The issue of defining an adequate education is formally rearing its ugly head late in the 2007 legislative session.
While state education officials, lawmakers and even the governor's office placed much of their combined focus on "equity" leading into and during the current session to avoid a lawsuit over the state funding formula, adequacy is left in the dust. This cart-in-front-of-the-horse approach is now causing problems, as demonstrated by the stalling of Senate Bill 2309 in the House Friday.
SB 2309 intended to toughen the state's high school graduation requirements, but some lawmakers say the additional requirements are too much, while others say they are not enough.
The Senate voted 43-4 Friday to raise the current benchmark of 21 units of high school coursework to get a diploma to 22 units during the 2009-10 school year and to 24 units in 2011-12. The House delayed action on the bill, however, as representatives questioned the increased number of required units and a provision that allows students to take multicultural studies instead of social studies.
Much of the current legislative discussion is from the mindset of graduation requirements needed to be successful in college. While that is well and good, lawmakers are forgetting not everyone is college material.
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When discussing high school graduation requirements, the conversation must go beyond establishing a required curriculum that is college-prep based. Vo-tech and other careers also must be considered, as is evidenced by the current demand the state faces for oil industry employees.
The reason why lawmakers are struggling with this particularly piece of legislation, however, is because the focus hasn't been on adequacy - it's been on equity. While a P-16 task force spent over 18 months researching the issue of adequacy prior to this legislative session, that group's work for the most part has been unfortunately shelved and ignored for the time being.
Therefore, the best any of our lawmakers can do regarding issues of adequacy this legislative session is make an "educated guess." That's truly sad, given the work that exists and which sits gathering dust.
Until lawmakers are ready to give their full attention to the issue of adequacy in addressing issues of college prep and non-college prep career paths and other important aspects, they are better off doing nothing.
