MANCHESTER, Conn.

President Biden nominated Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court to fulfill a campaign promise to give the court its first Black woman. But this week Jackson told the Senate Judiciary Committee that she can't define "woman" because "I'm not a biologist."

So how could the president have been so sure as to what constitutes a woman? He's no biologist either.

And how could the Democratic senators supporting Jackson, also no biologists, be so sure even as they are trying to push her through the confirmation process before her judicial and political philosophies are explored too much?

When the hearing on Jackson's nomination began, "woman" was in the dictionary, and had been for a long time.

But Jackson's evasion on the woman question was a strong hint that if she makes it to the court she will assist the extreme political left in promoting transgenderism and erasing any recognition of gender differences, particularly in regard to women in sports.

Of course, for many years all Supreme Court nominees have been evasive about their views on legal and political controversies. But this evasion never has been taken as far as Jackson took it this week.

The Senate should not accept such evasion. It should tell the president that if he wants to nominate a Black woman for the court, he should find one who at least isn't afraid to admit knowing what a woman is.

According to a Rasmussen poll this week, 58 percent of likely U.S. voters think that the public schools are getting worse, with only 13 percent thinking that they are improving.

Of course, the virus epidemic's interruption of schooling has damaged education terribly. But education already had been declining for years and is probably even worse than the 58 percent in the poll believe. A report in the New Haven Independent this week may not have been surprising but still should have been horrifying.

Quoting the city school system's data, the Independent reported that the performance of 45 percent of New Haven students is two grades behind where it should be and the performance of another 44 percent of students is one grade behind. Only 11 percent of New Haven students are performing at grade level.

Since most of the city's children are fatherless and impoverished, New Haven is worse in this respect than Connecticut generally, but statewide student performance should horrify as well. The last time Connecticut's high school seniors were formally tested for subject proficiency was in 2013 by the National Assessment of Educational Progress. While Connecticut's seniors performed best in the country, half still had not mastered high school English and two-thirds still had not mastered high school math.

Even so, contrary to the Rasmussen poll, most people in Connecticut seem satisfied with their public schools. At least there is no movement to improve schools academically or seriously examine student performance.

Maybe opinions about schools are like opinions about Congress, where most people think that Congress is corrupt and taking the country in the wrong direction even as most people like their own members of Congress

After all, there's some comfort in thinking that while schools are declining generally, one's local schools are still great and that, as in Lake Wobegon, all local students are above average. Such thinking relieves parents of any responsibility to take note of public education's transition from academic learning to "social and emotional learning" with a dollop of political indoctrination -- schooling without the inconvenience of proficiency-test scores.

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Connecticut's Hearst newspapers this week published a remarkable news item produced by an outfit called United Robots, whose computer programs process raw data and put it into prose.

This particular item, drawn from property records, said a "spacious and historic house" in Bridgeport with three stories, 3,700 square feet, seven bedrooms, three bathrooms, and a detached garage had been sold for a mere $2,000. A photograph showed the house looks intact and secure.

But the "robots" didn't explain the low price, so incongruous amid Connecticut's housing shortage. Bridgeport is a troubled city but residential property there is not worthless. There must be a reason for the giveaway price of that house but the "robots" apparently lack the curiosity of a live reporter.

Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester.