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December 5, 2005
What Happens if You Get Less Than a C Average in Your Major?
The Final Report on 9/11 Commission Recommendations is out. Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton and their by bipartisan commission graded various governmental bodies (plus the private sector) on the progress toward meeting 40 recommendations they had made to protect the United States against terror attacks. The over all report was not very good. There was only one A and it was an A- and several Fs. I decided I would try to calculate the GPA for those grades. It is not as easy to do this as one might think. Congress and the Administration shared quite a few of the grades. When this happened, I assigned the grade to both of them. So I ended up with more grades than recommendations. I used the 4.0 system and applied the full weight to the letter grade both when the Commission awarded a minus and when they awarded a plus to the letter grade. The table below shows the results of my efforts.
| Responsible Entity | A | B | C | D | F | GPA |
| Congress | 4 | 2 | 5 | 2 | 1.62 | |
| Administration | 1 | 10 | 8 | 11 | 3 | 1.85 |
| States | 1 | 3.00 | ||||
| Private Sector | 1 | 2.00 |
Two Incompletes were awarded and I did not take them into account although they could easily turn into Fs if they are not completed soon.
Neither Congress nor the Administration got a 2.0 GPA. So I don't see how either entity can blame the other for these, in my view, unacceptable scores. The Fs and Ds not only drag the GPAs down, they also require a lot of makeup work that will no doubt negatively affect next year's efforts. Remember, government is Congress and the Administration's major. These items were not elective.
One other point, both Congress and the Administration are led by the same party and I don't remember hearing the Administration clamoring for action on Congress' share of the problem.
Posted by Duane Smith at December 5, 2005 4:42 PM | Read more on Current Events |
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