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Education “Reform” and the Worthlessness of Standardized Testing

[ 66 ] August 23, 2012 | Erik Loomis

Kristina Rizga’s piece at Mother Jones on her experiences in a supposedly failing San Francisco high school is just fantastic. Following a Salvadoran immigrant who saw some pretty horrible stuff back home, Rizga shows how dedicated teachers and administrators created a positive learning environment in a diverse school.

One of the most diverse high schools in the country, Mission has 925 students holding 47 different passports. The majority are Latino, African American, and Asian American, and 72 percent are poor. Yet even as the school was being placed on the list of lowest-performing schools, 84 percent of the graduating class went on to college, higher than the district average; this year, 88 percent were accepted. (Nationally, 32 percent of Latino and 38 percent of African American students go to college.) That same year, Mission improved Latinos’ test scores more than any other school in the district. And while suspensions are skyrocketing across the nation, they had gone down by 42 percent at Mission. Guthertz had seen dropout rates fall from 32 percent to 8 percent. Was this what a failing school looked like?

By the metrics used under No Child Left Behind and anti-teacher “reformers” like Michelle Rhee, yes. And this is incredibly stupid, as are the standards themselves. As a historian, this bit on the standardized testing in history made me furious:

As Roth retreated to his desk, Maria stared at the rows of empty bubbles. A sharp, pounding pain filled her head. She picked up a pencil and read the first question:

During the late 19th and 20th centuries, urban immigrants generally supported local political machines that:

(a) discouraged the new immigrants from participating in civic affairs.

(b) were usually supported by urban reformers.

(c) provided essential services to the immigrants.

(d) reminded immigrants of political practices in their homelands.

As always, Maria started translating the words into Spanish. Then she got to discouraged. She’d seen the word many times before, but it was usually in a context where she could guess the meaning of the passage without knowing every term. In this short sentence, though, there were no hints.

She tried to remember the word’s meaning for a few minutes. Nothing.

Affairs was another word she’d heard before but couldn’t remember. She translated the rest of the sentence—new immigrants from participating—but that didn’t help. She took a deep breath and translated the rest of the answers. B was a possibility, she thought, but something felt off. C seemed right. But what about A? What if that was really the answer? There was no way of knowing. She filled in C for now.

“Five more minutes, everyone!” Roth interrupted. An ambulance siren wailed outside. Maria had spent too much time on the first five questions, and now she had to rush. She translated another page and randomly bubbled in the rest.

When she switched to the written section of the test, her leg stopped bouncing. When the bell rang, Maria kept writing, and didn’t stop until Roth collected the pages from her.

Roth waited until the last student had left the room, and we looked over Maria’s test together. She got almost all the answers wrong on the practice multiple-choice section, the only one that would have counted for the state. On Roth’s essay question, she got an A+.

There is so much here to protest. First, these tests automatically discriminate against people for whom English is not their first language. The profiled student did not really learn English until 9th grade. So it’s hardly surprising that she might not know what some of these words meant. It doesn’t mean she’s not smart or learning rapidly or that the school is failing her. It means that for reasons outside of her or the school’s control, she doesn’t have the English language skills that native-born speakers do. I’d like to see Michelle Rhee take a standardized test in Spanish about Mexican history after just 3 years of learning the language, despite the obvious educational advantages someone like Rhee has.

Second, why are we doing multiple choice tests in history? What does multiple choice show? Anything? The ability to memorize I guess. Does it promote understanding? Critical thinking? Real-life skill building? No. None of it. The article doesn’t really explore what the essay portion that the young woman scored so well on was about, but wouldn’t that be so much more valuable? If California wants to use standardized testing, go all AP on it and hire readers to go over these essays and grade them. At least that would give these students a chance to show their ability. Instead, that essay doesn’t really count for anything in standardized testing.

I do not use multiple choice tests in my college classes. Why? Because they test nothing valuable and because they can destroy the grades of students who may not have a great factual basis in the material or a good memory for these types of things. Instead, short answer essays allow students to show what they do know instead of what they don’t know and create scenarios for partial credit.

Meanwhile, despite the huge obstacles this school faces, they are placing kids in college, graduating them at high rates, etc. But I guess we should fire the principle or something because the test scores aren’t high enough. Absolutely absurd and outrageous.

But hey, instead of focusing on the poverty, language barriers, and economic inequality that creates educational disparities, let’s instead have our wealthy white California high schools hold “Seniores and Señoritas” dress-up days, where our next generation of plutocrats can dress up as cholos and wear sombreros.

Even better, why not just force immigrants into a permanent underclass. That’s the new official policy of the Republican Party after all, which just included a plank in their platform that would deny federal education funding to any state that offered in-state tuition to undocumented immigrants. California is one of 12 states to still offer this for its residents and this policy would ruin any chance for higher education for the young woman profiled in Rizga’s piece.

Disgusting.

This Day in Labor History: August 23, 1927

[ 25 ] August 23, 2012 | Erik Loomis

On August 23, 1927, the state of Massachusetts executed two Italian immigrant anarchists by the names of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti for the murder of two men in a 1920 armed robbery in South Braintree. Although the two men may or may not have been involved in the crime, as Italian anarchists, they were on trial for their beliefs as much as the murder. Despite the lack of concrete evidence and international outrage over the miscarriage of justice, the state of Massachusetts railroaded them into the electric chair.

Sacco and Vanzetti were anarchists, men deeply affected by the terrible labor and social conditions of the early 20th century. Both immigrated from Italy in 1908, though they didn’t meet for nearly a decade. The seeming inability for the capitalist system to treat working people with dignity and respect drove many to desperation. By the 1890s, anarchism was a growing threat in the United States, perhaps most personified by Leon Czoglosz’s assassination of President William McKinley in 1901. Although that and other incidents convinced enough upper and middle-class Anglo-Saxons to enact limited reforms during the Progressive Era, the fundamental conditions of working-class urban life had changed little by 1920.

Sacco and Vanzetti both followed the teachings of Luigi Galleani, an anarchist theorist who advocated violence to overthrow the state. The Galleanists did in fact use violence in the United States. They were believed to be the group behind the bombing of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer’s home in 1919. Palmer, already cracking down on radicalism with the help of his young eager assistant by the name of J. Edgar Hoover, built upon this incident to intensify the Red Scare, that nation-wide crackdown on radicalism in all forms during and after American entry into World War I.

It was in this atmosphere that men like Sacco and Vanzetti were suspects in murders like that which took place on April 15, 1920, when armed robbers attacked a company payroll, killing two men. Although the evidence was indirect, the police suspected the greater Boston anarchist community, which was suspected in a series of other robberies to fund their activities. The police also discovered that one anarchist, Mario Buda had worked in two shops subjected to similar robberies. Upon questioning, Buda let slip that the local anarchist community had an automobile under repair, leading police to stake out the repair shop. The police convinced the garage owner to notify them when the anarchists arrived to pick up the car. When 4 men did, including Buda, Sacco, and Vanzetti, they sensed a trap and fled, but Sacco and Vanzetti were soon picked up. Both had guns at their homes; Sacco having a loaded .32 Colt similar to that used in the killings.

I’m not going to get into the details of the case, they are easy enough to read about if you want. Suffice it to say that the evidence was dicey that these two men committed the crime. It is at least possible that Sacco was directly involved, but Vanzetti was an intellectual and not a man of action; as John Dos Passos wrote in his defense of the men, “nobody in his right mind who was planning such a crime would take a man like that along.” Given the firearm evidence, the case against Vanzetti was far weaker than that against Sacco.

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti

The trial was a farce. The judge, Webster Thayer, was a conservative who had openly called for a crackdown against Bolsheviks and anarchists and held deep prejudice against immigrants. Taylor asked for the assignment so he could make an example of Sacco and Vanzetti. After denying an appeal motion, Thayer famously told a lawyer, “Did you see what I did with those anarchistic bastards the other day?” He told reporters that “No long-haired anarchist from California can run this court!” Despite his bias, Thayer controlled the trial proceedings until the executions.

What can’t be denied is that Sacco and Vanzetti called for violent revenge due to their arrest, trial, and conviction. And their friends delivered. Mario Buda set off a bomb on Wall Street after their indictment, killing 38 people. He then fled the country, returning to Italy. Neither Sacco or Vanzetti ever renounced the sort of violence that they were accused of committing. Vanzetti called for the murder of Thayer. In 1932, a bomb blew up Thayer’s home in Worcester, Massachusetts, injuring his wife and housekeeper.

Aftermath of the Wall Street bombing

Sacco and Vanzetti’s case became the cause celebre of the 1920s. Not everyone claimed their innocence, but the behavior of Thayer and the unfair trial led to worldwide calls for a retrial. Although anarchists and other radicals dominated the defense committee itself, the case caught the attention of many around the world who thought justice poorly served. People ranging from Albert Einstein to Edna St. Vincent Millay to H.G. Wells thought it a miscarriage of justice. Even Benito Mussolini was ready to request clemency from the governor of Massachusetts if he thought it might do some good. Among others, future Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter called for a new trial. Thayer refused all these requests and Sacco and Vanzetti were executed on August 23, 1927.

Protest in favor of Sacco and Vanzetti


Wrote John Dos Passos in New Masses after the execution:

This isn’t a poem

This is two men in grey prison clothes.

One man sits looking at the sick flesh of his hands—hands that haven’t worked for seven years.

Do you know how long a year is?

Do you know how many hours there are in a day

when a day is twenty-three hours on a cot in a cell,

in a cell in a row of cells in a tier of rows of cells

all empty with the choked emptiness of dreams?

Do you know the dreams of men in jail?

They are dead now

The black automatons have won.

They are burned up utterly

their flesh has passed into the air of Massachusetts their dreams have passed into the wind.

“They are dead now,” the Governor’s secretary nudges the Governor,

“They are dead now,” the Superior Court Judge nudges

the Supreme Court Judge,

“They are dead now” the College President nudges

the College President

A dry chuckling comes up from all the dead:

The white collar dead; the silkhatted dead;

the frockcoated dead

They hop in and out of automobiles

breathe deep in relief

as they walk up and down the Boston streets.

they are free of dreams now

free of greasy prison denim

their voices blow back in a thousand lingoes

singing one song

to burst the eardrums of Massachusetts

Make a poem of that if you dare!

Woody Guthrie also contributed to the memory of Sacco and Vanzetti:

This is the 39th post in this series. The series is archived here.

Economists

[ 54 ] August 22, 2012 | Erik Loomis

I guess I always assumed that most economists were political hacks hiding behind academic credentials. I don’t have a problem with academics looking to influence public policy. But it is a fine line between supporting a political candidate and sacrificing professional credibility in service of that end. That’s true whether we are talking about economists going whole hog for Romney and falsely accusing Obama of destroying the economy or whether we are talking about Sean Wilentz embarrassing himself in service of his desire to be the Clintons’ Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

Of course, one person’s hack is another’s principled academic.

Oklahoma Über Alles

[ 52 ] August 22, 2012 | Erik Loomis

This is incredibly stupid, even for Oklahoma.

OKLAHOMA CITY (WXYZ) – Last week the principal at Wilson Elementary in Oklahoma City elementary school made 5-year-old Cooper Barton turn his University of Michigan shirt inside-out.

News 9 in Oklahoma city reports the boy’s mother is now demanding the school change their dress code. She says the school told Cooper he could only wear gear from Oklahoma or Oklahoma State or an other in-state school.

In fact, it’s the dress code for the entire Oklahoma City Public School System.

If any kid of mine can’t wear an Oregon shirt to school (not that anyone in New England cares about college football), it’s going to be war.

Unscalable Options Have Little Value

[ 65 ] August 22, 2012 | Erik Loomis

I like Tom Philpott’s work at Mother Jones, but this piece connecting Americans’ disposable society and clothing with malnutrition around the world had one point that bothered me. I think in principle the article’s idea is a good one. Our clothing purchases have skyrocketed in the last 50 years, far faster than income growth. We throw away a lot of clothes (well actually I never throw away clothes, much to the chagrin of my wife) and don’t think twice about it. What is the environmental impact? A good question. Cotton grown in India and Africa for American clothing markets has a big impact. Philpott tries to connect that to malnutrition. It’s possible; certainly the world produces enough food to feed all people, especially given the gigantic amount of food that goes to waste. People who idealize globalization have a vision of a smooth running mechanism moving products from place to place so that you don’t have to grow your own food, but that doesn’t really work in the real world. Does growing cotton in Africa directly lead to malnutrition there? I don’t know. It likely plays a role but it’s probably not the whole story. This doesn’t even get into the other environmental negatives of clothing production for the western market such as the desertification of Mongolia to produce cheap cashmere.

Anyway, that’s all fine and good. Philpott goes on to suggest some options:

So what are your options for a guilt-free closet? Vintage and secondhand, of course, are good options, and some major retailers (Patagonia, Eileen Fisher) encourage customers to send back used clothes—then repurpose them or offer them for sale at a steep discount. If thrift stores aren’t your thing, many manufacturers (including H&M) now offer some products made from organic cotton, which requires fewer chemicals and a little less water. But most of it is grown in the same regions as conventional cotton—meaning the farmers still get a raw deal. By far, the most effective strategy is to give up the supermarket sweep approach to clothes shopping and instead buy a few durable pieces. As for me, I’ll be thinking twice next time I’m tempted to grab a cheapo item off the rack at a chain store. Come to think of it, I just might splurge on a spendy wool sweater I’ve been coveting. Considering how long it will last, it might not be so extravagant after all.

Again, the overall point here is good–the real answer is that we should buy less and keep what we have. But I have to say that the thrift store market argument drives me crazy. Not that there’s anything wrong with it in principle. But it’s completely unrealistic and unserious as a real option for most people because there’s just not enough clothes in them to feed the market and because to rush en masse to thrift stores would raise the prices beyond what people who actually rely on these clothes to survive could afford. Yet people who try to reject sweatshops, capitalism, unsustainable practices, and other problems in the modern world run this argument out as an example of how to do things differently time and time again. And it drives me crazy because it is so obviously not scalable.

Now I know that I am not fashionable in my leftism. I despise anarchism. I don’t think corporate campaigns are worth much. I am skeptical of online activism (though the tools obviously have value). I think consensus decision-making is a joke. I think the emphasis on individualism that drives our economic and social lives is great in some ways but also prioritizes individual action within social movements like Occupy over getting things done. I also think these kind of individual decisions to opt out of a system (in this case clothing capitalism) by making some kind of fashion statement (I buy used clothes! Look how fashionable and anti-capitalist I am!) are essentially meaningless. If solutions aren’t available to the masses, probably driven by grassroots campaigns but, importantly, implemented by governments, they probably aren’t really solutions.

To be fair, it’s not like I’m really accusing Philpott of being this way. That sentence of his was just a good launching point.

Food Waste

[ 25 ] August 22, 2012 | Erik Loomis

The Natural Resources Defense Council has released a paper detailing the grotesque waste of food in the United States and suggesting common-sense plans to reduce this waste.

Food is simply too good to waste. Even the most sustainably farmed food does us no good if the food is never eaten. Getting food to our tables eats up 10 percent of the total U.S. energy budget, uses 50 percent of U.S. land, and swallows 80 percent of freshwater consumed in the United States. Yet, 40 percent of food in the United States today goes uneaten. That is more than 20 pounds of food per person every month. Not only does this mean that Americans are throwing out the equivalent of $165 billion each year, but also 25 percent of all freshwater and huge amounts of unnecessary chemicals, energy, and land. Moreover, almost all of that uneaten food ends up rotting in landfills where it accounts for almost 25 percent of U.S. methane emissions.

What’s particularly outrageous is that 50% of the seafood in the United States goes to waste. 50%!!!!! These are wild animals, the last wild animals we harvest commercially for food. Some of these species are in severe decline and are becoming endangered. Yet we treat this food so casually as to dump 1/2 of it in landfills. This is outrageous.

Of course, the national appetite for government-led environmental initiatives is now close to zero so I suppose nothing will get done.

This One Goes Out to the Republican Party

[ 3 ] August 21, 2012 | Erik Loomis

Every time I listen to the old Tex Williams song “The Night Miss Nancy Ann’s Hotel for Single Girls Burned Down,” I always think the relevant politicians are modern Republicans. The hypocrisy seems so perfect.

I prefer the Hank Thompson version of the song.

America’s Worst Historians

[ 151 ] August 21, 2012 | Erik Loomis

Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg summarize the problems with journalists writing history:

We have to fight mediocrity as well as plagiarism – the two are more closely related than you realize. Journalists doing history tend to be superficial and formulaic. To the historian’s mind, they don’t care enough about accuracy. It’s a surprisingly short distance to travel from dressing up the past in order to make it familiar, to paraphrasing (actually, stealing) an earlier biographer’s ideas.

History is not a bedtime story, folks. Plagiarism is variously defined as “wrongful appropriation” and “close imitation”; it is not just blatant theft of the gist of a paragraph. Originality in writing history is something palpable and verifiable, and it’s the reason History Ph.D. candidates spend years researching and writing a dissertation, taking several years more to fashion it into the book that will earn them tenure. Good history demands the ability to judge the available evidence – a form of knowledge journalists are not asked to cultivate.

Most everyone who transgresses on the work of historians uncritically accepts someone else’s work, then tweaks it a little. That’s how the game is played. But historians are trained differently. They are taught to be suspect of authors who come to their information secondhand. The mark of a good historian is writing something new about something old and making an original argument gleaned from primary sources.

You will not find a painstaking scholar dressing up his or her material to make it more familiar than it should be, such as: “The dark eyes that gleamed behind large metal-rimmed glasses – those same dark eyes that had once enchanted a young officer in George Washington’s staff – betokened a sharp intelligence, a fiercely indomitable spirit …” This is from the opening page of Ron Chernow’s mega-selling “Alexander Hamilton,” describing Hamilton’s widow as if the author knew her personally and could verify these superior qualities. Chernow is a smart guy; he’s another Ivy Leaguer who rose from freelance journalism to become a Pulitzer Prize–winning popular historian. His bias in favor of his subject is akin to McCullough’s, though he writes better and goes deeper.

I have no principled issue with non-professional historians writing history. But the fundamental problem is that so much of this history is bad. As Burstein and Isenberg state, “History is not a bedtime story.” Absolutely correct. Too often, history written by non-historians is superficial, lacks analysis or a strong thesis, and has major problems with evidence. I do think it is a problem that more professional historians are not writing for a popular market, but we are not rewarded for that. How you combine good writing with professional standards of evidence and argument is a challenge we need to think about harder.

…..This post set off a bit more of a fierce comment thread than I thought it would, which is fine. I will say that I am writing this as someone who is probably going to write a biography-esque project for my 2nd book, something that I never thought I’d do. Moreover, this is a book project that could sell some. So the issue of thinking about combining the best of what academic historians do with the best of what popular historians do is on my mind these days.

Akin Lives

[ 43 ] August 21, 2012 | Erik Loomis

For now anyway.

A flash poll in Missouri showed that despite Todd Akin’s insane statements about rape, he still leads Claire McCaskill 45-44, according to a poll by Public Policy Polling, a Democratic pollster. That’s aligns with similar numbers from May. It could be that people haven’t changed their minds about him yet and the news hasn’t truly sunk in. Or it could mean the Missouri Republicans would vote for literally anyone other than McCaskill. And in this case, it would be literally anyone since it’s hard to think of someone worse.

I also agree with David Nir that Akin holds more cards than one might think:

I don’t claim any ability to predict the future, but the fact is, Akin’s 65 years old, he had to give up his seat in the House to run for Senate, and won a pretty serious primary upset. This is the capstone of his career, and there really isn’t any inducement anyone can offer him to step aside—hence the threats. He may still prefer to quit, in the end, but I seriously doubt that national Republicans would write off this race entirely if he refuses to step aside.

If he can legitimately keep this a close race, I too have a hard time seeing Republican money not flowing to him by October, particularly given the importance of this race for control of the Senate. Of course, that’s a disaster for Republicans because that would keep the issue in the news, a particularly salient point given his relationship with Paul Ryan in trying to end reproductive rights.

Speaking of Senate control, it has seemed to me for some time that this was the most dire competitive race for Democrats. Not only do I think Elizabeth Warren is going to win in Massachusetts, but the North Dakota and Nevada races are looking up, as is Virginia. The Montana race looks tough too, but I would have bet on Tester before McCaskill. Not anymore. But it’s hardly over because Akin is not the anathema to voters you’d think. Because in the end, saying horrible things about rape is probably not so distant from the views a lot of Missouri conservatives hold.

This Day in Labor History: August 21, 1831

[ 27 ] August 21, 2012 | Erik Loomis

On this date in 1831, Nat Turner, a slave in Southhampton County, Virginia, led the largest slave revolt in the history of the United States, killing 60 white people before being brutally put down by the militia. This event frightened the slaveholding class that believed their human property could slip from them at any time, leading to increasingly draconian measures across the South to institute control over slave labor.

Nat Turner was a bit of an odd man it seems. He was a religious mystic who claimed to have visions that guided his actions. Unlike most slaves, he learned to read as a child and immersed himself in the Bible. He thought God spoke to him through his visions. He ran away in 1825 for an entire month before a vision told him to return to his master. Despite this history of erratic behavior and escaping, he was allowed to lead religious services for slaves. In 1828, he had a vision while working in the fields to prepare to lead his people from slavery. He began preparing for this, building a trusted cadre of followers. In February 1831, an eclipse could be seen from Virginia, which Turner interpreted as the sign to make final preparations for his revolt. A follow-up eclipse in August signaled it was time to begin.

On August 21, Turner and his trusted group of 6 slaves began a war of extermination against the slaveholders. Armed with axes, knives, and blunt instruments, they went house to house in Southampton County, killing all the slaveholding whites they found. At about 2 a.m., they reached the Travis household, where they murdered the entire family as they slept. Some of those slaves joined their force. They avoided poor whites, preferring to concentrate on the slaveholders, in part so they could then free those slaves and expand their rebel army. Eventually, they had about 40 people willing to do anything to free themselves, even kill their masters.

The next day, Turner decided to march toward the town of Jerusalem. Although they moved swiftly and silently (not having any guns was part of this strategy–plus it was hard for slaves to acquire them), within 48 hours, the rebellion had been suppressed. They faced an attack from the militia and were scattered. They attempted to attack another house, were repulsed and some captured. They then faced an organized militia force that quickly dispersed them, killing 1 slave and capturing more. Most of the rest of the rebels were captured over the next few days.

Turner himself actually eluded capture for over 2 months. The state of Virginia wanted him alive so they could try him. Fearing he was hiding in the Great Dismal Swamp where he could live indefinitely, the state offered a $500 reward for his capture. He was finally discovered hiding in a hole on October 30, tried on November 5, and executed on November 11.

Retaliation against Turner and his band was swift and harsh. They were almost all executed, 56 in total. The militia also started a reign of terror against the local slave population, rounding up and murdering at least 100 innocent people. Northern editors decried the wanton killing, but for southern plantation owners, all blacks were potentially murderers.

Image depicting massacre of whites by Nat Turner’s force.

The aftermath also saw southern states pass sweeping legislation to crack down on slave education and mobility. Most notably, states, including Virginia, passed laws making it illegal for whites to teach blacks how to read. Seeing Turner’s apocalyptic visions based on the Bible as a very real threat to their control of labor and lives (after all, if slaves read the Bible, they might come across that slightly inconvenient story of Exodus…), they sought to undermine it through forced illiteracy. The law was fairly unenforceable; if an elite slaveholder like Stonewall Jackson wanted to teach his slaves to read in quiet, the state wasn’t going to do anything about it. But the laws did increase illiteracy and served to control the information slave labor had about the outside world. The state also made it illegal for either slaves or free blacks to preach, but that was obviously unenforceable.

The revolt also put the final nail in the coffin of Virginia’s long-standing, if increasingly dying, debate over whether to find an end to slavery. That legacy of Jefferson and Madison already went out of fashion with the cotton gin and profitable investment in cotton lands in Alabama and Mississippi, but the fear of free blacks ended it entirely.

Most of what we claim to know about Turner comes from The Confessions of Nat Turner, written by a local white doctor named Thomas Gray. How much of that document came from Turner’s mouth is impossible to say. It’s hard to think of it as all that accurate; on the other hand, it’s pretty much the only document we have on the man.

This is the 38th installment in this series. Previous posts are archived here.

Your Evening Weather Forecast

[ 7 ] August 20, 2012 | Erik Loomis

This is the greatest weather report in history:


Onion Weather Center: Arizona Heatwave Forces Temporary Suspension Of Racial Profiling

The best part is when they hope for tornadoes to destroy Dallas:

“Any chance of these tornadoes changing course and ridding the Earth of some of these meat-loving racist fucks?”

“I can only hope so.”

The Creepy Koch Brother

[ 73 ] August 20, 2012 | Erik Loomis

Am I the only one who finds the lesser known billionaire Koch Brother Bill Koch even creepier than the pair trying to buy the 2012 election?

KEBLER PASS —There’s a new town in Colorado. It has about 50 buildings, including a saloon, a church, a jail, a firehouse, a livery and a train station. Soon, it will have a mansion on a hill so the town’s founder can look down on his creation.

But don’t expect to move here — or even to visit.

This town is billionaire Bill Koch’s fascination with the Old West rendered in bricks and mortar. It sits on a 420-acre meadow on his Bear Ranch below the Raggeds Wilderness Area in Gunnison County. It’s an unpopulated, faux Western town that might boggle the mind of anyone who ever had a playhouse. Its full-size buildings come with polished brass and carved-mahogany details and are fronted with board sidewalks and underpinned by a water-treatment system. A locked gate with guards screens who comes and goes.

Koch’s project manager has told county officials that the enclave in the middle of the 6,400-acre Bear Ranch won’t ever be open to the public. It is simply for Koch’s amusement and for that of his family and friends — and historians. It is the ultimate repository for his huge collection of Western memorabilia.

His mansion overlooking the “town” clocks in at only 21,000 square feet so that’s, um, something.

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