Your Opinion: Leadership needed on education reform

Dear Editor:

The Missouri House is getting ready to vote on a key education reform bill - HB1526. This is known as the "teacher quality" bill. It really should be known as the "students first" bill.

If one studies the problems with the US public school system it becomes clear that the most important thing we can do is to provide each student a great teacher. It needs to be the Missouri Legislature's top priority. This is the intent of HB1526.

In Missouri, we tend to think that only Kansas City and St Louis are the problem. This is just not true. Four hundred and 10 of Missouri's 500 school districts failed to meet No Child Left Behind's annual yearly progress objectives.

In many ways, providing a great teacher to each student is more important in the rural districts.

HB1526 changes the status quo in a positive way for great teachers and for school districts. It should allow the best teachers to have a greater impact in the classroom. It should allow school boards to be more effective at managing their school systems.

But there are powerful special interests against what's best for students, teachers, school districts, and the state of Missouri. These special interests have made education reform a miserable, costly, and politically tumultuous experience for all concerned. The net result is that we have seen that adults do well but when it comes to our children's ability to compete against the children from Bangalore, Helsinki, and Singapore, not so much. The end result has been a public school system that ranks 15th in reading, 17th in science, and 25th in the world in mathematics achievement. (It's like saying our military is ranked 25th in the world).

I am calling on both Democrat and Republican to do the right thing and vote for HB1526. Democrats started education reform and it continues under President Obama and the Race to the Top. Republicans have embraced education reform. Both sides talk about battling special interests.

I challenge each legislator to walk the talk and vote for HB1526. It's called leadership.