Who is the gatekeeper to your child’s mind? Lawmakers versus the education board
Education needs to be everyone’s business, right? Well, except for Kansas legislators. They can bug off.
How in the world does that work?
Not so well, it turns out. Parents and patrons, take note.
The Legislature this year approved two bills requiring that students pass tests on civics and financial literacy in order to graduate. Seems pretty commonsense — and, in the case of civics, arguably a matter of national security. After all, how can we hand our kids the keys to a country they don’t know how to run?
But Gov. Laura Kelly says education is none of the Legislature’s business — that it’s the exclusive province of the duly elected Kansas State Board of Education. So she vetoed the bills.
The thing is, she may be right from a legal standpoint. The state constitution does set the board up with its own “self-executing” powers that bypass the Legislature. But that just sets up a clash of the titans: The state board of education and Legislature are pushing and shoving each other, in a very starched-shirt but sharp-elbowed way, for access to children’s minds.
It’s a stupidly awkward situation for a state to put itself and its parents in. Maybe that’s why only about half a dozen other states do it even close to this way.
“We don’t have silo government. We have checks and balances,” says the civics test sponsor, state Rep. Steve Huebert, Republican of Valley Center, chair of the House Education Committee. “Everybody is served best when we work together.”
State board of education members agree — but only to a point. They talked at their June meeting about being “partners” with the Legislature. Yet they were agitated enough at legislators traipsing on their turf again that they talked about the board essentially being a “fourth branch of government” that won’t brook legislative interference anymore.
The state board has decided to draft a statement by next month — notably, it promises to be nice but “unambiguous and non-negotiable” — laying out the state board’s dominion over teacher licensing, school accreditation, graduation requirements and curriculum standards. Control of condiments in the lunchroom may be up for grabs, but who knows. There could be a food fight there, too. The board’s imminent message seems to be “we’ll get along fine as long as you stay in your lane.”
Again, the courts might agree. If that’s the case, the state constitution may need to be revisited. It’s unrealistic to pretend as if state legislators shouldn’t have an interest in, or some influence on, something as monumental as education.
For her part, State Board of Education senior member Janet Waugh of Kansas City, Kansas, says the board does want to work with lawmakers. “We always include legislators on any of our committees, to make sure that their opinion is in whatever we’re planning,” she says, though noting, “I think they simply don’t understand our responsibilities.”
Huebert says the collaboration has only been partial. He tried to sell the board on his civics test bill in February, to no avail. He says a teacher he knows started using the U.S. naturalization test as a civics guide in class, and was shocked by how much of it was news to his students.
For their part, top Republican legislators don’t buy the Democratic governor’s or state board’s assertion that lawmakers have no role in education.
“Ironically,” says Senate President Ty Masterson of Andover, “the fact some members of the State Board of Education think they are a fourth branch of government actually highlights why we need the civics test the board threatened to sue the Legislature over.”
This is a crucial conundrum, and it needs sorting out. I realize it’s a bit chaotic to have education standards bending to the wind and whim of each legislative session. But should the people’s lawmakers really be locked out of education standards completely?
Someone somewhere has to decide who in Kansas is the gatekeeper to students’ minds. A self-respecting state can’t go on not quite knowing.
Quick! How many branches of government are there?
Sadly, in Kansas even the adults don’t know.
