What might our failures in the Vietnam War and with education reform have in common?
“Hope
is not a strategy.”
|
·
When does optimism get in the way of seeing
a problem clearly and tackling it with the appropriate urgency and resources?
·
When does optimism hurt more than it helps
as we try to meet an enormous challenge and remedy a difficult situation? ·
When does hoping for the best lead to
self-deception – we can’t see the facts on the ground – which in turn leads us
to deceive others? · How do fantasy goals – CDE (for a decade) –All 3rd graders will read at grade level; Denver Public Schools: (2016) – 80% of 3rd graders will read at grade level – impact those tasked with achieving such unrealistic objectives? (See Addendum.) How do they view the authors and purveyors of such foolish targets? ·
What happens to their credibility when
leaders and organizations say, THIS IS WHAT WE WILL ACHIEVE (and repeat it, for
a decade!) and yet no one believes it can be done, for the goal is absurd? Why
not set goals we can believe in? |
In following national events, the two most disillusioning experiences of my life have been the Vietnam War and public education reform. As a naïve teenager and then as a young man in the Johnson-Nixon era, from 1965-1974, what I saw in America’s involvement in Vietnam, and then Watergate, often left me angry. As an adult, engaged in and/or a witness to efforts from 1990 to 2025 to bring dramatic improvement to our nation’s schools, I’d like to think I was mature enough to expect some failure and frustration. However, I did not expect the outcome, to date, to be this disappointing. To see so little progress.
So this fall, when I finally read David
Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest (published in 1969), I had both
Vietnam and education reform in mind. I present excerpts here on one theme from
the book. They reveal how the White House, where hope was a strategy, expanded
America’s involvement in the Vietnam conflict, from 1961-1967. I share this in
the belief that good, hard-working people trying to improve public education might
see a reflection of our story too. If they do, the warning is clear.
I underscore “might.” Who am I to say the
tragic flaws behind our failure in Vietnam have anything to do with discouraging
results from decades of education reform? It is just a hypothesis. Based on
what, you ask? Based on the belief that both have in common human frailty. And that
false hope and illusions are often key factors in the failure and
disappointment of any major national effort – in a foreign war, or in our
public schools.
But wait. Don’t we
need to hope for the best? How can optimism become a flaw?
Optimism is a nice quality. Who
likes a sourpuss?
But optimism, in the context of national and state policy, is another
matter. I hear people in leadership roles tell us they are optimists. Perhaps
they wish to appear encouraging and positive – “we can do this!” – even
when their stated policy goal is so clearly unrealistic.
Halberstam’s book reveals how optimism – especially when forced on us by
those in higher positions — can produce illusions. People brush off or even
resist hard facts that would undermine such optimism, and in so doing, become
increasingly detached from reality.
In The Best and the Brightest, the leaders Halberstam studies –
civilian and military – grow less able to see what is right in front of them. A
selective blindness. With devastating consequences.
He sees an administration straining to exude optimism, even when there is a growing awareness that the positive spin on the war in Vietnam is not accurate. In examining how the build-up of American troops took place, wishful thinking led to - if we only had another 50,000 or another 100,000 troops. In the end, as I show, our numbers grew from 10,000 in 1960 to over 500,000 troops before the end of the decade.
As the truth emerged about what we were not able to accomplish,
in spite of our military might and technological superiority, the American
public grew mistrustful. The upbeat White House narrative proved false. Our
troops came home in 1975. We had failed to achieve our goals. At the cost of over
50,000 American lives.
Hence the warning from Halberstam.
Another reading behind AV #293 - Voltaire’s Candide – again, 50,000 lives
The greatest send-up of simple-minded
optimism is Voltaire’s Candide. It is a comic masterpiece, and yet there
is bitterness there too. As there is in Halberstam’s account of how the nation’s
so-called “best and the brightest” led us into a tragic war.
In chapter V, Pangloss, the story’s foolish optimist, manages to repeat
his inane line, “everything is for the best” – even after the
Lisbon earthquake “destroyed three-fourths of the city of Lisbon” and killed
something like 50,000 people. As readers we are stunned. A sunny outlook blind
to human suffering. We sense Voltaire’s bitterness. It is not just that
Pangloss lacks common sense. It is worse. Such
optimism lacks simple human decency.
Voltaire’s Candide, or Optimism was published in 1759. Any education reformer unfamiliar with it might find it worth a read. The story is fun and often ridiculous. But its main idea might hit close to home.
Excerpts from The
Best and the Brightest
From Halberstam’s Introduction: (All bold is mine)
“What was even more
depressing was the optimism I found among the top Americans in Saigon,
which struck me as essentially self-deception. There was much heady talk
implying that we were on the very edge of a final victory and that the other
side was ready to crack.” (p. viii)
**
Halberstam contrasts the Eisenhower
Administration’s foreign policy with that of the Kennedy White House; he
describes it as “liberal, modern, lacking above all in self-doubt.” (ch.
8, p. 122)
Walter Rostow, then the deputy national security advisor, was among the
chief advocates for expanding the U.S. involvement in Vietnam in the early
1960’s.
“If there was one thing that bothered Walt’s
colleagues on the professional level, it was the firmness of his belief in his
own ideas (at a given time), a lack of healthy skepticism about them, a
lack of reflectiveness and open-mindedness.” (ch. 9, p. 159)
[See
the passage from p. 636 on Rostow, after he is promoted to national security
advisor.]
George
Ball, Undersecretary of State, became one of the early and most consistent
skeptics of greater U.S. commitment. He had been involved with the French in
the 1950’s during the Indochina war.
“… he had seen it all, the false optimism
of the generals, the resiliency of and relentlessness of the Vietminh … He
wanted no part of it for America.”
Late in 1962, on hearing of plans to increase the American troop level to
8,000, Ball warned President Kennedy “that he would have 300,000
men there in a few short years—the president laughed and said, ‘George, you’re
crazier than hell.’” (ch. 9, p. 174)
[NOTE: See troop numbers, below. Over 300,000 in
1966. Nearly 600,000 by 1968.]
Gen. Harkins - “leaving
no doubt that things were going to get better”
Gen.
Paul D. Harkins was the first commander of the Military Assistance Command,
Vietnam, 1962-1964.
“When Harkins
first arrived in Saigon … he had told reporters that he was an optimist
and that he was going to have optimists on his staff. He kept his
word. From the very first, the reports he sent to Washington were titled ‘The
Headway Report,’ leaving no doubt that things were going to get better. Very
quickly his command became a special, almost unreal place, both isolated and
eventually insulated from reality … The Saigon command soon reflected
Harkins’ views, with a flabby, foolish confidence …” (ch. 10, p. 186)
Harkins
- “he saw victory within a year (1962)
Halberstam writes of a time in 1962 when Harkins “pushed [his intelligence officer] aside” after being warned about “the growing Vietcong threat in the Mekong Delta.” Harkins’ view: “This was not what his own intelligence shop was saying—why, Colonel Winterbottom was very optimistic.”
“Harkins did not need anyone in
civilian clothes to tell him how to run a war. And so it went. Harkins was
comforted by his staff and his statistics, and he comforted his staff as well;
those who comforted him and gave him what he was looking for had their careers
accelerated.” (ch. 10, p. 187)
“… General Harkins was optimistic; he headed what was now a powerful institutional force for optimism. He had been told by his superior, Maxwell Taylor, to be optimistic, to downgrade pessimism, and he would do exactly that.”
“Everything, he assured his superiors, was
right on schedule; everyone was getting with the program. The war was being
won. He saw victory shaping up within a year.” (ch. 11, p. 200)
Colonel Dan
Porter, IV Corps, provided Harkins “the most pessimistic report on
the war so far, on the nature of the peasant, on the enemy and the ally.
Harkins went into a rage over it … Harkins had Porter’s report collected. He
told the other officers that it would be sanitized and that if it contained
anything of interest, he might make it available. It was never seen again,
which did not surprise Porter, but enough was enough, he was leaving the Army.”
(ch. 11, p. 203)
A young man named Daniel Ellsberg …
as in he of the Pentagon Papers
|
Years later (1971): “Daniel Ellsberg was an analyst for Secretary of
Defense Robert McNamara's classified study of the war in Vietnam, a report
which became known as the Pentagon Papers. Believing that the war was
unwinnable and immoral, Ellsberg and his co-defendant Anthony Russo secretly
copied the 7,000-page report and provided it to the New York
Times and Washington Post.”[i] |
[At this point in the book, in early 1963, reports coming back from
Saigon were consistently positive. Halberstam points out that it wasn’t
until 1965 that McNamara sent one of his “Whiz Kids” to be a civilian member of
the U.S. headquarters there. This “young man’s pessimism differed
sharply from Saigon’s optimism and had an important effect on McNamara’s
own doubts. The young man was Daniel Ellsberg.” (ch. 13, p. 247)]
Pessimism grows,
but is brushed aside (spring 1963)
Reporting from
William Truehart, Deputy Chief of Mission to Ambassador Frederick E. Nolting,
Jr., cast doubts on the leadership of the Diem government in South Vietnam.
“… it let loose a floodgate of doubts.… Five months earlier only
American journalists had been pessimistic about the war and the future;
now the State Department people in Saigon were pessimistic; the CIA was pessimistic;
the hamlet people were pessimistic, along with journalists. Only the
military held devotedly to the line of optimism.” (ch. 13, p.252)
In Washington,
discussions continued about supporting a greater American military presence in
South Vietnam. President Kennedy indicated “that he was uneasy with the use
of force and dubious reports about success.” And yet “McNamara was still going
on those trips to Vietnam, more and more often now, and coming back
relentlessly optimistic. It was beginning to be known as McNamara’s war,
which at the time did not bother him.” (ch. 13, p. 254)
If you can’t be
positive, you’re not part of the team
Halberstam writes of
those in the State Department expressing doubts about “the official
estimates from Vietnam and the ability to win with Diem …” But these men “were
now slowly being filtered out of the policy-making decisions, in part
consciously because they had questioned the policies but to an even larger
degree unconsciously, not so much because they were skeptical, but
because they seemed too negative.” (ch. 18, p. 369)
LBJ grows "isolated from reality" - cut off from "negative views" (1964)
“For the
Presidency is an awesome office, even with a mild inhabitant. It tends by its
nature to inhibit dissent and opposition, and with a man like Johnson it
was simply too much, too powerful an office occupied by too forceful a man … He
was in an office isolated from reality, with concentric circles of
advisors who often isolated rather than informed, who tended to soften bad
judgments and harsh analyses … knowing that if they became too identified with negative
views, ideas and information, they too would suffer ...” (ch. 20, pp.
456-457)
|
Humphrey to
Vietnam – Be optimistic
– (and that’s an order!) In 1966 LBJ
sent Humphrey on a trip to Vietnam. “Jack Valenti was sent along as a liaison
man with the White House, to keep an eye on the Vice-President, to call
Johnson every day and to bring the President’s instructions to Humphrey,
which were, of course, quite simple: Optimism, the President wants optimism.
The trip,” Halberstam writes, “was a disaster.” (ch. 24, p. 535) |
LBJ grew less tolerant of dissent within the White House. The President, according to Halberstam, judged skeptics as those who “sat around thinking and criticizing and doubting instead of doing.” He even saw his vice-president in this light, “and so when Humphrey voiced his doubts on Vietnam he was simply excluded from the action until he muffled his dissent.” (ch. 24, p.531)
Secretary of Defense McNamara – once his doubts grow, he is out
Halberstam writes
of McNamara’s confidence in 1963 in the war effort, but then jumps ahead four
years. “McNamara held to his statistics, though much later, in 1967, he
would change and convert to dovishness.” (ch. 13, p. 258)
By 1967 McNamara grew less able to present the optimistic message LBJ wanted. Seeing this change, the President “turned on” him. (Epilogue, p. 645) Johnson did not want doubters there in the Oval Office. In late November 1967, Johnson announced that his Secretary of Defense had “resigned,” and named him President of the World Bank.
In contrast, Walt Rostow – named
national security adviser in 1966
Rostow “eventually
served the purpose of shielding the President from criticism and from reality.
He deflected others’ pessimism and rewarded those who were optimistic....
a President in a hopeless war did not need … an advisor who seemed to reflect
the gathering doubts. Maybe the job required a positive thinker. There
was no more positive thinker in Washington than Walt Whitman Rostow.”
(Epilogue, p. 636)
Optimistic estimates on time and troops needed
to win
Halberstam recounts various estimates of how soon the American bombing
would produce results. Six months, a year, “perhaps a year or two.” He
observes: “This was the old American optimism and arrogance; the
French had fought here inconclusively for eight years with an enormous
expeditionary force, but the Americans fighting from defensive enclaves could
do it in a year, maybe a little more.… The judgment of the military,
said [an] official spokesman, was that it might last as long as six months.
The North would not be able to withstand the American pressure that long.” (ch.
25, pp. 577-578)
In Halberstam’s pages on the year 1965, estimates of the troops needed (below, left)
climb ever higher. Here, too, are the actual numbers.
|
Numbers discussed at White House and with military in 1965 |
Actual numbers – from The American War Library -
Vietnam War Personnel[ii] |
|
|
p. 579 – April
– talk of perhaps 80,000 (there were under 30,000 troops in Vietnam at the
time) p. 583 – June
- request for 200,000 p. 595 –
agree to maximum of 300,000 p. 597 – July - Gen. Westmoreland settles for 175,000; adds it could take another 6-7 years. p. 599 –
President tells public only part of the agreed-upon increase - another
100,000 troops. p. 602 – One estimate
says Westmoreland will need roughly 300,000 by the following year, 1966. p. 606 – December
- approve of 400,000 by end of 1966, perhaps 600,000 by the end of 1967. |
1960 |
900 |
|
1961 |
3,205 |
|
|
1962 |
11,300 |
|
|
1963 |
16,300 |
|
|
1964 |
23,300 |
|
|
1965 |
184,300 |
|
|
1966 |
385,300 |
|
|
1967 |
485,600 |
|
|
1968 |
536,100 |
|
Addendum
“All 3rd graders will read at grade level” - Fantasy
goals versus hard facts
Impossible goals – as seen next to
actual student performance. For years CDE continued to affirm the READ Act’s
initial goal, in spite of the monumental gap with how students actually performed. Why say what no one can believe? Who are we fooling?
2016 Annual Report on the Colorado READ Act
Opening letter from Commissioner Rich Crandall:
[No specific reference to the initial goal.]
|
2016 3rd grade CMAS-ELA 37.4% Met/Exceeded Expectations |
“The Colorado Reading to Ensure Academic Development Act (the READ Act) focuses on early literacy development for all students with special attention for students at-risk for not achieving third grade reading proficiency. Importantly, the Act focuses on identifying students with significant reading deficiencies, engaging parents in the development of reading improvement plans, and providing funding to support intervention for those most at-risk.”
2017
to 2023 – READ Act reports include an opening letter from Commissioner Katy
Anthes
2017 Annual Report on the Colorado READ Act
[No specific reference to the initial goal.]
|
2017 3rd grade CMAS-ELA 40.1% Met/Exceeded Expectations |
“By challenging our state to decrease the number of students identified as at-risk while also moving more students toward grade-level proficiency, we believe collectively we can drive student achievement here in Colorado while also serving as a national model for improving literacy and educational success for all children.”
2018
Annual Report on the Colorado READ Act
|
2018 3rd grade CMAS-ELA 40.4% Met/Exceeded Expectations |
“The Colorado READ Act passed in 2012 with
the intent of ensuring all children in Colorado reach grade level proficiency
in reading by third grade. This goal is chosen for good reason—students who
do not read at grade level by third grade struggle academically throughout
their school career and have limited options as adults.”
2019
Annual Report on the Colorado READ Act
|
2019 3rd grade CMAS-ELA 41.3% Met/Exceeded Expectations |
“Colorado legislators passed the READ Act in 2012 to help all students reach grade-level proficiency in reading by third grade…. The Colorado Department of Education is renewing its commitment to supporting districts, schools, teachers, and families as we work together to help students read at grade level by the end of third grade.”
2020 Annual Report on the Colorado READ Act
|
CMAS-ELA 39.1% Met/Exceeded Expectations |
“The passage of SB 19-199 represented a strong commitment by state policy makers and education leaders to underscore the importance of using evidence-based instructional practices to achieve the original goal of the READ Act – teaching all students to read by third grade.”
2022 Annual Report on the Colorado READ Act
|
2022 3rd grade CMAS-ELA 40.7% Met/Exceeded Expectations |
“The Colorado Reading to Ensure Academic Development Act (the READ Act) passed 10 years ago and provided Colorado educators with a roadmap for grade level reading by third grade.”
2023
Annual Report on the Colorado READ Act
[No
reference to the goal of reading at grade level by the end of 3rd
grade. Fewer illusions?]
|
CMAS-ELA 39.9% Met/Exceeded Expectations |
“The pandemic profoundly impacted reading
achievements of Colorado’s elementary students. However, despite these
challenges, the reading assessments, instruction and intervention practices
supported by the READ Act will help us move forward. And we are making progress
that I believe will continue with the impact of the READ Act.”
2024
Annual Report on the Colorado READ Act
|
2024 3rd grade CMAS-ELA 42.1% Met/Exceeded Expectations |
Opening letter from Commissioner Susana Córdova:
"We are encouraged by this progress and by the clear commitment of our educators and school teams to ensuring that every student has the support they need to reach grade level literacy by third grade. At the same time, we have seen an overall 4% increase in the number of Colorado K-3 students with significant reading deficiencies compared to pre-pandemic rates.”
2025
– Colorado Department of Education’s Strategic Plan, 2025-28
Includes a new goal: 60% of 3rd
graders read and write at grade level by 2028.[iii]
|
2025 3rd grade CMAS-ELA 42.0%
Met/Exceeded Expectations |
Chalkbeat Colorado noted: “Colorado has never come close to 60% of third
graders meeting or exceeding expectations in literacy since it rolled out the
CMAS tests in 2015. Córdova called this goal ‘very ambitious.’
“To get
there, the department plans to offer more training to educators and ensure more
school districts are using what it calls ‘high quality’ instructional
materials.
“The
department also plans to redesign its awards to ‘celebrate schools with strong
results.’”[iv]
Denver Public Schools – goal: 3rd grade - 80% at or above grade level
In 2016, in the Denver Plan 2020, DPS set this goal:
“In 2020, 80% of DPS third-graders
will be at or above grade level in reading and writing, lectura and escritura.”
(https://schoolrestarts.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Denver-Plan-2020_Strategic_Plan.pdf)
In
2018, an external study by A Plus Colorado pointed out how impossible it would
be for the district to meet that goal.
“Far from reaching its ambitious goals, the Denver district
plans to ask for community input,” Chalkbeat Colorado, May 31, 2018.[v]
At the
current pace of progress, it will take 13 years for the Denver school
district to reach its goal that 80 percent of all third-graders be reading and
writing at grade-level. It will take black and Latino students up to three
decades to reach that benchmark.
That’s
according to a new report by local education advocacy organization A Plus
Colorado that shows Denver Public Schools is far from meeting its own ambitious
goals on the timeline it set out by 2020, just two years from now.
For
example, the report predicts it will take 27 years for 80 percent of Latino
third-graders to meet the literacy benchmark. For black students, the
report says it will take 30 years. More than half of the district’s 92,600
students are Latino, and 13 percent are black.
DPS – CMAS-ELA - 3rd Grade - % Met or Exceeded
Expectations – 2017-2025
|
2017 |
2018 |
2019 |
2021 |
2022 |
2023 |
2024 |
2025 |
|
37.9 |
37.8 |
39.4 |
36.7 |
39.9 |
40.1 |
39.6 |
41.4 |
Endnotes
[i] “Daniel Ellsberg and
the Pentagon Papers,” Library of Congress,
https://www.loc.gov/exhibitions/drawing-justice-courtroom-illustrations/about-this-exhibition/crime-corruption-and-cover-ups/daniel-ellsberg-and-the-pentagon-papers/
[ii] The
American War Library - Vietnam War Personnel, https://www.americanwarlibrary.com/vietnam/vwatl.htm
[iii]
From “Wildly Important Goals,” CDE’s 2025-28 Strategic Plan, Colorado
Department of Education, https://go.boarddocs.com/co/cde/Board.nsf/files/DAYND75F3713/$file/11.13.24%20Strategic%20Plan.pdf
[iv] “Cutting absenteeism, boosting 3rd grade
reading among Colorado education department’s goals,” Chalkbeat Colorado,
Dec. 16, 2025,
[v] “Far from reaching its ambitious goals, the Denver district
plans to ask for community input,” Chalkbeat Colorado, May 31, 2018, https://www.chalkbeat.org/colorado/2018/5/31/21105066/far-from-reaching-its-ambitious-goals-the-denver-district-plans-to-ask-for-community-input/
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