Governors are responsible for schools
Today’s politicians think they have discovered the key to election success: Act like you’re not part of the government, even if you’re running it. Trying to sidestep the antigovernment funk that the public has been in for years now, they try to cast themselves as outsiders, as nonparticipants in a system that actually looks to them to keep its cogs lubed.
Governors are responsible for schools
Today’s politicians think they have discovered the key to election success: Act like you’re not part of the government, even if you’re running it. Trying to sidestep the antigovernment funk that the public has been in for years now, they try to cast themselves as outsiders, as nonparticipants in a system that actually looks to them to keep its cogs lubed.
Perhaps nowhere is this approach to governing more maddening than when elected officials whose responsibilities include educating children start talking like public schools are a bacterium they won’t touch. The schools are always their problem, and their means teachers.
Both Govs. Christie and Corbett play this game, though Christie has toned down his rhetoric. Corbett, in unveiling his school reform plan a week ago, still sounded like he would rather hand out vouchers and close traditional schools across Pennsylvania, if given the chance.
In past speeches, Corbett has said to improve schools you need an “escape route” so parents can “vote with their feet.” He said schools need competition, and that can only come when public funding for schools is portable. “I liken it to a backpack,” he said. “It’s carried to the school with that child.”
Children do need alternatives to languishing at bad schools. But Corbett can’t act like the only role he’s supposed to play is to provide an “escape route.” He runs the government, including the state Department of Education. Instead of throwing up his hands at bad schools, it’s his responsibility to fix them.
You couldn’t tell that by looking at his reform plan. The first three proposals are escape routes: Opportunity Scholarships, or vouchers; Educational Improvement Tax Credits, which provide vouchers paid for by businesses; and, of course, charter schools. His fourth idea is a new teacher evaluation system.
Christie, too, wants to establish a voucher program that relies on businesses to fund Opportunity Scholarships in return for tax credits. But his reform plan to a much larger degree than Corbett’s acknowledges that a governor can’t just recommend children flee public schools.
Christie’s teacher-evaluation proposal is more detailed. He wants to create “transformation schools” in the state’s 10 worst districts and develop a new accountability system that doesn’t just identify bad schools, but provides state intervention to help them. He also wants to reward top-performing schools.
Where Christie has faltered is in shaking his habit of insulting folks who could help get his bills passed — in this case, the teachers’ union. At least New Jersey’s governor has stopped sounding like the only solution to sorry schools is to help students run away. Corbett needs to learn the same lesson as Christie, and stop acting like “competition” from charters and vouchers will be enough to fix bad schools.
