School Leader

It's time for Kentucky to elect the state board of education

Serving on the Kentucky Board of Education from 2016-2019 was one of the greatest honors of my professional life. But it was emotionally brutal work, especially when it came to a legally dubious end when Gov. Andy Beshear, on his first day in office, fulfilled a frequent campaign promise and fired me and all the other sitting board members for blatantly political reasons. 

Often during my tenure on KBE people asked me why state board members aren't elected by the people (rather than Kentucky's policy of appointment by the governor). I was aware that some states elect some or all of their state board members, but I thought that Kentucky had generally gotten it right in trying to shield the board (and the education system as a whole) from the more brutal elements of partisan politics.

But there we were in 2019, victims of the most ugly partisan powerplay ever inflicted on Kentucky education. In the years that  followed, I've become increasingly convinced that the direct election of state board members is the right way to go. It gives greater transparency to the work of the board and makes the education system more directly accountable to the public. 

The board is already political, but under the current system it functions as the political football of governors and the state legislature. Direct election of board members just makes clearer their political values and commitments.

This year Senator Mike Wilson (R-Bowling Green) has introduced a bill to make KBE an elected office. In a recent op-ed for Kentucky Today, I argued in favor of the proposal, listed as SB 8. You can read my full argument here.

Usual disclaimer: Opinions on this website are mine alone and do not reflect the views of my employer, organizations with which I am involved, or anyone affiliated.

Related posts:

• Some final (for now) personal reflections about the Kentucky Board of Education

Educating for Wisdom

Late last year the Imaginative Conservative published my review of David M. Steiner's recent book, A Nation at Thought: Restoring Wisdom in America's Schools. 

I argued that even though Steiner makes an excellent case for an education system based on classical purposes, I am skeptical that such an approach can work in a secular school environment. An excerpt:

There is much to admire in David M. Steiner’s prescription for American education. Most of his platform already constitutes the focus of America’s revival of K-12 classical education, a phenomenon that is almost entirely taking place in faith-based private schools and public charter schools.

Steiner, however, seems most interested in the implications of teaching for wisdom in traditional public schools, and believes his agenda is appropriate for the kind of diverse, multicultural constituents served by these secular institutions. “The elements [of my proposal] are meant to inclusive, acceptable to those whose politics or beliefs would otherwise divide them,” Steiner writes.

It is not clear, however, that this is the case. As much as we should hope that public education in America would embrace academic rigor and the ethical and aesthetic formation of children, the moral relativism of many of our citizens – and their children – make it hard to imagine a public school district adopting Steiner’s program. Steiner says that teaching phronesis is not the same thing as the amoral “values clarification” programs or bland, content-free “character education” programs of previous decades. But one can imagine the angry school board meetings where parents of various ideological camps demand to know “whose” virtues represent the standard to which students should be trained.

Read the full review here. 

Conservatives, Liberals, and the Purpose of Education

Yesterday I posted about my recent speech "A Conservative Reclamation of Education." At least part of that talk was inspired by my reading of Yoram Hazony's 2022 book, Conservatism: A Rediscovery. I wrote about this book for the website Imaginative Conservative back in March 2023. An excerpt:

Of course, an appreciation for individual freedom is also a premier value to conservatives of the Anglo-American tradition, but for them personal liberty is situated into a larger framework of sometimes competing social obligations and purposes for government.

According to Dr. Hazony, “Many of us learned something like this view of the political world from our parents and grandparents, or from the Bible and religious community to which we belong,” though not likely from our education in secular, government-run schools (p. 101). But if civilizations, including those that value freedom and democracy, are to persist across the ages, children must learn to honor the past that gave rise to those values in the first place.

Honor is a concept that appears across all human societies, Dr. Hazony argues, and “We find that there can be no conservative society – by which I mean a society capable of conserving any teaching or text, institution or form of behavior, so that it persists from one generation to the next—unless it is permeated throughout by a concern and regard for honor” (p. 118).

This begins with helping children learn to honor their actual, biological parents, as the family is “the training ground for one’s participation in all other hierarchies, whether one has joined them by consent or not” (p. 131).

Read the full essay here.

The Conservative Reclamation of Education

I was recently invited to speak to the Northern Kentucky Tea Party on Kentucky's proposed school choice constitutional amendment. My friend and colleague Dr. Thomas Davis, president of Commonwealth Educational Opportunities (where I serve as a policy advisor), gave an update on the current legislative landscape, and then I situated my comments within the larger context of education in Kentucky and America. I titled my remarks "The Conservative Reclamation of Education."

I tried to offer a definition of "conservative" based on the ideas of political philsopher Yoram Hazony, explain how conservatives and liberals see the purposes of education differently, and argue why conservatives must reclaim education institutions for their original purpose. I also tried to describe what a conservative reclamation of education looks like in practice and policy. Excerpt:

Conservatives and liberals have very different views of the purpose of education. For conservatives, education involves the passing down of a civilization from one generation to the next, handing on values, ideas, and institutions that our forefathers found valuable. As G. K. Chesterton put it, “Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another. It is the transfer of a way of life.”

Of course, conservatives do not hold that everything from the past is worth conserving, nor that our institutions are never in need of updating. Repairs to our institutions must be made both because there is inevitable decay in the best of institutions due to human nature and because some institutions have proven unworkable or unjust over time. But conservatives seek to make repairs to institutions, causing as little damage to traditions as possible. Education is also about forming young people to not just honor the past, but to lead changes in the future that restore our social institutions to the original and enduring values of our culture.

And more fundamentally, conservatives believe that the primary purpose of education is to form young people for lives of virtue. Conservatives have a realistic understanding of human nature. We are born as fallen creatures in need of formation. Conservatives also believe in an enduring moral order that can be accessed through a combination of faith and reason and we can learn to better conform our lives to that enduring order. Schools in their various forms exist to help parents in their vocation of forming their children in just such a way.

That’s the conservative vision of education.

You can watch the talk at the link here. Thomas goes first and I come up around the 16 minute mark.

Usual disclaimer: The views expressed on this website are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of my employer, organizations with which I am involved, or anyone affiliated.

Here comes Kentucky's school choice constitutional amendment

Update, 3/13/2024: The Kentucky General Assembly approved HB 2 in modified form. It will now go to the voters as a ballot initiative in the November election. Many thanks to the hardworking lawmakers who made this possible.

Update, 1/27/2024: A second bill proposing a school choice constitutional amendment has been filed. House Bill 2, sponsored by Republican Majority Caucus Chair Suzanne Miles (R-Owensboro), accomplishes the same thing as the previously-proposed HB 208, with somewhat different language. Key members of House leadership, including Speaker David Osborne, are co-sponsors, indicating a strong chance that this bill will advance. Please continue to encourage lawmakers to work together, reconcile the language of the two bills, and unite to bring a strong constitutional amendment to voters this fall so that every family, regardless of income or zip code, might have the chance to choose a school that's the best fit for their child.

The biggest fight yet in Kentucky's long war for education freedom is about to get underway. House Bill 208 has been introduced in the Kentucky House of Representatives. This bill would place a question on the November 2024 general election ballot asking Kentucky voters to accept or reject a change to the state constitution allowing the legislature to adopt and fund school choice programs that do not use money already appropriated for public schools. 

A constitutional amendment is necessary because Kentucky judges, violating legal precedent from other states and even the United States Supreme Court, have repeatedly ruled that previous school choice laws adopted by the General Assembly are illegal under the state constitution.

The language of the proposed amendment changes Section 183 of the Kentucky constitution to read as follows (bold type represents new words):

To ensure that parents have options to guide the educational path of their children, the General Assembly shall, by appropriate legislation, provide for and oversee a[an efficient] system of common schools throughout the State, and provide for a portion of the educational costs for parents of students outside of that common school system. Sections 184 to 189 of this Constitution shall not prevent, nor require a further referendum for, any provision for the educational costs of students outside of the system of common schools for parents of limited financial means, as determined by law, so long as no such funds are taken directly from the common school fund.

Like all bills, the wording of the amendment is likely to change somewhat as it works its way through the General Assembly, but this is the basic "ask" to Kentucky voters.

There are some important things to note about HB 208.

First, if approved by voters, this amendment will not automatically give Kentucky families new education options. It just prevents judges from using the state constitution to circumvent the legislature when lawmakers do, in the future, adopt new school choice legislation. The General Assembly can then introduce charter schools, scholarship tax credits, education savings accounts, or other ways to give low- and middle-income families the same kinds of education options enjoyed by the children of affluent families every day.

Second, it is a persistent falsehood, deliberately spread by the education estabishment, that school choice policies "drain money" from traditional public schools. This amendment makes clear that any future school choice program will be funded outside of the "system of common schools," the constitution's archaic term for "public school system." School choice in Kentucky, following this amendment, will actually increase the total amount of funding for education in the Commonwealth.

Finally, HB 208 must be approved by the Kentucky General Assembly before it goes to the voters. In the past, Kentucky lawmakers have been highly reluctant to pass robust school choice laws, even though Kentucky is completely surrounded by states that have embraced school choice and are experiencing great results. This is a testament to the incredible political power of the education establishment, which will lobby ferociously to keep HB 208 from moving forward. 

Call to action: Kentuckians need to press their representatives in the House hard, first to co-sponsor this bill (as of this writing it already has 18 [29 as of 1/24/2024] sponsors), and then to move the bill from the Committee on Committees into the appropriate House committee for further consideration, and then on to the full floor for a vote. A constitutional amendment requires a three-fifths vote of both chambers, so HB 208 needs 60 votes in the House. 

An important point to tell your lawmaker: they are not technically voting for school choice if they support HB 208. They are voting to give Kentucky voters the chance to decide whether Kentucky should be allowed to consider school choice. There will be enormous amounts of work to do later to convince lawmakers to follow up with strong school choice legislation in a future session. For now, let's just focus on moving this amendment forward so more ordinary Kentucky families can choose the school that best fits the needs of their children. See more information about how school choice works in the links below.

Usual disclaimer: All views expressed on this website are my own, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of my employer, other organizations with which I am associated, or anyone affiliated.

Related posts:

• Does giving parents education options "divert money" from schools?
• Why the education establishment feels so deeply threatened by school choice
• Kentucky's National School Choice Week Celebration, 2023
• A School Choice Primer, Parts I, II, and III.