Crucial questions in school plan

Eclipsed, if just temporarily, by such high-profile political hot buttons as laws about where we can (or, probably easier to list, where we can’t) carry guns, and religious “liberty” legislation and the like, are some other Georgia legislative, political and legal matters at least as important.

One that will be before voters on the November general election ballot is another major item of Gov. Nathan Deal’s agenda, his public education overhaul.

No doubt the governor would like to see that plan prove as successful, and as widely praised, as his criminal sentencing agenda has been thus far. Substantial and lasting improvement to a state’s schools would make any governor’s legacy an honored one, and rightly so.

Unlike the campus carry or religious liberty bills, the Opportunity School District (OSD) plan isn’t legislation subject to veto. It’s a proposed constitutional amendment whose approval or rejection will be determined by the citizens of Georgia. It’s one that demands serious reflection, and answers to some critical questions.

Most Georgians already know the basic outlines of the plan. It would allow the state to take control of perennially underperforming public schools. It would create the OSD, a state-level school “district” with management of up to 20 schools a year and authority over up to 100.

This Opportunity District would be headed by its own superintendent, separate from the elected state superintendent, independent of the state school board and Department of Education, and answerable directly to the governor.

With schools absorbed into the OSD, the state would have authority to terminate teachers and administrators, reconfigure budgets and change curricula. (Not surprisingly, teacher organizations in the state strongly oppose the measure.)

Just a decade and a half ago, Democratic Gov. Roy Barnes’ education reform plan was criticized, by Republicans and Democrats alike, as a “top-down, one-size-fits-all” state usurpation of local control over local schools. How times and politics change.

But change isn’t the problem. (When something isn’t working, it’s often a solution.) The problem is that the Opportunity School District plan is based on an implicit assumption that centralized authority and control will be the answer to deficiencies in public education. If nothing else, that’s a striking departure (to put it mildly) from every “conservative” principle most in this state government claim to embrace. But if it turns struggling schools into successful ones, that’s effectively irrelevant.

Still … what’s Plan B?

Hope, as the saying goes, is not a strategy. How, and to whom, is the OSD itself accountable? How long does it have, should it have, to substantially and demonstrably improve failing schools?

If the OSD system is a failure at reducing failure, does somebody in state government issue a public apology (especially to teachers and principals it put out of their jobs), hand the schools back over to their local districts and say, “Oops” and “Good luck”? If so, then the only real change will have been to make public schools accountable to an authority that isn’t.

This story was originally published April 11, 2016 at 4:41 PM with the headline "Crucial questions in school plan."