"What do they want to do? They want kids to continue to fail? People ought to be outraged when kids are trapped in failing schools. It's a disgrace."
--John Kasich
John Kasich, the governor of Ohio and current presidential hopeful, said that months ago. He couldn't believe--and he's not alone--that anybody would stand in the way of real reform when it comes to the nation's failing public schools. How could so many educators oppose something that might work, simply because such a plan might decrease their political clout?
But it happens. You need not look any farther than Little Rock, Arkansas, and those who have opposed the state's takeover of public schools here.
The Washington Post, bless it all to pieces, published a story a few days back about the number of states that are taking control of schools away from local authorities when those local authorities prove they can't do the job. A funny thing happened on the way to writing the story: It turns out that most of those states that are ousting local school boards are led by Republican governors and legislatures.
How'd that happen? Aren't Republicans the party of local control and smaller government and top-down-doesn't-work? The answer, as it turns out, is: not always.
Those leaders on the starboard side of politics in states like Michigan, Nevada, Wisconsin, Georgia, Ohio and a state named Arkansas apparently aren't as interested in ideology as they are the kids' futures. Call it compassionate conservatism. As if the children in school today deserve pragmatic leadership, not one-size-fits-all talking points.
Or as a Republican governor from Illinois--one Bruce Rauner--put it: "I want to protect the schoolchildren and their parents. That's my first duty."
And that duty might mean wresting control from local school boards, their handlers in the teachers' unions, or just incompetents in the superintendent's office. And giving control to a state authority that probably can't do any worse. (In one school system in Youngstown, Ohio, John Kasich noted that just 1.1 percent of its graduates were ready for college. One-point-one percent.)
Sometimes top-down works. Or, in the very least, should be tried.
Protecting the schoolchildren--that should be every governor's first duty. No matter his political party.
Editorial on 02/04/2016