DN Editorial: Mark state Board of Education absent

IF YOU ever wondered what the Pennsylvania Board of Education does, the answer is . . . not much. Not much at all, according to a critical report by Auditor General Eugene DePasquale.

The 21-member board is tasked with creating and updating the Commonwealth Master Plan for education. It's independent of the state Department of Education, which has the job of implementing and overseeing the policies set by the board.

The Board of Education has regulatory power over an array of educational issues: school performance, staff certification, school finance and transportation, to name a few. As DePasquale's report put it last week, the board is supposed to provide a "road map" for education policy in Pennsylvania.

That map has been gathering dust in the glove compartment for more than a decade.

Although the law requires the board to do a new master plan every five years, the most recent one dates back to 1999.

A lot has happened in the past 16 years in public education. To name one, the federal "No Child Left Behind" law, which was passed in 2001. For another, the entire charter-school movement. (In 1999, the state had 41 charter schools. Today, there are 174.)

Education has become a political flashpoint on so many issues, the situation almost cries out for a bipartisan board - one step removed from the fray - to offer guidance and direction. The fact that we have such a board in place - and it does nothing - is a sign of the times.

There are fierce battles over money for the schools, the expansion of charters, standardized testing, student achievement, even curriculum. The list could go on.

We're fighting those battles in the trenches, at local districts across the state and on the floor of the Legislature. Those fights involve powerful forces - school boards, teachers unions, ideologues of both camps in the Legislature.

These forces don't want a bipartisan board to act as a referee. That would mean compromise, when each side wants total victory.

The auditor general's report reminds us of how education policy once was created, before the cultural and educational wars of the past decade. And it's a reminder that the board could play that role again and the state would be better off for it.

As we said, the board oversees formation of policy and regulations, but the state Department of Education implements and enforces them. Sort of. Kind of.

DePasquale's report also criticized the department for inaction over failing schools in the commonwealth. The department does its research well. Through various measures, it has identified the state's lowest performing schools. There are, for the record, 561 of them educating (perhaps babysitting is a better word) 310,000 students. That's 26 percent of all students statewide.

Having identified the poor performers, the department has gone into the bureaucratic equivalent of a coma. It has done nothing to remedy the situation. Something? Anything? Please.

The department seems to have taken an old saying, stood it on its head and adopted it as its motto: Don't do something, just stand there.

DePasquale's well-done and reasoned report is an attempt to shake up the board and the department. They should consider it a wake-up call - to get off your butts and get moving.