Tag Archives: history

Big Lies of Education, miracle schools

Big Lies of Education: Miracle Schools

A companion to the education crisis Big Lie of education reform is the education miracle.

The list of media and political claims of “miracle” is long since the foundational misleading crisis alarm was set off by A Nation at Risk, the bedrock Big Lie of accountability education reform—Texas miracle, Harlem miracle, and others.

Another companion of the crisis/miracle Big Lies is the “poverty is an excuse” Big Lie; the so-called miracle schools tend to be used as proof that student achievement is not most strongly causally related to socioeconomic factors outside the control of schools. [1]

Many people who are eager to accept education miracles are less interested in the education miracle and more seeking evidence to confirm their beliefs that reject economic privilege and disadvantage; the core here is the rugged individualism, bootstrap, and meritocracy myths.

Building on research from 2006 [2], I wrote a chapter on miracle schools in 2016 [3] and found the following:

  • Miracle school claims are rarely confirmed by non-partisan review; the so-called “high flying” schools (high poverty schools with high test scores) are incredibly rare events.
  • Those rare miracle schools are outliers, and thus, are not evidence of any generalizations about what all schools, or all high-poverty schools, can do to be more successful.
  • Evidence from outliers also are rarely scalable or transferable to schools with different challenges and populations of students.

Miracle school claims are often the tools for media, political, and marketing interests. They are designed to shame educators, not to provide evidence for credible reform.

Here are a few examples of how miracle claims in media are unmasked as false or misleading:

Notes

[1] Maroun, Jamil, and Christopher H. Tienken. 2024. “The Pernicious Predictability of State-Mandated Tests of Academic Achievement in the United States” Education Sciences 14, no. 2: 129. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci14020129

[2] Harris, D. N. (2006, March). Ending the blame game on educational inequity: A study of “high flying” schools and NCLB. Tempe, AZ: Education Policy Research Unit. https://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/ending-blame-game-educational-inequity-a-study-high-flying-schools-and-nclb

[3] Thomas, P.L. (2016). Miracle schools or political scam? In W.J. Mathis & T.M. Trujillo, Learning from the Federal Market-Based Reforms: Lessons for ESSA. Charlotte, NC: IAP.

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Pluribus, religion

Misery Loves Company: Pluribus as Allegory of Religion

[Header Photo by Ahmed Nishaath on Unsplash]

Starring Charlton Heston, Soylent Green was released in 1973 and set in 2022. Heston, in fact, starred in several classic science fiction films and is the face on some of the most memorable scenes and lines in cinema, including the Big Reveal in Soylent Green:

This film perfectly demonstrates the cross-genre power of blending science fiction and horror, usually a sort of slow boil horror pervading everything else in the film.

Heston starred in Planet of the Apes, but also Omega Man, released a couple years before Soylent Green. Omega Man is very much a slow boil film that emphasizes being terrifyingly alone as a human (also a key motif of Planet of the Apes).

Watching the first season of Pluribus, I was reminded of these classic science fiction films because of the motifs shared as well as some disturbing direct connections (more of that below). The main character, Carol, plays the role of “last human” similar to the Heston films above.

The horror here is not only losing her own humanity but also the end of all humanity.

Pluribus has been criticized by some as being too slow, but for me, that pace is essential for the dread that Carol feels, the existential angst that is her character even though for much of the first season she feels relatively safe because of the strict moral code exhibited by the infected (all but about a dozen are infected or dead).

I think Pluribus can be viewed (and read) many ways, but I have seen several posts noting that the show may be a commentary on religious fundamentalism.

I find that lens compelling and see the show as an allegory of religion, a dark satire of black-and-white moral codes and missionary zeal.

Season 1 builds to a Big Reveal in the final episode; that reveal depends strongly on the core elements of the show as an allegory of religion:

  • The infected view all life as sacred, likely speaking into the extreme “pro-life” movement that has successfully banned and even criminalized abortion.
  • That view of all life as sacred creates for the infected a paradox about their own survival, resulting in one of the most horrifying elements of the show; they consume HDP (human-derived protein) created from deceased humans.
  • And the infected are both happy and certain that everyone must join them in that happiness; their relentless niceness and efforts to convert the few remaining uninfected (their moral code requires the remaining humans must consent to the conversion) often feels like some parts Jehovah’s Witnesses and some parts Hare Krishnas.

One of the most well crafted aspects of the show, I think, is Carol proves again and again that she is a miserable human, and possibly a not very endearing person (even before the infection).

The obvious tension of the show, then, is that the infected are eerily and resolutely happy in contrast with Carol’s not-so-subtle perpetual state of misery and anger.

Carol’s seething rage, in fact, threatens the infected in dramatic ways that seem far worse than the power the infected have to convert her (again, she is ostensibly safe due to the moral code of their needing her consent).

This happy motif is far more complex than a clever element to create plot and tension.

Like the religious happiness running through major religions (being religious, the argument goes, brings happiness and contentment to the believers), however, I see the infected as miserable people unable to acknowledge or confront that their happiness is a veneer.

Concurrent with the release of Pluribus, the year 2025 has demonstrated the misery and even hate lurking beneath those most vocal about being religious.

The Trump agenda has knocked down the wall separating church and state with the consequences being anything except happiness for all.

The infected’s moral code seems naive and even a bit silly at first, but there is a Stepford Wives vibe lurking throughout, with both the HDP and final episodes exposing that, yes, this is an alien invasion of the horror kind.

The infected seem the product of some distant higher power, and they, like fundamentalists, have fixed moral codes and an insatiable missionary zeal.

The infected know what is best for everyone.

Few things are more horrifying than their certainty always offered with a smile.

Pluribus isn’t a show about happiness; it is an allegory summarized in a cliche—misery loves company.

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Critical Media Literacy, Education, Media, politics

CBS and the Myth of the Liberal Mainstream Media

[Header Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash]

If trending matters on social media, a consensus is building that Bari Weiss has ushered in the death of CBS, a nail in the coffin of mainstream media:

Many things can be true at once even when they seem to be somewhat contradictory, and here is such a case.

First, Weiss being hired by and then allowed to shape one of the original major networks in the US—associated with Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather—does deserve the criticism being leveled at both Weiss and CBS.

However, lurking beneath this hand wringing about the death of the mainstream media are interrelated realities—media and journalists have a long tradition of seeking to remain unbiased and nonpartisan, but they are both perceived by the public as liberal.

Over my 40+-year career, I have worked in two professions that share reputations for being liberal (education and journalism) even though both professions demand that teachers and journalists remain unbiased and nonpartisan, essentially not political.

Here is what many people miss about the Weiss/CBS controversy: Journalists/media represent a body of workers who are often disproportionately progressives or moderates but who have historically in the US (mostly because of standards around remaining unbiased and not political) perpetuated conservative and traditional values, often to the exclusion of pursuing truth and accuracy.

Yes, Weiss pulling (or delaying) the 60 Minutes episode is a grossly extreme example, but this action isn’t substantially different than how mainstream media has always worked. And that includes the nostalgia often associated with Cronkite and the Golden Era of broadcast television.

Journalists and media performing their work in unbiased and objective ways is not possible (all human endeavors are biased) but that standard also works as a veneer for maintaining social and political norms—which is a conservative bias.

Mainstream media has never really disrupted the political and economic status quo of the US; media has mostly served that status quo and those profiting from it.

My work as a public scholar keeps me in constant contact with mainstream media. This past summer, I had a commentary in The Washington Post, and while I found the journalists and experience very professional and supportive, the very long process tended toward softening my analysis of the reading crisis and shifting the discourse toward normative beliefs instead of critical evidence.

But I also had an experience with 60 Minutes in the spring of 2024.

A producer at 60 Minutes had read some of my public work on the current reading crisis movement, the “science of reading,” and he found my perspective unique, surprising. He emailed, and we set up a phone conversation.

We talked for over an hour and a half, and while the producer was engaged and interested, the discussion was mostly punctuated with him asking me to repeat key points that contradicted the norms of what people believe about reading and teaching reading.

He seemed most disoriented by my explaining what NAEP reading scores and achievement levels mean and how that tends to distort how reading proficiency and reading at grade level are understood.

By the end of the conversation, the producer concluded that everything I shared was important and even fascinating, but as he explained, there was no story there for a 60 Minutes segment.

Not long after this, however, 60 Minutes ran a segment on Moms for Liberty, an extremist right-wing group that also happens to perpetuate the exact reading misinformation that does provide the sort of story that media loves (compelling even though it is misleading or even false).

Frustrated and angry, I emailed the producer who responded by stating he had not been aware of the M4L segment, but that producers didn’t interfere in each other’s projects. You see, a compelling story trumps an accurate story.

Again, the Weiss/CBS controversy is a valid concern, but David Brooks—often considered not just a credibly journalist but an elite one—was a lower-key version of Weiss’s nonsense well before anyone knew her name. And Brooks enjoys a mostly uncritical acceptance and even celebration of his conservative ideology thinly wrapped in astute public commentary.

And The New York Times as well as Education Week have long been viewed as high-quality journalism that the public believes to be liberal while routinely producing conservative journalism and traditional stories.

Yes, many journalists (and educators, especially in higher ed) self-identify as progressives and moderates. But mainstream media is ultimately a business, and as the Trump era has shown, the public can be self-defeating in its retreat from anything critical, accurate, or counter to what most people believe.

Before Weiss, CBS was not liberal mainstream media or a Gold Standard of journalism; it was corporate media, often negligent while maintaining a veneer of being unbiased.

After Weiss, who has completely perverted the already problematic both-sides approach to journalism, CBS seems to believe that dropping the mask of objectivity will be the sort of story that sells—even when brazenly eradicating truth and accuracy.

You see, Weiss didn’t murder a robust and mature media; she just nudged it into the grave from Hospice.

Having just re-watched 28 Days Later last night, I am prone to suggest that while we mourn the death of CBS, let’s not rush to raise the dead.

In corporate America, there has never been either a liberal or unbiased mainstream media.

The Weiss dumpster fire is razing the garbage that most Americans pretended not to smell rotting right under their noses.

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Education, NEPC

NEPC: Celebrating and Remembering David Berliner

Celebrating and Remembering David Berliner

Education scholar, leader, wit, gadfly, mentor, father, friend and NEPC Fellow David C. Berliner died September 26th, 2025. He was 87.

As an academic who specialized in educational psychology, Berliner received many of the most prestigious accolades awarded to those in his field. He was elected to the National Academy of Education and the International Academy of Education, and he was given award after award: the E.L. Thorndike Award in educational psychology, the AERA’s Distinguished Contributions Award and its Outstanding Public Communication of Education Research Award, the Friend of Education award of the NEA, and the Brock Prize in Education Innovation. He served as president of AERA and Dean of the College of Education at Arizona State University. He taught at universities around the nation and the world.

David’s Bar Mitzvah, 1951

Although he excelled in the Ivory Tower, Berliner was probably best known as a public intellectual who intrepidly pushed back against lawmakers and education policy that flew in the face of research and (quite frequently) common sense. This work is represented, for instance, in his general-interest books The Manufactured Crisis (1996, co-authored with Bruce Biddle), Collateral Damage (2007, co-authored with Sharon Nichols), and 50 Myths and Lies that Threaten America’s Public Schools (2014, co-authored with Gene Glass).

David and Ursula, March For Our Lives

“In the raging battle over school reform, David wanted to fight—and fight he did,” said NEPC’s Alex Molnar.

In books, articles, op-eds, and speeches, he relentlessly exposed the lies and hypocrisy of neoliberal school reform advocates and the danger posed by their market-based vision of public education. He fought hard but he was a joyous warrior—dancing would have definitely been allowed at David’s revolution! I have never met anyone more full of life. I will miss you terribly, my friend.

David and Ursula

David enjoying the waters of Hawaii, 2025

The 200-plus articles, reports, chapters, and books Berliner authored during his lifetime ranged from scholarly writings on psychology, pedagogy, and assessment to accessible books that used plain language to explain how education research was applied—and misapplied—in the real world. He remained prolific to the end, publishing a book of 19 personal and reflective essays, Public Education for Our Nation’s Democracy: Commentaries on Schooling in America, the month he passed away.

“David was an acerbic critic of the past two+ decades of what was called ‘education reform,’” his friend, the education scholar Diane Ravitch, wrote upon his death.

David laughed at the nonsensical but heavily funded plans to ‘reform’ education by imposing behaviorist strategies on teachers, as if they were robots or simpletons. David had no patience with the shallow critics of America’s public schools. He respected the nation’s teachers and understood as few of the critics did, just how valuable and under-appreciated they were.

Although his work grappled with serious topics, David was known for his lighthearted approach. He was our enthusiastic host of The Bunkum Awards, a satirical “honor” that NEPC used to bestow on the most appalling educational think-tank reports of the year. The videos, which are from 2013 and 2014, are still fun to watch, as David joyfully skewers the award recipients.

2014 Bunkum Awards

David also took great joy in the simple pleasures of life, from sunsets to seltzers to real honest-to-goodness New York City bagels, especially when enjoyed with his many friends, his children and grandchildren, and his beloved wife, Ursula Casanova.

David and Kevin in 2023

At an online memorial held October 4th in his honor, the word repeatedly used to describe him was “mensch.” “Just thinking of David always made my heart smile,” said NEPC’s Kevin Welner. “His presence among us, effusing decency and empathy, was a reminder of why we’re here on earth.”

“He was a great guy, in so many ways,” his daughter BethAnn Berliner told us. “We’ve heard from people how he was a giant in the field, a scholar, a teacher, a mentor, and an advocate. But to me, he was just dad and that was far greater.”

diversity, Equity, free speech, John Gardner, memoir

USA 2025: “Cheap Streamers in the Rain”

[Header Photo by Casper Johansson on Unsplash]

That idea—humankind’s inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—coupled with a system for protecting human rights —was and is the quintessential American Dream. The rest is greed and pompous foolishness—at worst, a cruel and sentimental myth, at best, cheap streamers in the rain.

“Amber (Get) Waves (Your) of (Plastic) Grain (Uncle Sam),” John Gardner

As summer was slipping into fall of 2025, I attended with my partner the Upstate Renaissance Faire held at the fairgrounds in Spartanburg, SC, just a few minutes from where I live. This was my first-time at what many call a “Ren Fair.”

I have a friend group connected with my partner made up of gamers, and a few of them were there along with us and my girlfriend’s sister and her boyfriend.

I was immediately shocked by the size of the crowd. Parking was an adventure, and despite the fairgrounds being quite large, the crowd left me a bit claustrophobic and overwhelmed.

However as we started making our way around—and once my partner kindly asked at the information desk where the beer was—I realized something that I have been mulling over in the context of the heightened social tensions in the US, especially since the inexcusable shooting of Charlie Kirk.

The atmosphere at the Faire was overwhelmingly happy and incredibly peaceful. Despite the abundance of ancient weapons and people dressed as knights—and even when attending a jousting demonstration that included a sword fight—I felt more safe there than in most public spaces.

I thought of October 2017 when several of us attended an open-air concert by The National in Pittsburg just after the horrific mass shooting in Las Vegas. Fireworks were set off behind us during that concert and everyone froze; in the US we have cultivated a culture of guns and as a result, a culture of fear.

As a lifelong educator, I was also involved in a school shooting in the 1980s.

At the Faire, there was a wide array of how people dressed and presented themselves. Yes, plenty of folk in medieval and Renaissance attire (the majority attending were dressed up, in fact), but there were those of us in our daily clothing along with Furries and even a guy in a Spider-Man costume.

Notable as well, many people blurred and broke the boundaries of gender norms. A person in all black and fishnet stockings turned around in the line for beer, and I was briefly caught off guard by his beard.

But as people made eye contact, they would smile and nod, often speaking pleasantly and with the general excitement everyone shared just being there.

This was one of the most diverse places I have ever been. And no one was offended, or angry.

No one was trying to change or judge anyone else.

I didn’t see a single MAGA hat or shirt (again, this was in Upstate SC where the Trump agenda is everywhere, on clothing and cars, and plastered across yards). Oddly, this space was absent partisan politics and a deeply political arena where the barriers of race, socioeconomic status, gender, and sexuality seemed to disappear.

Not to be overly idealistic, but this space is exactly what those of us calling for “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” for all envision.

And I cannot understand how this is a radical or offensive idea.

This experience reinforced for me that the tensions in the US are not between two sides that are equal:

  • One side calling for all people, even the smallest minorities, to have the same rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, guaranteed by our laws and political system.
  • The other side determined to impose their narrow beliefs on all Americans using the power of misinformation and government mandates.

These are not the same.

LGBTQ+ people who seek “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”—they are not seeking to impose their lives on others. They are a minority who have had their access to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” mostly denied, and then occasionally allowed begrudgingly.

And just as there seemed to be some possibility the US would extend full humanity to people who are LGBTQ+, a political wave of resentment, hate, and denial has swept across the nation, often scapegoating this community.

Now, there is a powerful conservative movement in the US who seeks to impose their narrow beliefs on everyone even as they do not practice those beliefs themselves.

These are not the same.

Too many people leading and following in the US have lost touch with reality and facts.

Too many people have abandoned a commitment to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” for all, pursuing the false sanctuary of imposing their beliefs on everyone.

Ironically, it is not the people cosplaying at a Ren Fair.

Denying “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” to anyone is a threat to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” for everyone.

This may be the “cheap streamers in the rain” era of the USA that John Gardner rejected in 1976. This may be the final era with no renaissance possible.

Recommended

“Amber (Get) Waves (Your) of (Plastic) Grain (Uncle Sam),” John Gardner

The Sick Rose

By William Blake

O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

Education, education reform, Educational Research, Science of Reading

Who Controls Science Controls: “we all need to conform to the science”

[Header Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash]

While there is ample and disturbing evidence to keep our focus on the tremendous destructive outcomes of the second Trump administration, we should also recognize that the seeds of these worst policies for education were planted by George W. Bush as both governor of Texas and president of the US.

The recent release of the government report with fake citations (likely from using AI) is just one of the most chilling examples of the cumulative effect of government control of what counts as “science,” and thus, Why Trump’s push for ‘gold-standard science’ has researchers alarmed.

So, first, we must note that Bush education agenda in Texas included scripted curriculum, and then, more significantly, Bush’s signature No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was grounded in mandating “scientifically based” instruction and programs.

Ironically, despite NCLB’s “scientifically based” mandate, in the second decade after implementation, the media, politicians, and pundits declared a reading crisis and ascribed the cause to teacher education and teachers failing to know and use the “science of reading” (SOR).

SOR has, then, spawned the “science of math” and more broadly the “science of learning.”

Similar to the bi-partisan support for NCLB and most education reform since the 1980s, a politically diverse coalition has embraced and endorsed the “science of” movement, although few people have acknowledged that the agenda is mostly conservative ideology.

Some are, however, starting to recognize that “science of” policies are working to de-professionalize teachers through mandating scripted curriculum.

Rachael Jefferson confronts this reality:

There is not enough evidence behind the science of learning to justify it being enshrined in our education system, Jefferson contends. 

“It posits science really as an absolute, and it also suggests explicitly that nobody can question its authority because it is the ‘science’ of learning.

“In other words, ‘whatever [teachers have] been doing for the last few decades is unimportant now, we all need to conform to the science’.

“That’s a very heavy-handed way of approaching pedagogy and also approaching teachers in the field who are very, very experienced in this,” Jefferson tells EducationHQ.

The problem here is not “science,” but who controls what counts as science and how “science” is used as control.

NCLB codifying what counted as “scientifically based” was cause for concern. But over the past two decades, a narrow definition of “science” has evolved, reinforcing the contradictory “science of” movement that demands applying that narrow view of “science” as a veneer for an ideological agenda.

What counts as “science” and credible evidence in education—and all fields—should not be abdicated to government bureaucracy (as evidenced by the current Trump administration).

Ultimately, the “science of” movement has proven to be less about teaching and learning or reforming education, and more about political and ideological control (parallel to the current misuse of “science” by Health and Human Services [HHS] Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.)

For teaching and learning, scientific research certainly provides important and powerful evidence for teaching and teachers; however, the “science of” movement is distorting and controlling what counts as “science” for ideological and political agendas.

The Trump agenda for so-called “gold-standard science” is the logical and catastrophic logical outcome of many decades of political mandates for education reform.

The lesson?

Who controls science controls.

Recommended

The problem with vibes-based cellphone reporting – Kappan Online

#BlackLivesMatter, James Baldwin, Margaret Atwood, race, racism, Whiteness

What Every White Person in the US Knows: 2025

[Header Photo by Walid Hamadeh on Unsplash]

Here are two texts that may not immediately appear to be saying something similar about the state of the US in 2025.

Let’s start with On Language, Race and the Black Writer by James Baldwin (Los Angeles Times, 1979):

Every white person in this country—and I do not care what he or she says—knows one thing. They may not know, as they put it, “what I want,” but they know they would not like to be black here. If they know that, then they know everything they need to know, and whatever else they say is a lie.

And then, just a few years later, there is Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, specifically the closing “Historical Notes” where readers learn about the context behind how Gilead comes about.

At a satirical symposium in Gileadean studies dated June 25, 2195, the keynote, Professor James Darcy Pieixoto, explains that context:

Men highly placed in the regime [of Gilead] were thus able to pick and choose among women who had demonstrated their reproductive fitness by having produced one or more healthy children, a desirable characteristic in an age of plummeting Caucasian birthrates, a phenomenon observable not only in Gilead but in most northern Caucasian societies of the time.

The reasons for the decline are not altogether clear to us. Some of the failure to reproduce can undoubtedly be traced to the widespread availability of birth control of various kinds, including abortion, in the immediate pre-Gilead period. Some infertility, then, was willed, which may account for the differing statistics among Caucasians and non-Caucasians.

…But whatever the causes, the effects were noticeable, and the Gilead regime was not the other one to react to them at the time. Rumania, for instance, had anticipated Gilead in the eighties by banning all forms of birth control, imposing compulsory pregnancy tests on the female population, and linking promotion and wage increases to fertility.

What are these texts from over four decades ago telling us about the current political and cultural state of the US during the era of Trump/MAGA?

White Americans, notably the white political and cultural leaders, are openly concerned about the low birthrate among white people. And thus, restricting and banning abortion have swept much of the country after the overturning of Roe v. Wade. [1]

Not that long ago, mainstream thinkers believed Roe v. Wade and abortion rights were safe in the US; people raising concerns were considered alarmists.

Now, as Republicans and conservatives seem to be coming after birth control next, we cannot hesitate as we did before the dismantling of women’s rights came as we should have known it would.

In the passage from the “Historical Notes,” we have a key point about the birthrates of white people falling against the rise of birthrates about other races.

And thus, the connection to Baldwin’s confronting “every white person in this country—and I do not care what he or she says—knows one thing. … [T]hey would not like to be [B]lack here.”

Not to speak for or over Baldwin, but to help us tease out this connection in 2025, white fear in the US is fear not singularly grounded in race but ultimately fueled by the fear of becoming a minority.

We must next consider fully Baldwin’s recognition that for white people, Black people and the consequences of their minority status in the US are a mirror for who white people are—more so than any commentary on Black people themselves.

For all the histrionics denying white privilege, white people know one thing—that white people as the majority, that white people with the balance of power, used that majority status and power to the detriment of any and all minorities.

If and when white people become the minority, they fear that they will then suffer the same consequences of minority status that white people have imposed on other races in the US.

White people cannot fathom a world in which majority and minority statuses do not result in some winning because others are losing.

The Great Whitewashing is upon us—one foreseen by Baldwin and Atwood.

One that is coming to fruition before our eyes.

What every white person knows may destroy everything for everyone.

What each white person does now will tell everyone everything we need to know.

[1] See Things Fall Apart for Women (Again): Leni Zumas’s Red Clocks

politics

Guest Post: Efficiency Is Not Always Effective, Rick Meyer

[Header Photo by John Cameron on Unsplash]

Below is a guest post by Rick Meyer

My mother was extremely smart and had a remarkable sense of humor. Even at the worse moments in her life, she found humor and insight. One day, as my sisters and I were playing (and fighting) in the house because of rainy weather, she called out to none, some or all of her three children, “Hey, do you want to know a way to lose twenty pounds of ugly fat?” We stopped our bickering and turned to her, waiting for her to reply to her own question. “Cut off you’re your head,” she said and quietly continued making dinner. Her remark cut through the tension and led to some whole-hearted laughter.

I think of my mom today as I try to understand what it means for a country to work on becoming more efficient. My mom was right: your body would be twenty pounds lighter if you removed your head. That’s an efficient solution to a weight problem. The problem is the effect: you’d most certainly die. Indiscriminately removing something that’s weighty may not be good for the body of the whole.

In a country striving to be a democracy, the tension between efficiency and effect is crucial. Tom Paine said that in a democracy, law is king, and in a monarchy, the king is law. The latter is an efficient way to get laws made and enforced, with the king having power  over both the laws and their implementation. The problem is the effect on the people living within the country in that they all work for the king, for  the perpetuation of the monarchy, and suffer at the king’s whims, desires, moods, needs, and temperament. The effect on the people is that they are essentially enslaved.

In contrast, in a democracy, when the law is the king—meaning it’s the center of organization, structure, and power—things are much more complicated because the government is obligated to consider its impact on all the people. In a representative democracy, like the one in our country, those that represent us are morally, ethically, and legally bound to the good of all. A democracy is organic, meaning that it changes over time as our understandings of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are informed by our deepening understanding of what it means to be a human being. We learned about, understood and acted upon slavery, putting Japanese people in internment camps, workers’ rights, women’s right, voting rights, civil rights, and so much more.

Our growing knowledge also causes tension as, for example, outlawing the owning of slaves affected the economy and led to war. But we adjust because of our deep-rooted belief in and commitment to a country that offers the potential for every human being to realize and act upon all that they can do. In other words, a democracy is not always efficient because the effects that efficiency has matter.

Cutting Medicaid is efficient: money is saved. The effect is that people without economic means lose access to medical care that keeps them alive.

Cutting social security is efficient: money is saved. The effect is that people lose their earned deferred income—money they were forced by law to set aside for their future and their quality of life deteriorates to the point of losing their homes, dignity, and peace in their later years.

Cutting the department of education is efficient: money is saved. The effect is that schools lose essential aid, programs that protect health and civil rights, support for reading instruction, research programs, and even statistical analyses of progress.

Cutting funding of scientific research is efficient: money is saved. The effect is that research that can save lives, improve our food and water, keep our air clean, make communities safer, improve mental health and so much more is lost.

Cutting funding for the arts is efficient: money is saved. The effect is that beauty does not matter, expression is marginalized, and the voices that push our thinking and being are silenced.

Cutting support for programs in other countries is efficient: money is saved. The effect is that more people die of AIDS and other diseases, more children die of starvation, countries are left unprotected against radicals, and oppressed people no longer hear voices of hope.

We should not fall prey to chaos, attacks on a free press that expose chaos and selfishness, and the push to simplify the complexity of our democracy. We need to demand that every member of our government safeguards our well-being, demands that programs for the good of all are replenished, and uncovers who is getting the money that is supposedly being saved. We need to make sure that our heads are not being cut off to reduce our weight.

Rick is an activist and retired literacy researcher.