School Debate Goes Stale (Editorial)

There was a time, based on talks with legislators and insiders, that a compromise plan appeared to be near to fix the inadequacy and inequity problems with the state’s public schools.

All that would be needed would be to call a special session of the Arkansas General Assembly and pass it. But now in the dog days of August, the stalemate continues and the sides seem more polarized than ever before.

Eventually, one way or another, the state must come up with a solution. With so much at stake for the future of Arkansans, it doesn’t make sense to sow division.

We were early supporters of Gov. Mike Huckabee’s plan. It doesn’t go as far as we have advocated, but it’s a doable plan that would put us on the right road to a progressive education system.

We’ve seen nothing from the rural superintendents or legislators that would make the schools equitable or adequate — something that must come about by Jan. 1 under the Supreme Court order. And we sure haven’t seen anything that acknowledges the constitutional requirement that the educational system be efficient.

The state needs real education reform, not just something that will keep us near the bottom of the barrel.

We applaud the governor for sticking to a plan that has some possibility of bringing that about. True reform could be the term-limited governor’s shining legacy. Past governors tried but only managed patchwork changes that didn’t fix the fundamental problems — hence the wall we’re up against now.

The only thing that we can conclude from the actions of the rural superintendents and legislators is they are content with just getting by or they don’t care about the future of the children for which they are responsible. They aren’t ready to make any personal sacrifices, but they won’t hesitate to ask taxpayers elsewhere in the state to make sacrifices to keep their minuscule school districts in business.

We say let’s use real assessments to make those officials accountable for their districts’ performances. There should be rewards for districts that are making the grade, and consequences for those that are not.

It took a lot of guts for the governor to publicly declare the truth: that many people seems to be more concerned about where students go to school than what they will learn when they get there.

Here’s to an October special session that focuses on the latter.