The Zero recently reported that there wasn’t a “dime’s worth of difference” on the issue of education between the two major candidates to become Oregon’s governor. I beg to differ. I’ve highlighted during the past couple of days on the show the ideas about education championed by candidate John Kitzhaber. The following are observations I made about the Kitzhaber interview with the Oregon editorial board (and apparently others, including educators). Kitzhaber calls for the state to begin the educational process at age “zero” (who needs parents when you’ve got ‘the state?’); state, not local, control of schools and funding;  wants teachers unions involved in selecting curricula and teaching methods (who needs administrators?); want to redistribute the money that under Measure 5 would go equally to all students to go to more troubled schools that don’t have as much “parental involvement” (throwing a bone to Portland);  The observations are followed by a time reference where you can find it on the following video. Kitzhaber wants:

• The state in charge of child’s education starting at age “zero” [2:07].
• Full state–not local control–of education [2:10].
• Instead of equally distributing education money, wants his education czars to redistribute it to schools they deem more deserving [3:37].
• Non governmental organizations (NGO’s) selected by state to participate in education [4:34].
• Oregon Teachers Association to help select curricula and teaching methods [11:36].
• A statewide pot of money from which all schools would be funded [21:35].
• To end the kicker, Measure 5 because he would like more of your money [22:57].

Two more interesting observations: at 17:28 he discusses the lack of jobs available for high school drop outs and those who only finish high school Then he gives the example of ‘back in the day’ when you could make a good living working in a mill. The irony escapes him, obviously. It was his political party that killed most natural resource jobs in Oregon through their radical environmental policies and old growth/spotted owl myths. And at 21:35 he makes this extraordinary admission about how his new education czars (appointed by the Governor) would fund education and how you can’t do this during a good economy because Democrats just spend the money on other stuff.  They fund everything else first–their pet programs–and leave education till the last. The Republicans begged them last time to start with education first and the D’s scoffed at them. It’s that attitude that puts Oregon at, to say the least, a fiscal disadvantage. It’s why they need to go.