Now, just a few years later, what is the status of education in Idaho?     Parents are free to educate their children at home as Idaho does not regulate or monitor home school activities.  Today, thousands of Idaho parents are enjoying this education choice option and using a myriad of on-line and other programs to facilitate their very successful home school programs.

Charter schools over the past decade have grown from just a handful of schools and a few hundred students to what we have today: 44 schools, enrolling over 160,000 students.  With thousands still on waiting lists, and if the past is a good indicator, 10 years from now we should see these schools double in numbers.  In addition, Idaho’s charter school law has been improved greatly over that period, now with no cap as to numbers, a charter school commission, expansion of authorizers and, most recently state support for charter school facilities.

Providing tax credits for contributions for education purposes, a no-no for years, actually passed the House this legislative session although unfortunately, it was defeated in a Senate Committee.

Now, with Governor Otter advocating school reform along with State Superintendent Luna,  and with the  leadership of both the House and Senate Education committees “on-board,” the future looks a lot brighter for Idaho students.

Through our Political Action Committee, I am proud to have had a role in many of these changes and, while not having an official part to play, I intend to continue to be an advocate for education choice and an improved Idaho school system.

Now, what one thing could you do to improve our schools?  First of all, who are the stakeholders to our k-12 education system?  Few would argue that those stakeholders are our parents, our taxpayers, our teachers and administrators and of course our elected school board members.  Further, few would argue that all of those stakeholders would do almost anything to make their schools the best they could be.   Still further, few would argue that the most important element in school improvement is to have the best possible teacher in every classroom.  There is no doubt that being able to assemble a high performing teaching faculty in every school is the true avenue to improved schools.

All of those stakeholders are probably in full agreement, so why is that not happening today?  It is because all of those stakeholders, although they are probably unanimous in their desires, are held back by the greatest hurdle to school improvement.  It is the most contentious and controversial of any possible legislative proposal, however it is one that the majority of the Idaho electorate supports.  Had that single issue been on the ballot last November, I probably would not be writing about it today.

What is the solution?  What is the “Silver Bullet?”   What is it that the recent past president of the IEA stated, “we will never give up!”  While performance pay is important as well as all of the new technologies and so are a host of other issues that legislators find on their agenda each year, but all are pale in comparison to the real issue that is holding back the true route to school improvement.  If we had a high performing teacher in every classroom we would not even be concerned about negotiated agreements, performance pay or computers for kids.  The real impediment that stands in the way of school boards and administrators to place an excellent teacher in every classroom is the RENEWABLE CONTRACT LAW!

That is the number one hurdle to school improvement facing all of the stakeholders, It is a law that protects the worst of our teaching staff and diminishes the value of our best! We can’t continue to Ignore what most Idahoans know, that tenure, (renewable contract) for teachers is detrimental to our kids?

While this issue is not up for debate this session it is hoped that the Governor’s task force will tackle it head–on.  The solution is not necessarily an outright repeal of the law as there are other alternatives that would give school boards greater flexibility in the process of reaching that goal of having a great teacher in every classroom. Hopefully, the task force will come back next January with a strong recommendation to deal with this most critical issue.

“The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.”  Abraham

Lincoln

In the letter the author decrying the recent actions of the Idaho School Boards Association contained a fundamental error.  The author stated, “the ISBA introduced the very same laws in multiple bills in an attempt to make it more difficult to repeal them again.”   Simply not true! These bills are no-where near the same bills that were approved by the 2011 legislature.  I don’t think you will find any of the following in the current proposed legislation which were prominent in the 3 propositions: laptops for kids, parents evaluating teachers, bonus money for teachers in hard to fill positions, all schools having wireless internet accessibility, bonuses for teachers who achieve high performance from their students, on line 2-credit requirement for high school graduation, bonus money for teachers assuming leadership roles, colleges and universities sponsoring charter schools, and loss of teacher tenure.  While all of the aforementioned items are important for school improvement they are not part of the current legislation.   Hopefully, Governor Otter’s education task force will address these items and make recommendations for the 2014 legislature.

These current bills that were recently introduced in the House and Senate Education committees are bills that will enhance school district operations and perhaps make it easier for school boards to deal with fiscal problems similar to those that the Nampa School District Board of Trustees are now faced with that 4.5 million dollar deficit.

What the author of that letter apparently wants but did not reveal is that he wants schools to continue down the same path of mediocrity that they are currently on.  Specifically, he wants school district negotiations to continue behind closed doors so that the public is not aware of how their taxes are being spent.

He regards keeping an on-line account of all negotiated agreements and expenditures available to the public on-line is somehow a bad idea.  He believes that the local bargaining agent, in most cases the local teacher’s union, should not have to show to the board that they do in fact have a majority representation of the teachers that they purport to represent.

He apparently believes that when necessary for a school board to reduce the teaching force that only seniority should be the factor.  Never mind whether or not the teacher is a poor performer or not.   Apparently quality of performance simply does not matter.

He also apparently believes that agreements signed, perhaps decades ago, by union and school boards should perpetually stay in place and not be open for new negotiations every 1 or 2 years.

He also does not want the school board to have the authority to delegate responsibility to their superintendent to grant to teachers voluntary or involuntary leaves when the superintendent believes that it is in the best interest of student health and safety.

All of these measures, which the author states that he is against, are in the best interest of maintaining control of our local schools by locally elected school trustees.

I believe the author of that letter, an excellent teacher in Caldwell, is wrong in his desire for schools to continue to operate as they are.  Change is uncomfortable for everyone, but change we must.  Our students, our parents and taxpayers and yes our teachers deserve better.

 If you don’t like the message attack the messenger!

The charter school critics invariably will suggest that charter schools are nothing more than a fad, in essence private schools at State expense and cost more to operate rather than less.   All of those claims are false.  They do serve all kinds of students and they will continue to expand in numbers if some of the barriers to growth can be overcome.   Further, all of our public schools are supported by the tax dollar and on average charter schools spend about $3,000.00 of those tax dollars per year per student less than their traditional counterparts.  For example:  the Boise School District spends on average about $8,200.00 per year per student while Anser Charter school located in Boise spends only about $5,000.00 per year per student.   All charter schools spend less per student per year than their traditional school counterparts!   The spending per student disparity between traditional schools and our virtual schools is even more dramatic.

That huge disparity is primarily the result of charter schools not having access to any of the various property tax levies.  Charter schools don’t have access to the proceeds from emergency, supplemental, plant facilities or bond levies.  Nor can they participate in the state sponsored bond levy equalization program.   Traditional school districts use the plant facility and bond levies for building and maintaining their facilities.   Since charter schools do not have such taxing authority this leads to the number one problem facing new or start-up charter schools.  This is not to suggest that charter schools be afforded taxing authority, but they do need some type of State support that will provide more equity in building and maintenance in the form of low interest loans, or grants to facilitate the growth of charter schools in Idaho.   As stated before, charter schools do the “job” better and they do it at less cost to the taxpayer.  We ought to be encouraging their growth.

“The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.”  Abraham Lincoln

SB  1039….The local union must provide evidence to the board of trustees annually that they do represent at least 50% plus one  of the teaching staff.  However a major weakness in this bill is the lack of definition as to how that evidence is collected in order to ensure honest, fair elections without any intent to take unfair advantage. If the bill had stated that the local school board will define the criteria as to how that evidence is collected it would have been better legislation.  However, it is a good step in the right direction.

H OO67….Negotiations to be in public and all documentation exchanged between the parties during negotiations subject to public writings disclosure laws.    When spending the taxpayer’s money they ought to be privy to the process.  Public negotiations will bring about better results and less conflict.   Having an audience does tend to change behavior.   How could any legislator vote no on this bill?

Why is government transparency important?

Access to information allows members of the public to protect their own rights, as well as the rights of others.  Government works for the individual taxpayer. Each citizen should have the ability to know what their government is doing on their behalf, and the government should provide an open door for feedback. Representation works best when it is transparent and multi-directional.

However, the founders of the political action committee, “Idaho Parents and Teachers Together,” Mike Lanza and Maria Greeley, see it much differently.  They are saying “not so fast.”   They are suggesting a broad based task force be appointed to develop a new and innovative school reform program to be presented to the 2014 Legislature. Translated, they believe that with a new task force they might be able to avoid their real issues–that of collective bargaining and teacher tenure, and perhaps derail the school reform movement entirely.   (recently they apparently got what they wanted)

Never mind that, for the past three years, we had that broad based committee developing a school reform program. It was the Idaho Education Alliance, established by Governor Otter, and it was the alliance’s recommendations that became the “heart” of the three propositions.

However, that “Alliance,” which did have representation of the teacher’s union the IEA, did not do a very good job of bringing along all of the education stakeholders as they developed their final recommendations. Superintendent Luna probably tried to do too much too fast. I am sure that if they had to do it over again all would have proceeded a bit differently.

Now with the Governor’s recommendation we have another “Idaho Education Alliance” a 31 member task force that will come up with another set of recommendations to improve Idaho’s k-12  education system.  Over the past ½ century that I have been involved with k-12 education we have had countless task forces, committees etc. etc. and what has been the result?  For the most part those “committees” have produced a set of very nice recommendations that are still on the “shelf” gathering dust somewhere and nothing really changed.

Since the new “committee” is already appointed and meeting we will have to comply and I agree we will have to “slow down” and be very attentive to the process. But slowing down does not mean putting a hold on every aspect of school improvement for a full year, which would mean that it would be at least 2 full years before any improvement could be seen in our schools.  Two full years is a lifetime of high school graduates who will be denied the quality education that they deserve.

That is simply not acceptable as there are aspects of the recent reform efforts that do have wide support and they should be dealt with in this legislative session.  What are they?  In Propositions 1, 2 & 3 there were 16 specific reform measures, and without doubt, some were very controversial. Let’s take the most controversial off the “table” for now and let that “committee” deal with the more hot-button issues. They do need to deal with them and not get off “track” and “dance” around them.

What does that leave for this session?  Quite a bit really: Let’s be sure that every school has wireless Internet accessibility, and that every teacher has, as does every legislator, a laptop or similar computing device and the necessary training.  Let’s make sure that our high school students are able to earn, via online instruction, college credits at the expense of the state.

Since our charter schools have great support in Idaho, let’s give our state-supported colleges and universities the option of sponsoring their own charter high schools.  Finally, we can take some fundamental steps in the area of teacher accountability and collective bargaining. Almost everyone agrees that the contract negotiations should take place in open public meetings and that contracts or negotiated agreements should be readily available online. Further, that those agreements should be only for one year and that the union must show they represent at least 50 percent of the employee group.

Even with approval of these items by the 2013 legislature there are still remaining some tough issues to be resolved.   We still have on the “table,” the limitation of negotiations to salary and benefits, teacher tenure, parents’ role in evaluation of teachers and principals, staff reduction criteria, performance pay for teachers, laptops for kids and online credit requirement for high school graduation.  These are tough and controversial issues but if they are not addressed and become legislative issues we will once again have done the “feel good” thing and left the system basically unchanged

All of the elements of the three failed propositions are fundamental and necessary in order to bring about real improvement in our schools.  They all had good support from the legislature back in 2011.   They were vital for school improvement then, they are still vital today.   While we may have a new approach now, the mission is still the same.

While the Governor did not direct the “committee” to provide specific legislation, this 2013 legislature could proceed with the modified reform measures and request the “committee” to make recommendations for the balance.

How well prepared for college level work are our graduates who do leave high school with a diploma?  Actually, not very well, as our colleges and universities are spending millions of dollars on remedial programs to correct the failings of our k-12 system. It was recently reported that as many as 47% of our Idaho high school graduates entering college need some type of remedial work.

We all know that the most important ingredient in every school is the quality of the teacher in the classroom.  How are we doing there?   While the vast majority of our teachers come to work dedicated and prepared to do the best job they can to help our students learn there are some exceptions and that is an area that must be improved.  You simply can’t have a good school unless you have a good teacher in every classroom!   Idaho has a renewable contract law that essentially guarantees teachers, after serving a 3-year period, a job for life.  This law is often referred to as tenure and it must be modified in order for school boards and administrators to assemble the best possible teaching faculty in every school.  Further, we must alter our teacher compensation program so that teachers in hard to fill positions and teachers who perform well are compensated accordingly.  We can’t continue to pay all teachers the same based only on how many college credits they have and how long they have been teaching. That out-dated system is simply unfair to the high performer, or the teacher who takes on extra duty or is teaching in a field that is in high demand. All teaching fields or teachers are not equal and our compensation system must recognize that.  If our colleges and universities had to adhere to the type of compensation system of our k-12 system we would simply not have colleges of engineering or medical schools to name a couple.

Our constitution states that our legislature shall establish a uniform and thorough system of schools. How can it be uniform or thorough when some of our rural schools do not have qualified teachers in every field, or some schools do not even have access to the internet in their schools? I know that the “education establishment” has their answer.  It is what their answer to every education problem or deficiency is, “we just need to have more money appropriated by the legislature.” More money is NOT the solution, but there is something that can be done and for the most part it was addressed in the recently defeated proposition 3. Technology is a big part of the solution.  It is through technology that all schools, whether in Boise, or Bliss, can have access to the best teachers in every field.   It is through technology that we can enable students to attain college credits while they are finishing their high school diploma.  Teachers can be enabled to provide the best instruction for their students.  It is through technology that good schooling can take place anytime and in any place!

How about the money situation?   There probably is not a school district in Idaho that would decline additional funds. However, any increase in appropriations to keep doing what we are doing now would be money misspent. We need to make sure that the scarce funds that we now have are to be used to their best advantage. We can’t use taxpayer funds to pay teachers not to teach. This occurs in some school districts where a few teachers are paid to represent the union and they do not teach. We are spending on an average of over $7,000.00 a year per student or over $175,000.0 for each classroom of 25 students. Don’t you think there might be a way to get more of those scarce dollars to the classroom?

However, the founders of the political action committee, “Idaho Parents and Teachers Together,” Mike Lanza and Maria Greeley, see it much differently.  They are saying “not so fast.”   They are suggesting a broad based task force be appointed to develop a new and innovative school reform program to be presented to the 2014 Legislature. Translated, they believe that with a new task force they might be able to avoid their real issues–that of collective bargaining and teacher tenure, and perhaps derail the school reform movement entirely.

Never mind that, for the past three years, we had that broad based committee developing a school reform program. It was the Idaho Education Alliance, established by Governor Otter, and it was the alliance’s recommendations that became the “heart” of the three propositions.

However, that “Alliance,” which did have representation of the teacher’s union the IEA, did not do a very good job of bringing along all of the education stakeholders as they developed their final recommendations and Superintendent Luna probably tried to do too much too fast. I am sure that if they had to do it over again all would have proceeded a bit differently.

I agree we will have to “slow down” and be very attentive to the process. But slowing down does not mean putting a hold on every aspect of school improvement for a full year, which would mean that it would be at least 2 full years before any improvement could be seen in our schools.  Two full years is a lifetime of high school graduates who will be denied the quality education that they deserve.

That is simply not acceptable as there are aspects of the recent reform efforts that do have wide support and they should be dealt with in the 2013 legislative session.  What are they?  In Propositions 1, 2 & 3 there were 16 specific reform measures, and without doubt, some were very controversial. Let’s take the most controversial off the “table” for now and let an interim task-force deal specifically with those hot-button issues.

What does that leave for the 2013 legislative session?  Quite a bit really: Let’s be sure that every school has wireless Internet accessibility, and that every teacher has, as does every legislator, a laptop or similar computing device and the necessary training.  Let’s make sure that our high school students are able to earn, via online instruction, college credits at the expense of the state.

Since our charter schools have great support in Idaho, let’s give our state-supported colleges and universities the option of sponsoring their own charter high schools.  Finally, we can take some “baby steps” in the area of teacher accountability and collective bargaining. Almost everyone agrees that the contract negotiations should take place in open public meetings and that contracts or negotiated agreements should be readily available online. Further, that those agreements should be only for one year and that the union must show they represent at least 50 percent of the employee group.

Even with approval of these items by the 2013 legislature there are still remaining some tough issues to be resolved.   We still have on the “table,” the limitation of negotiations to salary and benefits, teacher tenure, parents’ role in evaluation of teachers and principals, staff reduction criteria, performance pay for teachers, laptops for kids and online credit requirement for high school graduation.  To address those issues the legislature could create a qualified committee with the specific charge of developing recommended legislation in regard to those issues for the 2014 Legislature to consider.

This approach would keep reforms moving forward instead of stuck in a delay and retreat cycle.

In the recent election there were three school reform propositions on the ballot and all three were rejected by the electorate.  Within those three propositions there were sixteen definable school reform measurers.  Briefly, they were as follows:

• one year labor agreements
• labor union must represent at least 50% of the employees
• negotiate only salary and benefits
• seniority not the only factor in staff reduction
• tenure phased out
• negotiations in public view
• parents have input in teacher and principal evaluations
• teachers can earn bonus money for filling hard to fill positions
• teachers can earn bonus money for filling leadership roles
• teachers can earn bonus money if their students achieve goals
• union contracts accessible online
• teachers and high school students to have computing devices
• all schools to have wireless internet accessibility
• high school graduation requires 2 online credits
• colleges and universities can sponsor charter high schools
• high school seniors can earn college credits at no cost

If each of those measures were framed within the question as to whether or not they would enhance student achievement they might have been worded differently as well as being viewed more favorably by the electorate.  For example, the pay for performance plan might have “looked” a lot different if the guiding principle question had been, how will this component enhance student achievement?  You can apply the same approach to all of the reform components and the process and the result might have been somewhat different.

So, as the legislators return to work next January and begin to tackle the many school reform issues they should always keep at the forefront, the question:  “How will this measure enhance student achievement?”  They also must remember where it “all happens” and that is in the classroom with a teacher and students.

So again now what?   In that prior article I suggested that the legislature should look at all of the school reform measures contained in the 2011 laws and extract those that will do the most good and for the least cost.   Many of the components do not have any significant cost to the taxpayer, and would certainly enhance what school reform should be about, raising the achievement level of all of our students.  For example, a no cost item to the taxpayer would be to alter teacher contract law so that school boards and school administrators could assemble higher performing faculties.  Even the editorial board of the Idaho Statesman, in their analysis of the “Luna Laws” recognized the importance of this measure.   In that same analysis the Statesman endorsed Proposition two recognizing that all teachers and all assignments are not the same and that the single salary schedule must be modified.

In addition there are some elements that should be universally accepted and those could be enacted in 2013.  For example who could argue that negotiations should take place in open public meetings and that negotiated agreements should be made available to the public, or eliminating seniority as the sole criteria in staff reduction or allowing colleges and universities to sponsor charter schools or allowing high school seniors the opportunity to earn college credits.   All of those elements could be enacted with little opposition, and would move us a bit closer to school improvement and at little or no cost.

Some of the other reform measurers are also without the usual hurdle of costing too much money, but there are still high hurdles because of the anger and distrust that exists in our State today.   So, the process that the legislature takes to further school reform is all-important.   Probably one of the most numerous mentioned criticisms of the school reform measures contained in those 2011 laws was, they did not have input from the education stakeholders.   I disagree as they certainly were at the “table” especially in regard to pay for performance.  However, starting over, and involving those stakeholders in a very public way may be the route to achieve the changes that must be made in order to improve our schools.   That process of having interim committees certainly is more time consuming, but we have to remember that our schools did not decline overnight nor will the needed improvements be made overnight either.  While the decline is not entirely to be placed at the foot of our schools, as we all are aware that there are many assorted student issues that did not exist to any extent 25 years ago but are prevalent today.   However, change and improvement must happen to meet these new demands.