“The most important and precious resource in the world today is not oil. It’s not water. It’s brainpower,” Gov. Timothy M. Kaine told business leaders in Harrisonburg yesterday as he stumped Western Virginia in support of his pre-K expansion initiative. “Strategies that increase our brainpower are going to keep us on top.” (See the Daily News Record story here.)
I totally and whole-heartedly concur. But there our agreement stops.
It does not necessarily follow from Kaine’s initial premise that the most cost-efficient way of increasing “brainpower” among Virginia’s youth is to spend an additional $75 million to expand the scope of existing Virginia’s pre-K programs, which currently cost $50 million already.
Why not invest in kindergarten? Municipalities in Northern Virginia, in Virginia’s educational vanguard, are dedicating their extra resources to expanding kindergarten, not pre-K. (See “Forget Full-Time Pre-K, How about Full-Time Kindergarten?“) What do they know that the Governor does not?
Why not invest in middle school? For purposes of argument, I will accept Gov. Kaine’s assertions that pre-K improves pupil performance in the early grades. But Virginia national standardized tests show Virginia students performing comparatively well in elementary school. The problems in the Virginia educational system manifest themselves in middle school, where performance slides markedly. Why not target middle school with extra resources instead?
Even that point begs a number of larger questions. Why does Gov. Kaine find it necessary to raise $75 million in new revenue for his initiative? With state aid to public education in Virginia amounting to $6.7 billion in Fiscal 2008, he can’t carve out $75 million? Isn’t it time we take a look at the rigid funding allocation formulas that deprive governors of any flexibility in educational spending?
Speaking of the subject of rigid, centralized educational bureaucracy in Richmond, why does Virginia permit so little experimentation within its school system? To raise the questions posed earlier by Norm Leahy, why don’t we have more charter schools? Why can’t we give parents a wider array of choices, via vouchers, of where to send their children to school?