Where Kansas Education is Headed

Legislature hears report from state commission

Earlier this month, legislators heard a startling report from the Kansas Education Commission. It was startling not just because it painted a challenging picture for educators and taxpayers, but because it reflects what I have been warning for years: Transparency, accountability and achievement must be at the core of education reform in Kansas.

Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) exposes the bureaucratic red tape wrapped up in his state’s 1000+ page Race to the Top application for federal education funding. See the video clip. >>

The Kansas Education Commission was formed in May by the State Board of Education to tackle the mandates of the

Obama Administration’s A Blueprint for Reform. These federal mandates take the educational standards of their predecessor –the federal No Child Left Behind program – to a whole new level – a level that will create bureaucracies that take us further away from helping teachers and students achieve.

It’s about time education departments got serious

about results.
For too long, state and federal education bureaucrats have avoided standards of accountability. Kansas dropped out of the Race To The Top federal grant program because our state had no semblance of standards. The monopoly that is the public education system must be more accountable to parents and taxpayers. Especially when we’re spending an average of $12,225 per pupil in Kansas – an increase of 26% in the last five years.

We’re headed for a loss of local control.
The federal mandates required of Kansas are aimed at providing national standardization, rather than targets of excellence that could be established locally. For parents seeking to direct their children’s education, this is bad news. For teachers who go the extra mile to help their students achieve, this forced standardization can be a bureaucratic impasse.

Though the federal standards sound good on the surface, they place an enormous administrative burden on states like Kansas, and will inevitably force an even bigger educational bureaucracy at both the state and federal level. If you think your tax dollars aren’t making it into the classroom now, just wait until the Kansas Dept. of Education spends the bulk of its time mired in the red tape of Washington’s latest flavor of ‘reform.’

School ‘report cards’ should be transparent to parents and other taxpayers.
For years, my conservative colleagues in the Kansas Legislature have been carrying the torch for accountability and achievement in schools. We’ve urged fiscal responsibility in state education funding (which takes 53% of your state tax dollars just for K-12 grades).

But federal mandates are not the answer. Data is already compiled by states about school performance, and it should be shared with parents and taxpayers. We should empower parents to act on that information.

The federal government’s “blueprint” for reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) creates strong pressure for states to create expensive bureaucracies to meet national standards. The Obama Administration is crafting both incentives (Race To The Top) and penalties (denied access to Title I funding) to adopt national standards and tests. As a result, schools will be more accountable to Washington, D.C. than they are to parents and local taxpayers.

Get educated about Kansas education.
I encourage you to read the federal Blueprint for Reform (download it here), as well as this document: Backgrounder: Why National Standards Won’t Fix Education, (download it here) an excellent analysis of how federal education mandates will affect state schools. It is published by the Heritage Foundation and it’s full of facts about federal and state education. If you’d like more information published by the Kansas Education Commission about these topics, please request it here.

This fall I will be meeting with the Commission and other legislators to discuss the impact on Kansas schools and communities. I urge you to follow these developments and share your thoughts and concerns with me here.

Rep. Owen Donohoe is the State Representative in the 39th District in Kansas, which includes western Shawnee, Bonner Springs and Basehor. He has served on the House Appropriations, Budget, Education, Economic Development, Health and Human Services, and Aging and Long Term Care Committees in the Kansas Legislature.