The lady's not for burning - Connecticut State Board of Education nominee Kay Wall - Column

National Review, July 10, 1995 by Jeffrey Christensen

WHEN Connecticut's newly elected Republican governor, John Rowland, nominated Kay Wall, a proponent of high academic standards and local control of the schools, to the State Board of Education, he gave a voice to a long-neglected majority of Connecticut residents. He also tripped the detonation wire of the educational establishment's disinformation network.

Within hours, opposition phones, fax machines, and presses were humming with defamatory ``background information.'' Less than three weeks after her name was announced, Mrs. Wall had been Borked. She withdrew her nomination, stating that the opposition had made the issue ``who I am'' rather than ``what I stand for.'' Most importantly, ``who she was'' was a wholly fabricated demon -- market-tested for political failure. Kay Wall, a market research executive turned volunteer community leader, successfully led a grassroots campaign that helped defeat ex-Governor Weicker's bid to strip local school districts of control over management and curriculum. Proponents claimed the ``school restructuring'' bill would ``increase local control.'' But Kay Wall blew the whistle on the centralizing power grab beneath the populist facade. This won her the enmity of what Bill Bennett calls ``the Education Blob'': those with a vested interest in the nearly $400-billion-a-year educational status quo. As a Greenwich PTA member, Mrs. Wall first saw how educators can disguise an agenda they know would be rejected if clearly presented to parents. ``The superintendent's office proposed a '21st-Century Vision Statement' that made no mention of anything academic,'' she said. After a petition drive forced the goal of ``fulfilling the academic potential of all children'' into the statement, the superintendent decided not to propose the goals as policy. Perplexed, Mrs. Wall traced the problem to its roots and discovered an educational philosophy, methodology, and political agenda called Outcome-Based Education (OBE). OBE puts ``cooperative'' group learning ahead of ``competitive'' individual achievement, teaches nebulous social and behavioral ``outcomes'' like ``promote . . . interpersonal well-being,'' and holds back high achievers by requiring them to teach slow learners before they move on themselves. So she co-founded Save Our Schools (SOS) to alert parents to OBE's true implications. Then in 1993 Governor Weicker proposed to institutionalize the OBE dream with a massive state takeover of local schools, claiming his ``World Class Education'' bill would produce a ``21st-century workforce.'' Mrs. Wall and her SOS colleagues began speaking to parents statewide about ``the truth behind the motherhood-and-apple-pie rhetoric.'' Proponents of the bill, meanwhile, clinched the support of the Connecticut Business and Industry Association, which contributed an estimated $4 million to underwrite an advertising blitz. One ad read, ``Join Us in Support of World Class Education in Connecticut,'' and listed a veritable Who's Who of executives from IBM, Xerox, Union Carbide, GE, and other Fortune 500 companies in Connecticut. That so many industry leaders could be co-opted into supporting an egalitarian, state-centered bill reveals the sophistication of the educational establishment. Just how the establishment operates became clear in the case of Kay Wall. State Senator Kevin Sullivan set the tone: ``Mrs. Wall and her SOS colleagues have demonstrated in no uncertain terms an agenda of high-tech, educational witch hunting and a self-avowed war on government.'' He added that she was ``dangerous'' and ``unrestrained either by truth or tolerance.'' The Hartford Courant, Connecticut's highest-circulation newspaper, labeled her ``a right-wing ideologue'' and ``a zealot,'' who would ``dumb down the Board.'' Liberal legislators, editorialists, and reporters called her ``mean-spirited,'' a ``religious fanatic,'' and part of ``the religious Right'' -- curious appellations for a Unitarian. More damning yet was this simple fact: she is white. The New York Times intoned that ``Governor Rowland has displayed appalling insensitivity'' because he nominated ``a slate with too few minorities and not enough talent.'' They singled out Kay Wall as ``a divisive figure with little concern for the problems of city schoolchildren.'' State Senator Toni Harp, a member of the Black and Puerto Rican Caucus, said that if the Rowland administration was ``truly color blind, this would not have happened.'' Mrs. Wall ``brings a very limited perspective to education,'' Senator Harp later added, and ``she comes from a community that is not diverse.'' Senator Sullivan felt that, in place of Kay Wall, the Board really needed ``a black.'' Testifying before the Executive and Legislative Nominations Committee, Westport Superintendent of Schools Paul Kelleher complained that Mrs. Wall ``has inaccurately labeled OBE as 'multicultural,' a term which invokes racial fear in some people.'' He then invoked racial fear by accusing Mrs. Wall of ``using code phrases like 'disruptive students' . . . to propose practices that would deny equal educational opportunities by segregating some students . . . by social class and race.'' The official testimony against Kay Wall was a testament to Blob solidarity. Donald Rettman of the Connecticut Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project feared it was ``backed up . . . by religious-Right organizations.'' People for the American Way weighed in about Mrs. Wall's ``indiscriminate attacks on all explorations of genuine educational reform as the dumbing down of the curriculum.'' And claiming to represent the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education Patrice McCarthy opined that Kay Wall ``does not [offer] any positive solutions to the problems our schools face.'' Nothing could be further from the truth. State Representative Tim Barth, a leader in the school-choice movement, is convinced that ``Kay Wall is the Newt Gingrich of education in Connecticut. She's a revolutionary and she has vision into the future. She's got brains, she's got ideas, she's got facts, and the pro-establishment legislators were scared to death of her.'' Mostly, when people use words like ``revolutionary'' or ``visionary,'' Kay Wall shrugs her shoulders. She'd like to see the system changed, sure. And she's got a vision as to how best to re-structure it. ``Most people who hear me speak don't think my ideas are radical,'' she says. ``In fact, many think they always had the reforms I'm advocating.'' That's because they weren't consulted when educational standards were taken away. Kay Wall has no hidden agenda, no need to speak in codes. Her most effective weapon is open debate. Her opponents couldn't talk straight when they destroyed her nomination. But they paid her a back-handed compliment when they showed how far they'd go to silence her. But the lady's not for burning. With parents increasingly concerned about the schools, time is on her side. Sooner or later, the educationists will have to debate the issues with Kay Wall.