The Mississippi Department of Education has invited 30 people to participate on a task force about how public schools conduct testing.
While we suppose that’s a good thing to study, it’s doubtful that the panel will come up with any novel solutions because of the lack of diversity on the board. We’re not talking about differences in gender or skin color, of which there are many, but in professional background.
The panel is made up entirely of people already in the education system. That goes from State Superintendent of Education Carey Wright to chairman of the legislative education committees to teachers, principals, parents, heads of education related nonprofits and even four students.
Yet there is not a single businessperson on that list. That boggles the mind considering:
1.) Schools are supposed to be preparing students to work so people in the working world would have good insights about what they need in employees; and
2.) Businesspeople inhabit a world totally different to public education in that they must convince people to pay for their product or they will go out of business. Public education, on the other hand, compels the taxpayers to support it with little redress of grievances if schools don’t perform. To put it another way, a crummy school system can levy the same property taxes, and reap the same amount of state money, as a great one. They might even get more from the federal government.
Certainly the task force should include plenty of people directly tied to the education system. They know what’s going on in the schools and have long professional experience in the field.
But could it hurt to have one outsider who might be able to see the broad picture better because they’re not looking so much at the details?
Considering Mississippi’s long history of industrial leaders playing key roles in the affairs of their state and communities, we’re sure there were many people who would have been glad to serve regarding such an important issue as measuring the success of our public schools. It’s most likely the state Department of Education, which tends to be mostly concerned with preserving its power through the status quo, simply didn’t ask anyone.
It’s easy to see why: Having someone used to reading financial reports and demanding sales results might push the state to actually produce neutral, valid statistics measuring school performance, not trumped up ones like a graduation rate that keeps rising because standards have been lowered.
