Education

Position paper for Don Jarvis, Candidate for HD 63

25 February 2010

Strong economies require good education systems, and educating our children is a real Utah value. In the past, economic growth centered around river and rail junctions. Today, businesses grow up around universities. My friend and fellow conservative Democrat Paul Thompson played a key role as President of Weber State University in proposing USTAR, the Utah Science, Technology, and Research initiative, which with a modest investment now supports research and development at our major universities and has had a huge positive impact on our state's economic growth, especially in high-tech industries and renewable energy. A little money spent on education often produces a lot of economic growth.

Not only do universities produce money-making ideas, but they produce highly educated workers. This is important to businesses, because by far the biggest asset and expense for most firms is their employees. So good education is good for business, among other things.

However, during the recent past boom years, our short-sighted legislature let Utah education continue to languish at or near the bottom of the entire United States in per-pupil funding, teacher-to-student ratios, and teacher pay. Many of our best teachers are fleeing to other states. While we still have many outstanding and dedicated teachers, they are being overwhelmed. Our state ACT scores for whites and minorities have sunk to well below national averages (Warren 2008), and our scores of eighth-graders are dead last when compared to those in comparable states (Falling Behind 2007). Now in the Great Recession, our legislators are tempted to cut our education funding even further.

We often hear people say that the reason we have America's lowest funding for education is because we have large families. Let's rethink that. Just because we have large families, do we let our children become the worst fed or the worst clothed in the United States? If we have a big family, we should of course be prudent and frugal but should take care of them properly and educate them excellently. We can do that.

Actually, our state spending on education as a fraction of personal income ranks us 33rd, well below average in the United States, (Education Paradox 2009) while our total tax and fee burden is above average, 20th highest in the nation (Bernick 2008). What's going on here? Why is education being shortchanged? We need to look carefully at where our taxes are being spent and change our priorities. We must support higher and public education better, even if we have to use the rainy day fund and postpone some road building and other capital improvements to do it.

If we are going to invest more in education, however, we need more local accountability. That doesn't mean legislators' micromanagement or more testing of students. We have plenty of data on K-12 students, but it is time to use that information more intelligently, focusing on individual improvement. Local educators should be empowered to reward teaching that results in value added. Focusing on the quality of student learning, they should have funding and authority to provide substantial incentives to reward and attract effective teachers. Of course teachers must play important roles in designing and implementing this process.

Some people think that every legislator has to be a business person, forgetting that a large part of our state budget goes to education. I have spent my life in public and higher education and think you will agree that we need more educators in the legislature.

SOURCES

• Bernick, Bob Jr. "Utah's tax burden…" Deseret News 10 June 2008.
• "Education paradox" Salt Lake Tribune 1 Dec 2009.
• "Falling Behind: Utah's test scores not what they should be." Salt Lake Tribune 07 Nov 07.
• Steve Warren "Debunking Utah's ACT…" Salt Lake Tribune 31 Aug 08.