HOW THE LEGISLATURE SHOULD IMPROVE SCHOOLS
By Lon Woodbury, Publisher
RuralNorthWest.com

(This essay is based on one of a series of polls RuralNorthWest.com has run in the last year. To participate in the current poll on a topic of current interest, go to www.ruralnorthwest.com and scroll down the left side of the front page)

Americans have always emphasized the importance of education. It seems to be a distinguishing part of our culture. As the frontier moved west, one of the first things the early settlers did in virtually every community was to establish some form of school. Even before tax supported common schools were founded in the late 19th century, there was a flourishing system of community-based private schools. The tax-supported common schools rapidly came to dominate education under the dream of expanding the benefits of education to all children, and provisions were placed in the Constitutions of the western states, including Idaho, with the obligation to support public education.

The basic framework of modern public education was established in the early 20th century, with professionally trained teachers, local school districts as independent government entities, and over time, increased state funding to help poor areas provide an education and expand education opportunities equal to the more wealthy districts. The dream was to provide quality education for all children equal to that provided by the elite private schools.

For decades Idaho has devoted half or more of the budget to public education. Education is always a major issue in legislative campaigns, usually in the context of finding a way for the state to provide more money. The successful legislative candidate is usually the one that more convincingly promises to do everything they can to fully fund public education’s needs. Among other things, critics of education usually claim that most of the problems of public education are because it is not fully funded.

Although the public debate primarily centers on the issue of how to fully fund public education, a recent poll run by RuralNorthWest.com indicates there might be a real divergence of opinion between public policy makers and the public. While public policy makers focus on fully funding public education, out of almost 500 votes in our poll, only 15 percent choose that as the goal they thought legislator’s should focus on.

The question was: “What do you think would be the most important thing the legislature could do to improve the education Idaho young people under 18 receive?” While only 15 percent thought full funding was a priority, more than twice as many, 37 percent, thought it more important to “Support and/or encourage alternative education approaches such as charter schools, vouchers, tax breaks for private schools or home schooling, etc.” In addition, three times as many thought the legislature should “Initiate basic top to bottom system-wide reforms of public education from funding, to programs, to curriculum, etc.”

Admittedly, this is a small sample, and there are no pretensions of a scientific random sampling of the voters. Still, it suggests the public would prefer the legislature to make real efforts at major systemic reform of public education, instead of just continuing cosmetic changes on a century old institution, and find more money.