In Washington, there’s a new administration, an old bureaucracy, and pending legislation. There’s electricity in the air and, for some people, a thrill going up the leg.

The former Secretary of Education offers some advice to the new guy in A Word to My Successor (WP, 1/13).

It’s a little thick, if you ask me:

I am so pleased … you, a fellow reformer …Your experience…will be invaluable in continuing the work we…began doing to close the achievement gap and provide all children…the skills needed to succeed.

…Thanks to the bipartisan No Child Left Behind Act, we now measure student achievement annually so that we can take an honest look at our problems…

Is it working? Yes…

Still, the strong reactions the law provokes speak to the harsh truths it reveals…

And so on:

You need no lessons from me on toughness and tenacity…You stuck to your guns on merit pay …You expanded charter schools…And you closed chronically underperforming schools so that they could be restructured.

I am confident you will bring this attitude to Washington…

These statements, while self-serving (no surprise), are on their face not so much wrong as they are embarrassing.  Overall it’s trite, fawning, clichéd, pointless:

Many in Washington will judge you on your popularity with adults. If some adults are made uncomfortable by your policies, so be it. The needs of children must come first.

But let’s try to be a little more critical.  Here’s help! The Daily Howler takes her to the woodshed, particularly going after the “high expectations” rhetoric.  In the process we’re schooled in the need for clear thinking and expression.

“When we raise expectations, we achieve results,” Spellings says. This murky motto is endlessly invoked in the age of No Child Left Behind (as it was in the years before that act passed). But readers! If that claim is true, perhaps we should make fifth-graders take eighth-grade math! Wouldn’t that show we had “raised expectations?” Come to think of it, why not raise expectations even more? Why not do fifth-graders the favor of teaching them tenth-grade math? Why are we holding them back?

Spellings makes some significant claims—the kinds of claims that are seldom fact-checked. Quick reaction: We’d say that some of her claims are factually accurate—but at the same time, we’d have to say that some of these claims are rather misleading. But her third claim, about those high expectations, may deserve the most attention of all. In his column in Sunday’s Post, Marc Fisher also sang the praise of those “high expectations”/“higher standards.” We hear such cultish talk all the time. But what do such claims really mean?

The Howler stays on the case, and stays on the case:

In her “Dear Arne” letter to Duncan, Spellings implied that test scores have risen to “record highs” due to her baby, No Child Left Behind. But whatever you think of this federal program (we think some parts of the program are good), it just isn’t clear that that’s really the case. Nor is it clear that we automatically “achieve results” just because “we raise expectations”—whatever that is taken to mean. Nor is it clear that “every student [should] be taught to grade level in reading and math”—whatever that murky statement might mean. But this is the kind of murky discussion that has long been accepted from people like Spellings. (The rules were the same for Bill Clinton’s Ed Sec.) You know the rules inside the palace! Low-income kids should be held to high standards. Big hacky Ed Secs? Maybe not.

It’s thought-provoking, uncompromising, and it’s exciting to see someone cutting through the usual education pap. Reading The Howler might just send a thrill up your leg!