November Editorial: On Education Policy, the Tea Party, and ME!

I think that it’s important to point out that one of the strongest messages delivered by the electorate last week is: Education is not important to Idahoans.  Idahoans reelected the only governor in the history of Idaho to cut public education funding, a superintendent of public instruction who has no experience in the classroom, and many of the legislators who shepherded these cuts through the legislature.  Thankfully, here in Latah County, we retained legislators who value public education and are strong advocates for our schools…but, this past election also highlighted a strange political divide around the issue of public education.

I freely admit that my political leanings tend to the left and, like many others in Latah County, I am not a really big fan of the Tea Party movement and its anti-government libertarian agenda, but as I began to notice Gresham Bouma’s “Burma Shave” signs I found myself agreeing with his message about education.  Me, a liberal intellectual, agreeing with a Tea Party Republican about public education policy!  I couldn’t believe it at first, but I have come to accept that Bouma’s message about local control is of the utmost importance if the American public school system is to survive.

Since the Reagan administration, the federal government has slowly expanded its reach into educational policy.  Reagan’s original intent was to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, but the release of a scathing report by his handpicked National Commission on Excellence in Education titled “A Nation at Risk” backfired.  “A Nation at Risk” argued for increased federal oversight and touched off a political tidal wave of increasingly heavy-handed federal education mandates.  The most recent of these being the infamous No Child Left Behind, currently due for reauthorization by the new Congress.

Education policy is now dictated by politicians who see public education as a tool to promote their agendas and influence the electorate.  The past twenty-five years of federal policy has removed educational decision-making from the hands of professional educators and has perpetuated the mindset that “those who can do, and those who can’t teach”.   Our political system has devalued and deprofessionalized educators.  Decisions about curriculum, assessment, classroom management, and more are now made by the least qualified: politicians and interest groups. 

Education policy has homogenized curricula and assessment across the country because politicians don’t trust educators.   We have schools obsessed by content standards and yearly test scores.  Schools across the country are now driven by what students (supposedly) need to learn, instead of teaching students how to learn.  Knowledge has been politicized through increased federal and state oversight of the curriculum.  Politicians can dictate what they think students should know, but this is an amateur approach to education that divorces the content of education from the process of learning.  Trained educators wouldn’t make this mistake, but they are forced to work within an educational system that requires them to live with this mistake every day.

Idaho is no different.  Despite our collective tendency to distrust the federal government, we have elected officials who support and perpetuate educational mandates that erode the authority and professionalism of our teachers and administrators.  Teachers and students have become political pawns upon whose back Governor Otter and the Legislature balance the budget.  The State Department of Education is obsessively preoccupied with the costly pursuit of ensuring compliance with federal mandates, and meanwhile my daughter has to bring home roughly stapled photocopies of reading books because there are only 7 books for her whole first grade class.  

So, if anything I’ve learned something through the past election cycle it is:  1) Mr. Bouma and I may have something in common.  I think we might agree that allowing communities, educators, and parents to take a more active, collaborative role in running schools is a better alternative to the direction we are currently heading, and 2) never underestimate the educational value of a well-placed, pithy “Bouma Shave” sign.