A creature of the system, you say! Close to management, you say!
I am wounded, sir.

Look, the whole argument boils down to what can reasonably be accomplished. The Buckeye Institute wants government to completely get out of the business of public education. Fine. I get that. I’d like government to get out of a whole lot of stuff, but that isn’t going to happen either. If you choose to live in fantasyland, have a great time. In the real world, a Democratic Governor and a Democratic Assembly are not going to dismantle the system anytime soon and if they do, a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress will pass some law saying they can’t do it.

What Governor Strickland has proposed will incrementally improve the system. I want the system to be improved and I want the system to be improved for no more than we are already paying.

Now, as to the merits:

The state mandates curriculum. Those are the rules. You may not like the rules, but until you win a whole lot of elections, you play by the rules. We can have the state mandating a curriclum that makes no sense (e.g. rote memorization, rigid classroom instruction, idiotic assessment etc..) or you can have the state mandate a curriculum that makes more sense. You can have Johnny bored and restless because he has more technology on his cellphone than in his high school or you can teach Johnny useful stuff that might lead to a productive life. You can throw Johnny away in 2nd grade because he is autistic or you can help Johnny reach his god-given potential, whatever that is.

You want to focus on Johnny. Fine, I get that too, but just as the CEO of GM wants to focus on cars, those pesky employees just keep getting the way. Fortunately, the CEO of GM can get rid of those assembly line workers that put the tires on backward. The Governor is looking to give districts that flexibility. In your fantasyworld, that may seem obvious. In the real world, it is a quantum improvement over the status quo.

As to the merits, perhaps you should be asking yourself whether you’re so close to the management now that you’re buying into the system. (Goose! Gander!) What business is it of a bunch of smart people somewhere else running the classroom? Setting hours. Setting days. I don’t care if you give a teacher tenure or not. THat’s up to you and the teacher. Your main complaint, I would guess, is that tenure is protecting the self-righteous goldbrickers. Maybe so, but that’s between the school board and the teacher’s union. The only real cure is to let the children escape that fiasco while it fails to work itself out over a few decades.

How about this: We believe Johnny should be able to understland linear equations. Every year we study Johnny’s facility with them: In an hour he can do 75 of them with a 90 percent accuracy rate. We decide that’s within the range of what is acceptable and necessary. Problem solved, so to speak.

Now, do I then care whether you, the teacher, did that in 200 days or 180 days or 30 days? I do not. (Although as a parent, I choose the school where you did it in 30 days.) Do I care that you kept the poor child chained to a mind-numbing desk from 6:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. or that you let him run riot through your halls all day? I do not. (Although, as a parent, I choose the school where he can run riot, as little boys ought.) What I care about is that Johnny can do 75 equations at a 90 percent accuracy rate. Nor do I care that your teacher is tenured or not tenured or contracted or not contracted or online or piped video or any of those other things.

I care about Johnny. Everything else is your business model, and for that I say good luck and best wishes to you, and give you the freedom to implement it. Which, necessarily, includes the freedom to fail. Of course, what we have now is a mandated failure system, the only benefit of which is to allow everyone to point the finger at someone else. Instead of the subprime mortgage crisis that, like magic, eliminated risk, we have a subprime responsibility crisis, that, like magic, allows us all to proclaim our love for the children while we are destroying them.

The governor lost every bit of credibility when he reached THE moment of his speech, the very first substantive thing he was going to say about THE BIG THING that everybody’s been waiting three years for, and what came out? “Global Awareness.” If he means Johnny should be able to identify 100 countries on a map and describe basic trade patterns and economies and history, I’m with him, all the way. Then we’d be able to see Johnny actually learning something. But all he means is, if Gordon Gee signs off on a Comprehensive Communications Reification Action Program, then by golly, we’ve got a 21st Century worker bee who has Turned Around Oho. And please, vote for me on the way out, because I’ve got to solve that residual education crisis.

Obviously, the devil will be in the details and I have no clue how he intends to pay for a long list of educational enhancements, but yes, I think the list is a good start. I may feel differently after he submits his budget and his list may turn out to be unimplementable, but the stuff on the list would be transformative in nature.

As to the rest, it’s the devil in the details part. He definitely let the cat out of the bag on charters-”for anyone who misunderstood me on charters, I’m happy to have them so long as they’re subject to the same nonsense as the public district schools and teachers union approval” was the clear message.

And you bought the part about academics over athletics from the man who started his speech with an anecdote about Ohio Stadium?

1) Replacing stuff you memorize with skills you need.
2) A longer school year
3) An increased focus on academics over athletics.
4) A career ladder for teachers
5) Teacher tenure in 9 years rather than 3
6) Allowing lay-teachers (professionals) a short path to a teaching credential.
7) Allowing school boards to dismiss teachers “good cause”
Establish standards for the mastery of management principles for CEO’s of school districts.
9) Replacing the OGT with the ACT
10) A financial report card to taxpayers

Granted, the devil will be in the details, but I thought it was a good start.