State law: no one can legally claim to be a banjo player without knowing the first few notes of “Dueling Banjos,” the famous composition from the 1973 movie Deliverance involving a country banjo player and a city guitarist. What begins as a musical challenge of oneupmanship eventually evolves into a beautiful musical collaboration.
Public education has its own competing banjos and guitars, too, in an era of dueling central planners. Both political parties have embraced the concept that faraway central planners from Washington D.C. or Capitol City know what is best for all children, whether they live in the panhandle or the inner city. Parents and local educators once knew best, so how did this happen, and how do they fingerpick so darn fast?
We are simply following the federal template for educational central planning that began after the 1944 GI Bill, designed to provide well-earned educational benefits for veterans. Since federal money always comes with strings attached, leaders eventually began to demand more accountability for those federal funds, often for extremely good reasons. Eventually, they began to question how states and local schools were engaging in college and career preparation. Apparently, some college banjo players couldn’t hit the right notes, and they needed answers.
In 1965, under Democrat Lyndon Johnson, America adopted the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) to address education on a nationwide scale. (Again, for many good reasons and with many good intentions.) ESEA remained largely unchanged for over three decades. Then in 2001, under Republican George Bush, we adopted the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Fourteen years later, NCLB was scrapped by the 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act under Democrat Barack Obama. It was a slow but steady game of dueling political banjos, and in the end, they always synchronized with bipartisan support – while simultaneously blaming the other party for the outcomes. It appeared that Democrats and Republicans were replacing each other, but in the end, all steps reduced local control for parents and local educators.
States like Oklahoma followed this template, but we have become a finger-pickin’ model for dueling central planners. In 2010, we cancelled PASS curriculum, and adopted Common Core State Standards (CCSS), spending millions over several years in the transition. Literally weeks before CCSS implementation in June of 2014, we scrapped Common Core and re-adopted PASS curriculum with orders to create our new Oklahoma Academic Standards by 2016. Yes, from 2009 to 2016, the state of Oklahoma cancelled PASS, adopted Common Core, cancelled Common Core, re-adopted PASS, and created “brand-new” Oklahoma Academic Standards that do not at all resemble Common Core. Dueling central planners switched from banjo to guitar at least four times over six short years. Quite often, the same people voted for . . . then against the same items. Boy, howdy!
None of this compares to the chaos related to the State Testing Program or the Reading Sufficiency Act, but the pickin’ has only gotten faster since the pandemic. Each year we adopt or un-adopt, cancel or replace something barely implemented for the newest and best ideas to control faraway local schools. We protested closed schools and open schools. We required and banned masks. We vaccinated and refused vaccinations. We attacked and counterattacked over CRT. We fostered Epic rises and Epic fails. All of this often supported, opposed, adopted, cancelled, and/or readopted by the same finger-pickers.
Just as in “Dueling Banjos,” however, I am beginning to wonder if the “duel” ever really existed – perhaps it has all just been a beautiful coordination of central planners making beautiful music together on a state level, completely oblivious to the local impact. We all “pick” our side – either the banjo or the guitar – but in the end, they are both playing the same notes. The outcome is the same, however, for locals in both Deliverance and Oklahoma: towns flooded and sometimes erased through the unintended consequences of well-intended, faraway central planners. To quote a very famous line from Deliverance . . . that’s a “mean banjo!” Tom Deighan is superintendent
Tom Deighan is superintendent of Duncan Public Schools. You may email him at deighantom@gmail. com and read past articles at www. mostlyeducational.com