Apparently, there’s a dearth of clever blog names.

Good thing we locked up 7 West early.

“You can’t build a reputation,” Henry Ford once said, “on what you are going to do.” And when it comes to raising graduation standards, Virginia is building quite a reputation.

Tomorrow (at an absolutely ungodly hour), I am headed off to the Southern Regional Education Board’s Legislative Conference. This nonprofit, nonpartisan organization works with leaders and policy-makers in 16 Southern states to improve education.

One of the key topics at the conference will be the results of the accountability movement of the 1990s. Virginia, like many other states, raised standards for what students graduating from high school needed to know and be able to do.

In the beginning, states talked tough. They raised graduation requirements. They instituted state tests that students had to pass to graduate.

But when the time came for those new standards to kick in, many states backed off. They lowered their expectations for students. Or they watched their graduation rates slide.

Except Virginia. Here, despite rigorous new standards (every high school graduate now has to complete math through at least Algebra I, for example), graduation rates have actually increased slightly.

How did we do that? Much of the credit goes to local schools and teachers. They have worked very hard to prepare all students.

But the state has done its share. Gov. Warner’s Project Graduation is cited by SREB as one of the national model programs. Funded by the General Assembly to the tune of more than $8 million a year, this initiative allows schools to identify students who are at risk of not graduating. Then they are enrolled in special academies that may meet before or after school, during the summer, or on Saturdays.

As a result, Virginia’s graduation rate has held steady. In 1997, before any of the rigorous standards were imposed, 94.5 percent of high school seniors graduated. Today, 94.7 percent of seniors graduate—and they do it after taking tougher math, English, and other academic courses.

 This is a success story that all Virginians can be proud of. Over the years, the State Board of Education under both Republican and Democratic governors has held to a clear vision. Today, people from all across the country are taking notice.

There’s a fascinating story in today’s WaPo on the secret World War II interrogation site at Fort Hunt. The site, located in the heart of my district, is a popular picnic site today. But during the War, it was a place where a small group of Americans pried German war secrets out of POWs–without harsh interrogation techniques. But because the installation was a secret, most of the veterans never were able to tell their families about the work they did to shorten the war.

This story, combined with Ken Burns’ marvelous series, The War, come at an important time. World War II veterans, truly the Greatest Generation, are dying at the rate of 1100 a day. They were mostly not given to talking much about their experiences. Share this Post story with your parent/grandparent and see what memories it brings to the surface.

Vivian Paige, one of the most thoughtful bloggers anywhere, posts about what happened on her blog this week.

It’s a sad and sorry tale. Her conclusion: “So it is a sad state of affairs in America today, one in which blacks and whites talk past each other instead of to each other. It is a sad state of affairs when people make assumptions about a person’s beliefs simply on the basis of race. And it is a sad state of affairs when people make excuses for injustice.”

We couldn’t say it better ourselves.

If the Iraqi Government has failed to meet 15 of the 18 benchmarks, yet is considered a success by President Bush . . .

Then why, when schools meet 28 of 29 benchmarks under the No Child Left Behind Act, are they considered failures by this same President?

who loves the I Can Has Cheezeburger site?
(Not to get too English-teacher-y here, but there is an actual grammar on the site.) Mostly, though, it just makes me laugh, and in my line of work that’s always a good thing.

It’s Labor Day. The last day of the Minnesota State Fair.

Sigh.

That means I have let another year go by without eating a Corn Dog—basically, just a hot dog dipped in batter, deep fried, and served on a stick

The stick is important.

Those of you who grew up east of the Blue Ridge may not be familiar with the Food On A Stick phenomenon. But it’s huge in those Big Rectangular States Out West. In addition to Corn Dogs, the Fair also offers:

Cheese on a stick

Caramel apples on a stick

Chocolate-covered bananas on a stick

Cheesecake on a stick

Sloppy Joe on a stick (it must be really, really sloppy)

Spaghetti on a stick (ditto)

Pretzels on a stick

Reuben on a stick (not sure how the sauerkraut makes it)

Pork chops on a stick

Pancakes and sausage on a stick

Chocolate chip cookie dough dipped in batter and fried, on a stick

Deep-fried Snickers on a stick

Macaroni and cheese on a stick (explain how THAT works)

Walleye on a stick

Frozen grapes on a stick (who wants HEALTHY when you’re eating food on a stick?)

Batter dipped deep fried fruit on-a-stick (that’s more like it)

Puff Daddy on a stick (I wondered what Diddy was doing these days)

Dixie wings on a stick (aren’t wings kind of like chicken already on a stick?)

And my Scandinavian favorite, Ole and Lena’s Tater Tot hot dish on a stick (served with a dipping sauce made from Cream of Mushroom Soup)

In a great Salon article, Emory professor Drew Westen sums up what Democrats have to do to win the White House next year. The short version: More Jim Webb, less John Kerry.

“If you look at [Virginia Sen.] Jim Webb‘s response to the State of the Union address this year, Democrats should watch the tape of that over and over and over until they get it in their minds that here is a guy who is as centrist as you can get, I’m not sure that he’s even left of center, but what grabs people in the center about him is that he knows how to throw a punch. He can do it with conviction. When he speaks about national security he can take what is thought of as a left-wing position, which is the most stridently antiwar position anyone really is taking … and enunciate that position with crystal-clear clarity as a values issue: that families like his are willing to sacrifice their lives for the country, but that the flip side of that contract is that their leaders have to be judicious in the ways they call for them to sacrifice. Sending them to the desert in the wrong war into the midst of somebody else’s civil war is not judicious and is betraying the military and is as far from supporting the troops as you can get.”

So today I read about this innovative new company, BookSwim. “Stop buying books when you can borrow new releases and classics,” they say. Sorta like NetFlix for books. You submit a list of books you’d like to read. Then the books arrive at your door. You read them, send them back, and get more books.

Doesn’t this sound a lot like . . . well, like the public library? Where you don’t have to pay $20 a month and you can borrow more than three books at a time?

With studies showing that one in four Americans didn’t read a book last year, I am reluctant to criticize BookSwim. But maybe those subscribers should just get a library card.

Go by air. Those are among my mother’s Words to Live By, and the last two weeks have certainly proved them true.

I’ve flown through airports in Washington, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Boston, Atlanta, and San Pedro Sula, Honduras in the last ten days. (I feel like a contestant on a bad episode of The Amazing Race.)

One thing is clear to me: air travel in this country is a broken system. The air traffic control system is an ancient analog system that is close to collapse. Any untoward event–bad weather on the East Coast springs to mind–and the whole system goes down. The Virginia delegation to NCSL, for example, spent 25 hours trying to fly home from Boston. Had we only chartered a bus, we’d have been here in less than half the time.

Flying through so many airports in such a short time gives you a perspective on the whole TSA screening process. We were told the system is supposed to provide a basic uniform level of security. But rules seem to vary not only from airport to airport, but from screener to screener. In Boston, we were told that “TSA Regulations” prohibited putting shoes in those gray plastic bins. No such rule, say the TSA folks in DC.

Customs in Atlanta? Let’s just say that staff there were less efficient, less polite, and less effective than any customs screeners in any of the (many) Third World countries I have visited. The customs section there is dirty and disorganized, a disgraceful way for citizens and visitors to enter our country.

This is basic government service. It is supposed to have been a priority of the Current Administration. And it is not working.