Not Standards, Just Measuring Tools Needed

Here's a headline that makes me start to like Gov. Daugaard's education plan and I haven't even read it yet: "Sioux Falls School District Critical of South Dakota Education Plan".

To be fair, the criticism levied at the Governor's plan that says it's a "one-size-fits-all" concept has merit.  A state-wide plan inevitably is going to be that.  But then, if you're going to tax people in Mitchell to subsidize schools in Huron (or vice versa), it's hard to object to people in the one community wanting some control over how their money is spent in the other.

Better still would be to have a state-wide measuring stick, but complete local control and funding.  Note that I say "measuring stick".  Neither the state nor the federal government should say a school has to achieve a certain result, regardless of what that result might be.  What they can and should do is establish tools that measure the performance of a school relative to other schools and then publish that information.  These tools could include the politically correct variables as well as the more substantive academic ones - do your 9th graders have to do "community service"?  How much?  How well are they doing in reading?  Integration?  Foreign language instruction?  Mathematics?  Playstation literacy?  Football?  Music?  Have a full palette of measurements.  Then let parents see whether a given school measures up to their standards and decide where they wish to send their children - and the money attendant to them.

Giving Sioux Falls School District - or any other school district - control over other people's money is not the answer any more than is retaining control at the state or federal level.  "Local control" must mean "parental control" or it's just cover for one set of politicians against another set.