Journal editorial on education and governor's race

Monday's Journal Sentinel had an interesting editorial comparing Gov. Jim Doyle and challenger Mark Green on education. It did a useful job of summarizing the differences between the two candidates (presumably the always-perceptive Greg Stanford played a major role), generally preferring Doyle.

Green has endorsed the so-called 65% solution, apparently raising the mandate so that 70% of education money would have to be spent in the classroom. While appealing on the surface, it is not clear that this proposal would actually improve education. It seems likely that the differences reported by districts in the percentage going to classrooms may have more to do with differing accounting systems and definitions than a genuine concentration on classroom resources. So far, attempts to find a connection between this figure and achievement have been unsuccessful. Depending upon how classroom spending is defined, the proposal could force resources away from areas with potentially higher impact on student achievement to those with less (for example, from school libraries to driver's education). Thus the proposal becomes one more mandate, telling schools how to do things, but disconnected from outcomes.

Another issue discussed in the editorial is that of vouchers. Clearly Green is a much stronger supporter than Doyle. As the editorial points out, Doyle tried to leverage expansion of the voucher enrollment to expansion of class size reduction. Doyle's relatively neutral position on school choice, while earning the enmity of some choice supporters, is probably as far as a Democratic governor could go, reflected by the fact that the compromise he negotiated was supported by only four Democratic legislators.