[Vision2020] Race for Idaho Schools Chief Puts Focus on Role of Office

[Tom Hansen]

Courtesy of today's (August 29, 2010) Spokesman-Review.

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Race for Idaho schools chief puts focus on role of office
Businessman Luna faces longtime educator Olson
Betsy Z. Russell, The Spokesman-Review

BOISE – The first non-educator to head Idaho’s public school system is
running for re-election, and he’s being challenged by one of the state’s
most respected educators: the just-retired superintendent of the Boise
School District, the state’s second-largest district.

The race between state Superintendent of Schools Tom Luna, a Republican
businessman, and Stan Olson, the Democratic challenger who calls himself
“apolitical,” is raising issues about what Idaho’s schools really need,
from politics to professionalism. And it’s coming at a time when schools
are struggling with huge and unprecedented spending cuts.

“I think it’s easier to lead educators when you are one,” said Steve
Casey, the retired Coeur d’Alene High School principal who ran
unsuccessfully for state superintendent as a Republican four years ago and
now works for North Idaho College. But he said of Luna, “I think he’s done
a good job given the environment that we’re in. 
 I think this is
going to be a good opportunity for two quality candidates to deal with the
issues, and I think that’s good for our state.”

Jerry Evans, former longtime GOP state superintendent of schools, strongly
believes the position should be filled by an educator.

“We’ve been struggling with a strong and consistent voice for education, a
place where you can go and find out what the needs of our schools are and
have some confidence that it’s based on some reality,” he said. He hasn’t
endorsed in the current race; he said he tries to steer clear of politics.

Luna, a college dropout who spent 25 years working for a weights and
measures business – and obtained a bachelor’s degree, the minimum
requirement for the superintendent job, online just before he first ran
for the post – said, “My goal is to improve education so that every child
benefits, and run it so that it’s responsive to the customers of
education.”

Based on his background in measurement science, he’s focused on measuring
and improving student achievement and says the numbers show it has worked.
For example, the percentage of Idaho schools making “adequate yearly
progress” under the federal No Child Left Behind law has more than
doubled, an improvement other states are viewing with envy.

Olson says the AYP standard is “based on a false premise.” He said, “By
2014, every child in the country has to be proficient in language arts and
mathematics; even if your IQ is 6, you have to be proficient. I want to
tell you: It ain’t gonna happen.”

Proficiency has been defined as between the 15th and 23rd percentile on
the Idaho Standards Achievement Test, Olson said, which he called nothing
to “ballyhoo 
 as a significant achievement.”

He points instead to disparities between large school districts in the
state and small ones, which struggle with funding uncertainty from year to
year that forces stops and starts in their programs. “We don’t do very
well as a state,” he said. “It has nothing to do with the intelligence of
children or the abilities of teachers – it has to do with a plan and a
focus and getting kids ready for not just low-bar standards, but high-bar
standards.”

Luna says he’s kept his top campaign promises: Establish a “longitudinal
data system” to track student achievement, a multimillion-dollar project
that’s now being phased in; launch a math initiative, which has included
running 5,000 Idaho teachers through an innovative one-time training class
and adding a computerized math practice program to every classroom; his
“classroom enhancement package,” which lawmakers funded before the current
downturn to pay for such items as textbooks and teachers’ supplies; and
addressing the “technology gap in our rural communities” through the Idaho
Education Network, a multimillion-dollar statewide broadband system that’s
in its early stages and already has linked 80 Idaho high schools.

Olson decries those as “silver bullets” rather than systemic reforms, and
says there’s been no strategic plan for improving Idaho’s schools for the
past four years. As proof, he points to Luna’s recent move to drop a new
high school science test; science graduation requirements were increased
five years ago, he said, with the idea of schools being ready for the test
this year, but Luna did nothing to get schools ready.

“It has been very, very evident that we have had no leadership of the
field,” said Olson. “Our field has been focused primarily on political
ideology rather than educational leadership.”

Luna disagrees, saying the science test simply wasn’t a good measure of
achievement. He said he’ll submit a budget proposal to lawmakers this year
to increase funding for science education to try to help schools meet the
new graduation requirement. Luna has been a strong supporter of charter
schools and performance pay for teachers and has prominently endorsed
various Republican political candidates. That prompted Olson to say the
superintendent’s position “has been politicized beyond belief in the last
four years.”

Olson, however, is running as a Democrat, though he says he’s nonpartisan.
Of his politics, he said, “I have supported the people who have been able
to really deliver the goods.”

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Seeya round Town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"The Pessimist complains about the wind, the Optimist expects it to change
and the Realist adjusts his sails."

- Unknown