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Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2008 > July > 31
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Dog? Check! Pony? Check!
(Gov. Ted Strickland’s “conversation” on education in Dayton Tuesday)
Tuesday’s “conversation” in Dayton between Gov. Ted Strickland and a hand picked audience was quite a dog and pony show. Besides the friendly audience, the event featured a polished professional host, a promotional film touting Ohio’s education gains and strict discussion limits that kept big elephants in the room (funding?) from making it into the conversation.
There were few hard questions and even the mildly hard ones were basically not answered by Strickland. Today’s editorial cites one of the few examples of spontaneity when a city high school school student asked about the problem of getting to school without buses this year in Dayton. Strickland didn’t really get was he was asking and clearly didn’t know that high school busing had been cut. Thus he gave another non-answer.
Strickland said the event was to gather feedback and ideas for reforming the state education system. But if you really want ideas, wouldn’t it be good to get some from people who don’t necessarily agree with you?
And some of Strickland’s own ideas were just not worth discussing if funding can’t be part of the conversation. How can you, for instance, really consider the merits of extending the school year by 18 days — an idea Strickland floated — without also talking about the huge associated cost and the problems of paying for it?
He’s got eight more of these conversations yet to come and in March Strickland is due to unveil his big reform plan. It will be interesting to see if any of the feedback or ideas from the floor at these events make it into the final plan. Or was the whole thing just for show?
(Image credit: Jim Witmer, DDN)
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