08/29/13: Hiding under the banner of accountability

This op-ed appeared in The Virginian-Pilot on the date shown.

LABOR DAY, the first Monday in September, marks two events in Virginia: the start of most public schools and the final push to Election Day. In many ways, the failures of both are connected.

Standardized tests, brought to us by our elected representatives under the banner of “accountability,” have contributed to a society more concerned with passing them than learning their content.

Yes, Johnny can read, but can Johnny comprehend what he just read? Or does Johnny simply memorize and regurgitate what he read, discarding it if he deems it not worthy? Is that why Johnny can recite the words to every song on the radio but can’t tell you what 10 percent of 100 is?

Is that what makes the mature Johnny susceptible to campaign slogans and not what is behind them?

Is that what makes Johnny blindly loyal to a party, repeating its talking points verbatim, never questioning the validity of them?

With the announcement last week of the defection of longtime Republican consultant Boyd Marcus to the campaign of the Democratic candidate for governor, anecdotes about Marcus’ impact on Virginia politics were all over the place.

Jim Gilmore, arguably one of the worst governors in Virginia history, rode Marcus’ creation, “No Car Tax,” to victory.

After that election, people reportedly called local government offices asking about their car tax refunds.

Clearly, the education system has failed when there are those who do not understand the difference between an election and legislation.

Politicians exploit this lack of education at every opportunity. They claim to be accountable to us, yet deny far too many the skills to do so.

I’m guessing they missed Thomas Jefferson’s admonition that “An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.”

For a while, the answer was to throw more money at the problem. In these austere times, though, that simply isn’t going to happen.

In fact, money has drained rapidly from education budgets, in Virginia and nationwide, as tough economic times have lingered. Public education, whether it’s K-12 or at our colleges and universities, is funded by a combination of federal, state and local tax dollars.

The decrease in those revenues means that schools are forced to do the same — or more — with less.

Or, as in the case of Head Start, less with less. As someone who participated in Head Start, back when the program was a summer session prior to the start of first grade — we didn’t have public kindergarten back then — I have been appalled at the effect of the sequester on this program, as outlined in an article in this paper Sunday.

Politicians of all stripes pay lip service to the concept that poor kids should have the opportunity to succeed but fail to act when a program as successful as Head Start faces cuts.

How about we use some of that budget surplus the governor has crowed about to make up the shortfall?

In his “Notes on Virginia,” Jefferson wrote, “Every government denigrates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degree.”

With our pathetic voter participation rates — less than 40 percent of registered voters are expected to cast ballots in this fall’s elections — we are trusting our government to our rulers.

And as their actions contribute to the undereducation of each succeeding generation, keeping this republic gets harder and harder.