help Center provided questions 1 - 30.

Questions 31 - 40 were derived from questions suggested by Timothy Alvaro. Thanks Tim! I rewrote his questions to follow the suggested question framing guidelines.

Questions 41 - 44 were dereived from questions suggested by Mike Mett

Vision Statement

This blog is concerned with aspects of education in U.S. public schools. In particular we are concerned that students graduate high school with a thorough grasp of the founding documents: the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. We are concerned with any attempts to “deconstruct” our national narratives and national symbols and thus “deconstruct” the concept of an American identity.

We are uninterested in simply adding requirements to the existing school curriculum; we are interested in a specific result: high school graduates who are conscious of the nature of their country’s government, can immediately recognize proposals and ideologies that are contradictory to their country’s nature and are fully equipped to preserve, support and argue for their country. Put another way, we believe that a high school graduate should fully understand what it means to be an American.

Americans are not Americans simply because of geography or ancestry. The contrast between America and the two countries that we share geography and common borders with, Canada and Mexico, is very clear. Leaving aside recent immigrants, Americans are descendents of people who have transferred from other cultures and assimilated into ours. More than any other citizenship, American citizenship is a state of mind and concepts. Americans share certain fundamental beliefs and principles. Americans understand that our country’s founding documents, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, are the foundation for these beliefs and principles. In our view, American citizenship cannot be fully grasped by a person who is oblivious as to what it means to be an American.

Such a high school graduate would immediately recognize assertions such as “It is illegal of America to wage war without the approval of the UN.” as false because they would already know that the U.S. constitution has not a single word regarding the UN Security Council. Such a high school graduate would be troubled by a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that cited foreign law because he would know that our Constitution is the supreme law of our land. Put another way, such a high school graduate would be much more resistant than the average current high school graduate to any attempt to warp the popular mind-set about the United States in ways contradictory to its actual nature.

Our opponents are those are patriots of an America that only exists in their aspirations. Those who seek an America that can be constrained by an UN Security Council vetoes paid for in the coin of Oil-of-Food bribes are our opponents. Those who seek an America that resembles the socialist European Union are our opponents. Those how seek to redefine the word “democracy” such that key political units are ascriptive groups (that is, the racial, ethnic, or gender groups into which one is born) rather than the individual citizen, who forms voluntary associations and works with fellow citizens regardless of race, sex, or national origin are also our opponents.

In America, there are those who intend to educate public school students with a transmuted version of America so as to effect a slow-motion regime change; transforming America into a country that is fundamentally at odds with its own constitution. We are on the "regime maintenance" side of the struggle, our opponents are for "regime transformation."