It is election time again. Governor Bredesen and those seeking to replace him have begun to campaign. Seats in both houses of the General Assembly also are up for grabs. No issue is as important as education for Tennessee’s long-run well being. Yet, it is difficult to elbow other urgencies aside and place our schools and colleges front and center. This should change.
One has a sense that incumbent Bredesen would like to be an education governor. He certainly put schools high on his agenda as Nashville’s former mayor. However, emergencies such as stunning recession-related budget deficits, runaway Tenncare costs, the Tennessee Waltz ethics scandal, and methamphetamine labs have pushed education to the back burner.
With his first term, many of these urgent issues behind him, and the prospect of a stronger revenue flow, perhaps Bredesen can return to first campaign agenda where he said “the path to a brighter employment future and a better Tennessee runs through our schools.”
Blaming Bredesen gets little traction. Whenever he could pinch a public penny here and there, he has advocated added pre-school opportunities for low-income children. This is certainly in the right direction, but, by itself, is insufficient.
Four years ago, Bredesen’s primary and campaign opponents also paid lip service to the significance of schooling but subsequently had few concrete proposals. We need to rebuild Tennessee’s education reform momentum
The issue is important, and here is why. Tennessee leads in little, and often lags near last when it comes to learning, both elementary and secondary school and college.
Tennessee is among the nation’s lowest states in the proportion of the adult population with a college degree. Tennessee’s high school graduation rate is the third lowest in the nation, barely ahead of only South Carolina and Nevada. Worse yet, our high school graduation rate actually has declined during the past decade. Tennessee routinely falls below national averages in reading and mathematics on the Nation’s Report Card, the National Assessment of Education Progress. Tennessee eighth grade students have made no reading or mathematics gains on national examinations since 2003.
The newly elected, or re-elected, governor and other state officials will likely encounter another tight budget year. It will not be bleak, but it will not be a replay of the bountiful 1990s. Even so, one can be sure that state employees and other public servants will be seeking to catch up from the last five years when their salary increases lagged cost of living increases.
Thus, the challenge is to improve Tennessee’s education systems without having great gobs of new money to throw at the problems of schools and colleges. The good news here is that there are important changes that can be made, changes that would gain leverage on added achievement, but which are relatively low in cost.
Below is an illustrative list of low cost but high impact education reform items to which gubernatorial and General Assembly candidates should attend. The list extends from preschool through college
Preschool. This should continue to be the highest state public education priority. It should be expanded first for low-income children and then for all children.
Accountability. Tennessee’s education data systems are primitive compared to many other states. This is a relatively low cost fix where the, eventual, payoff is high. Florida, for example, can track a child from the time he or she enters school (public or private), then link that individual student to all subsequent teachers, schools, dollar resources, subjects taken, achievement examination results, parental descriptors, and post-secondary employment and college. The eventual outcome is to know with great precision how resources are being allocated and which resource deployment patterns lead to productive education results, both for the state and for individual student.
Competition. Whether airfares, automobiles, or other services and products, monopolies, if unregulated, lead to inefficiency and low quality. Education is no exception. Public charter schools offer an opportunity to inject a responsible level of competition into Tennessee’s education system, a level of competition that might well advantage parents, students, and, eventually, the state. There need be no added dollar costs to the state for expanding public charter schools.
Incentives. Teaching is the last large employment sector wherein professionals are not evaluated on results. Tennessee needs badly to experiment with responsible pay for performance plans. Our education results will lag until adults also pay a price, or reap rewards, related to gains in student performance. Texas now is undertaking a remarkably innovative project, costing but $10 million, wherein school districts are competing for state funding for innovative pay-for-performance models. Tennessee should follow suit.
Alignment. Tennessee now suffers from a Rube Goldberg governance arrangement consisting of a State Board of Education, a separate State Education Department, two huge university systems that dysfunctionally compete with one another, and a higher education coordination commission. The entire system is held together with bureaucratic baling wire and political bubble gum. It is an accountability disaster wherein multidirectional finger pointing is the order of the day. A K-16 agency responsible for all education parts would reduce costs and facilitate responsible governance.
It would be productive if candidates in Tennessee’s upcoming elections would begin to debate these and related education issues. The costs of inaction are mounting.
James W. Guthrie is a professor of public policy and education, director of the Peabody Center for Education Policy and chair of the Department of Leadership, Policy and Organizations at Vanderbilt Peabocy College of Education and Human Development.