A call for accountability from public education

One reason the quality of public education continues to slide in the United States and Alaska is its lack of accountability.

Educators are more prone to make excuses about why our kids aren’t learning at the level they’re capable instead of taking responsibility for their part in that degeneration.

Of course, parental support is always important and there’s only so much that’s reasonable to expect of the public school system short of raising our kids for us.

By and large, public education works. In the Mat-Su Valley, we have dedicated, hard-working teachers and administrators who are passionate about and take pride in what they do. Like in any endeavor, it could be better.

When challenged about quality, public education can be too quick to blame No Child Left Behind. Educators say standardized testing fails to be a fair measure of how much our students are learning and/or a lack of funding and resources to do the job properly. To a point, this may be true — but only to a point.

How refreshing it would be to hear a public school administrator step up and say, “Hey, we just need to do better.”

At least on one front, Gov. Sarah Palin is putting the ball back into the court of educators. She’s unveiled a school funding proposal to invest more than $1 billion a year for three years into public education. The message here is clear: You say you need more money, well here it is. The only string attached is accountability.

Under the plan, four main areas of education will see boosts in funding:

• Base student allocation will increase by $200 per year for three years from the current $5,380 per student school districts receive from the state.

• Intensive-needs student funding will increase to nine times the base student allocation in the first year, 11 times the second and 13 times the third.

• A formula change will use district-cost factors so high-cost districts aren’t left behind because the price of educating students is so much greater than in more centralized areas.

• Transportation grants will more accurately reflect the costs of moving students.

That’s a lot of money, but we can think of no better investment than in our children and their education. Like any investment, we need to see a reasonable return. That Palin specifically identifies accountability as part of her proposal is refreshing and needed.

We hope school districts and individual schools will embrace the challenge of accountability and leave off explaining educational failures as being issues of funding.

While educators are also quick to lament whatever method is in place to measure academic success and progress (like No Child Left Behind), this is what we have. Should Palin’s proposal go through it’s reasonable to expect fewer children left behind, higher graduation rates and higher percentages of students achieving at and above proficiency in basic subjects.

“This will enable school districts to have the resources they need to be accountable for student success,” the announcement of her proposal says. If funding is one way to help give public education the resources it needs to excel, $3 billion over three years is plenty.

We support Palin’s proposal and urge state lawmakers to follow suit when they convene in 2008.