This is going to be the first of a series of posts regarding my ideas that I would like to see the next candidates for Governor address. It is my hope that it starts a dialog among the state; whether that happens remains to be seen. Among the top priorities I see that are problem hot spots, they are: education, jobs, economy. There are others, to be sure, but those are the ones I plan to address. Without further ado, part 1: "A Comprehensive Education Proposal."
Introductory remarks:
In the words of Publius, "The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate, as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice." The time has come for all of the People of this great State to unite behind a common purpose and begin discussing the positive directions to which we should be heading. I offer these remarks not as a directed commentary or evaluation but as a starting point for a conversation into what I hope becomes a united campaign behind which we can all support and champion.
The rich history of our state needs no introduction or remarks beyond these: all of us appreciate our native roots and the inherent siren call that either brings us back or keeps us here in one form or another. Our citizens have gone on to do a great many things in a great many fields, and all of us have stories that can convey a greater meaning to the statement that the rest of the country looks to our Delaware as a leader. The time for reflection, however, has passed, and our State has asked for all of us to once again turn and listen. The time has come for each of us to stop talking about change and instead ask ourselves what we can do to push our state to the forefront of our great nation.
I base my remarks, in part, on the preamble to our State Constitution, which states in pertinent part as follows: "[A]ll people have by nature the rights . . . of enjoying and defending life and liberty, of acquiring and protecting reputation and property, and in general obtaining objects suitable to their condition, without injury by one to another. . . ." For over a century and beyond, our citizenship has developed on the premise that the rights inherent in these words are bounded only by reason.
Grounded in reason, then, I offer my suggestions, bearing in mind the words of the Federalist No. 1: "It may perhaps be thought superfluous to offer arguments to prove the utility of the Union, a point, no doubt, deeply engraved on the hearts of the great body of the people in every State, and one, which it may be imagined, has no adversaries." Feasibility and expense aside for the moment, I hope the adversaries to these remarks recognize their inherent merit.
A Comprehensive Education Proposal:
First and foremost, every Delawarean’s access to public education should be such that it does not matter which end of the public school system a student belongs. The diploma eventually earned by an elementary student in Delmar should have no different value than one from a student in Brandywine or any district in between. The legislative power to accomplish this goal exists in Article X of our Constitution, and reaching this goal requires no small sacrifice from each Citizen. It begins with the unification of the public school districts and abolishment of the current individual school board systems. Because no such system exists nationally, we need to develop our public education system in such a fashion that the rest of the States may follow.
A united public education across all districts ensures that every Delaware student, guided by the State, will no longer be disadvantaged by location. One economic benefit and effect from a unified public school system would be quantity pricing for necessities every district currently purchases individually, such as ordinary supplies and textbooks. An annual bid among all subcontractors for these various necessities ensures our State is not saddled with any one contractor trying to prosper unfairly at the expense of the General Public. The efficiency of the student transportation also increases ten-fold with a unified public school system, and an increased utilization of DART, as further explained below, may be of great assistance in making this an attractive and economically feasible goal.
Reaching the educational goal ensures that all graduates of our public schools are afforded the opportunities that a high school diploma brings, including the educational opportunities beyond high school if they so choose. Achieving a unified educational curriculum may be ambitious, but necessary for the long-term health and welfare of the State. I propose two methods that all educators and parents can agree upon as the ground to which reaching this goal begins and its success ultimately rests.
First, the pay scale for all public teachers must be unified across all districts. If a police officer in Sussex County makes as much as her counterpart in New Castle, the discrepancy in pay for teachers across districts can be and must be consistent before accountability and other related issues come to bear. A unified and equitable salary system potentially attracts qualified teachers to all districts in our State, not just the ones in the more affluent sectors. Such a system, to say the least, also requires a substantial increase in educational salaries. Recruitment and retention of qualified teachers will begin to increase the general education level of our State, a necessary precursor to reaching the rest of our goals. While all districts should be encouraged to enhance any teacher’s pay, we need to ensure that "teacher shopping" no longer occurs by reducing the percentage differences for similarly pay-graded teachers across districts. The education majors produced by University of Delaware also need to be enticed further into considering our Delaware schools as a viable option. Teaching our children, however, only solves fifty percent of the problem. Encouraging our students to learn constitutes minimally the next bulk percentage of the education quandary.
Second, we, as a State, need to adopt a means of affording a higher education to all. Such a long-term incentive may encourage our students to develop inherently a love for learning that motivates this result. Accomplishing this side of the education equation requires several steps, not least of which would be to create a full scholarship fund allowing all high school students with a certain GPA to be granted both conditional acceptance and complimentary tuition to one or both of the public universities. We need accountability to ensure that in-state students are not being selected out by the higher-paying out-of-state students. An equitable balance can and must occur. One feasible alternative to this suggestion would be to empower Del-Tech to award various four-year degrees, similar the power given to the satellite Penn State University campuses in Pennsylvania twenty years ago.
For those citizens who wish to pursue education out-of-state and are bogged by the financial aid process, the Department of Education should be funded to investigate the possibility of a financial aid non-profit organization devoted to all of our Citizens. No Delawarean should be deterred from the real possibility of a higher education simply because of application fees and associated CSS costs. Regarding the myth of exorbitance and college prices, our State could and must develop various incentive programs for debt relief to ensure that our graduates and college graduates return to Delaware with diplomas in hand. The money to pay for these education-related ideas can come from or through an increase in the lottery system revenue or from the revenues generated from the gambling industry.
