Education reforms likely

The election results and the hiring of a new Kansas education commissioner signal that more innovation and conservative reforms likely are coming to districts, schools and classrooms – at least the kind that won’t carry new costs for the cash-strapped state.

Of course, if the Kansas Supreme Court again sides with suing districts and orders millions more dollars in state funding, Gov. Sam Brownback and legislators may be too busy hunting for money to dabble in education policymaking.

Teachers and local district leaders need to be prepared in any case, and be as involved as possible in the debates.

Many public schoolteachers and their union were rightly upset by a law passed last spring that delivered court-ordered aid to districts but also stripped teachers of state protection of their due-process rights upon termination, relaxed teacher-licensing requirements and allowed tax breaks for private school tuition scholarships. But the teachers didn’t succeed in getting their advocates elected this month, leaving Brownback in office and a conservative Legislature to pursue more policy changes.

The recent debate by the K-12 Student Performance and Efficiency Commission points at where the governor and lawmakers might want to go next. They may try to further weaken the teachers union, perhaps by barring districts from paying teachers while they are on leave doing union business or – going for broke – by targeting teachers’ collective-bargaining rights. The commission also has discussed uniform fiscal management and more consolidation of districts’ administrative functions – though the potential savings of such reforms seem in doubt. The panel will make recommendations in time for the 2015 legislative session.

For their part, some lawmakers already are on record as wanting more charter schools, more tax credits and perhaps vouchers for private schools, as well as a full retreat from the Common Core state curriculum standards.

If it’s true that “we Kansans love our schools and they are great schools,” as Brownback said during his State of the State speech this year, he and other state leaders will take care to pursue and pass reforms that will only make those schools greater.

Meanwhile, the Kansas State Board of Education made a strong and interesting choice last week in hiring McPherson superintendent Randy Watson as state education commissioner, succeeding Diane DeBacker. Watson’s district has been on the leading edge of innovation in Kansas K-12 education ever since it won a waiver from the federal No Child Left Behind law in 2011. McPherson also was one of the first two districts to take advantage of a 2013 law enabling districts to earn the label of “innovative” and be trusted with even more flexibility.

Kansas schools statewide stand to benefit from Watson’s fresh perspective, especially because it’s rooted in real-world education experience rather than ripped from a think tank’s playbook.

For the editorial board, Rhonda Holman

This story was originally published November 20, 2014 at 6:07 PM with the headline "Education reforms likely."