Opinion
Wall Street Journal
June 26, 2012
It’s on. On the Idaho ballot, that is. Come November, Idahoans will vote on three referenda aimed at repealing what may be the nation’s most sweeping education reform, including new limits on collective bargaining for teachers. Think of it as the sequel to Wisconsin, where similar reforms led to a similar effort—the attempted recall of Gov. Scott Walker.
At the heart of the political drama in Idaho is the state’s superintendent of public instruction, Tom Luna. A glance at Mr. Luna’s résumé shows a career businessman who became involved in his local school board and went on to serve in the Bush Education Department before returning to Idaho to run for his present office in 2006. Most refreshing is what’s not on Mr. Luna’s résumé: a degree in education.
That makes Mr. Luna an outlier within the education blob that runs our public school systems. It may also explain the boldness of the reforms he helped push through the state legislature in spring 2011. Called “Students Come First,” it was a package of legislation that limits collective bargaining, introduces merit pay, and takes advantage of new technology to help give more Idaho students the education they need for college.
Because Idaho is a Western state lacking both huge urban centers and large minority populations, it doesn’t fit into the familiar education narrative of inner-city hopelessness. Nevertheless, failure is failure. Here’s just one telling measure: A report released a week ago by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for a Competitive Workforce ranked Idaho as one of the four worst states in terms of the percentage of students who enroll and complete a four-year college degree.
“Idaho epitomizes the Lake Wobegon effect,” says Jeanne Allen, president of the D.C.-based Center for Education Reform. “In states like this, the assumption is all is well. The reality is they’ve been simply going through the motions for years, and the result is a kind of Third World education status.”
Students Come First aims to change that by getting control over costs and elevating achievement. Thus the so-called Luna laws now restrict collective bargaining to salary and benefits, phase out tenure and force teacher contract negotiations out in the open. They also eliminate a practice that across America operates largely to protect bad teachers and keep good ones out of the classroom: the last-hired, first-fired system of seniority.
The other two prongs of Students Come First deal mostly with quality. New merit-pay provisions mean that teachers can earn up to $8,000 a year extra for serving in hard-to-fill positions, taking on leadership positions, or helping their schools boost student achievement. The technology part has to do with ensuring that students and teachers in any part of Idaho have access to the best instruction available.
As in Wisconsin, when Idaho’s reforms came up before the legislature last year, protesters converged on the state capitol. During that debate, Mr. Luna’s pickup truck was vandalized and the teachers unions launched an effort to recall him. That recall fell short when opponents mustered only a third of the 158,000 signatures they needed to proceed.
Now Mr. Luna’s opponents have taken a page out of the playbook of Ohio’s public-sector unions, which rolled back Gov. John Kasich’s collective-bargaining law via a ballot measure last November. The Idaho PAC leading the repeal has just hired David Williams, a longtime union activist who served as deputy campaign manager for the “We Are Ohio” effort that killed Mr. Kasich’s law.
Thus far, Mr. Luna’s fight has largely taken place under the national radar. That’s a pity. Idaho is a reminder that the inadequacies of our public school empires are not confined to racial minorities or inner cities. To the contrary, Idaho’s school system today looks like much of American public education: mediocrity sliding into failure.
As for Mr. Luna, he doesn’t appear to be backing down. At a GOP rally in Twin Falls on Friday night, he received a standing ovation after blasting teachers unions as the “common enemy” of achievement and reform. The unions aren’t giving up either, trying to scare parents with warnings about larger class sizes, school safety and the loss of local control.
We’ve seen this script before. As with other public-sector unions, the Idaho Education Association offers no real alternative. At a time when Idaho’s education budgets are being cut for lack of revenues, the union answer is the same as it’s always been: more money for more of the same.
Against this, Mr. Luna answers that Idaho cannot afford more of the same. In November we’ll find out whether Idaho’s voters agree. In the meantime, we’re going to have one heckuva fight.