Watching the final hours of legislative debate, when the Georgia House considers a bill that represents one of the most significant education reforms in ages, the stark contrast between two views of the role of government could not be clearer.
At issue was Senate Bill 10, legislation that would give a handful of Georgia parents of special-needs children a voucher that could be used to buy education services from private schools or from other public school districts. No matter your belief system or your impression of the job public schools are doing, SB 10 is nothing to freak out over.
It’s an evolutionary change, glacial really, in the relationship of parents to their government.
The great-grandparents of generations living today desperately needed government to gather up our children and educate them. The masses of farmers and factory workers lived hand-to-mouth and had neither the time, the money nor the education to school their children. They lived in isolation, on farms, in urban tenements and in mountain hollows. They needed schooling decisions made for them.
The problem with politics is the perpetual existence of one reality of representative democracy. That reality is that most elected officials — and editorialists, too, for that matter — are forever making assumptions based on the world as it existed during their childhood or formative years. New information is reinterpreted to fit the worldview we hold.
The consequence is that legislators are most always legislating for yesterday. In the case of education, that means they’re completely unmindful of the culture, of lifestyles, of the education marketplace that has evolved. Consequently, they keep trying to reconfigure the model, convinced as they are that if the class size is smaller, or if more money is made available for teacher salaries, or nicer buildings or newer books, the problems that existed a few generations ago would be cured. And they might. If this was then.
Reality is, however, that many children reach school with far more needs and far less appreciation for learning. Their families are often never formed, transient, overly litigious, demanding and altogether unreasonable.
Children, regardless of need or potential, are thrown together, sometime for no other reason than to achieve political correctness. And the teacher monopoly on talented women vanished decades ago.
We simply cannot configure government schools to serve all abilities and needs in one classroom. We can’t give up on efforts to make public schools better just because some parents are perfectly content to abdicate their responsibilities to government.
But because every child has one lifetime shot at the third grade, our elected representatives should give parents a genuine option to leave when they become convinced the child’s not being served. Special education parents, as they demonstrated in hour after hour of public discussion of SB 10, are informed and are capable of making responsible choices. Those who care can get the information to help them make those choices. Government collects tons of it. And if parents have the means, they can act on it.
Yet, a large contingent of legislators, close to a majority, is of the mind that parents are incapable of making responsible choices and, therefore, a government agent should. “SB 10 is not the solution for the families of Georgia with special education kids,” state Rep. Kathy Ashe (D-Atlanta) argued when the bill got to the House floor. A version of that advice came from a number of other speakers.
SB 10 said that parents who are satisfied with how public schools are educating their special needs child are free to stay. Those who have reason to believe their public school is doing a poor job can take a voucher and shop for services elsewhere. Choice.
Parents of limited means can, for the first time, exercise choice in k-12, just as they do in pre-k and college. How could anybody possibly object?
Lots do. And not just Democrats. Those who believe the role of government is to array us for its convenience and to educate us when, where and how the education establishment sees fit, opposed SB 10. Not only is the status quo the choice they’d make, they insist it’s the choice for the rest of us, too.
But for House Speaker Glenn Richardson (R-Hiram), the let-government-decide view would have carried the day. On the House floor, in the last day of the session, SB 10 fell one vote shy. Richardson, to his everlasting credit, cast the deciding vote that will bring choice into law.