1. Public Education and the State Budget Crisis: Virginia is currently near the bottom in state funding for K-12 education. What should be done about this? Where would the funds come from?

Answer: Virginia is mortgaging its future to pay for SUV's. We will never deal with the vast array of public needs until we begin to elect public officials who understand that we must pay for what we want. Republicans, supposedly the party of business, want only to use the lack of taxes to strangle government and free their constituency from having to pay for services they might not use. Democrats, having been branded with the "tax and spend" label, and increasingly dependent on the same constituency as the Republicans for the vast amounts of campaign funding they want to raise, have been no better. The closest thing we have come to an appreciation of the "cost of things" is the reluctant assent by Mark Warner that Northern Virginian's might be able to vote to tax themselves. Wow, a principle I thought well established by the events of 1776.

Of course, education, as part of what people might consider taxing themselves for, fell out of the equation and now only the immediately gratifying, albeit for a very short term, construction of roads is on the table. This is not the place to point out who actually benefits the most from this use of public monies. The place to start raising tax revenues for the state would be to increase the income tax rates by brackets so that all elements of Virginia's population pay at least the same percentage of their gross income in all taxes. I don't know yet how much revenue this would generate, but it would restore to our tax system a greater degree of progressivity than now exists.

2. Standards of Learning: What should the legislature do about the SOLs (Standards of Learning)? And how should it be accomplished?

Answer: I think the legislature should allow localities to devise their own SOL's, (and ways to measure them) which, in turn could be approved by a State Board. I am a big fan of E.D. Hirsch and think substantive education at all grades is valuable.

3. Priorities in Public Education: Besides additional funding, what should the legislature do to improve education in the Commonwealth? How and Why?

Answer: The state should commit to raise teacher's salaries not to the national average, but to a measure related to the level of personal income in the state. I.e., if our personal income levels are #14, so should our average teahers salaries be. New school construction should include private office space for all teachers, at no additional expense to the localities. (K-12 teachers, librarians and nurses are just about America's only professionals who do not have a private space. Only a cynic would notice that these have been professions dominated by women.)

The real answer to this question is that unless we are willing to pay our teachers significantly more, and tax ourselves so to do, all else is marginal and unlikely to make much difference at all. Not until we begin to engage the public in discussion of the value of teachers, and what, as professionals they should be paid, will we truly begin to face the challenges of education. The loss, or absence of talented teachers is the iceburg just ahead -- everything else is deck chairs.

Al Weed (electronic mail, November 5, 2001)