COMING SOON TO A SCHOOL NEAR YOU

KENNETT, Mo. -- Very soon now we will learn what role our federal governments wants to play in improving the nation's premier challenge: how to make our kids smarter.

We have our new president to thank for this much anticipated transformation in how our Johnnys and Janes acquire sufficient knowledge in a world that is increasingly driven by high technology, leaving absolutely no room for dunderheads and simpletons.

This enhanced role by our president as America's superintendent of schools was made possible by several egregious and antiquated election procedures in Florida and the U.S. Supreme Court, but regardless of its antecedents, I believe Americans have a right to be optimistic about their federal government's increased interest and participation in the painful process of making our classrooms places of learning rather than palaces of yearning.

Parenthetically, I believe it was Bush's emphasis on education during last fall's presidential campaign that brought about his electoral-vote, if not popular-vote, victory. Voters seemed to sense that Bush was serious about helping improve local schools, just as he had done earlier in Texas, while Al Gore was seen as perhaps helping but not rescuing America from its elementary and secondary education mediocrity.

Any day now the Congress, when it manages to convene in summer months, will pass the president's education bill, which he has campaigned for almost from Day One in the Oval Office. It will be a bill fashioned by a wide circle of national leaders, including not only the president, but liberal advocates in the Senate and bipartisan moderates in the House. The White House has done an excellent job of keeping this part of the Bush platform free of the partisanship that dominated the tax-cut bill. Making schools better is at least one issue we can now count on as being relatively free of party ideology, making it exceptional in our national Capitol.

There are as many ways to improve education as there are schools, and before special-interest groups disparage those that don't agree with their agenda, let me express the view that few methods, if any, are dead wrong, and if it were possible, our society should try each of them to see if they're economically and intellectually sound.

The truth is, we know how to improve our public schools, but a vast majority will not countenance a solution that requires considerably more economic sacrifice than most want to make. We automatically make our kids smarter and better equipped by spending more on the institutions that provide them with this assistance. Our current spending rate is guaranteed to maintain the status quo, educating our kids by giving them no more than be begrudgingly do now. I know this won't please many of the critics among us, but it's true.

For more than 50 years we Missourians have lived under a constitution that states public education is the most important program of our state, yet for years we have spent less on elementary and secondary schools than our state spends for its welfare system.

The difference is more than $1 billion a year, with the schools on the short end. Missouri can achieve better schools overnight by spending more of our tax dollars on our children's education. We currently spend 80 cents per capita on public schools in our state. If this amount went to $1 per capita the current allocation for welfare programs we would see an immediate change in the quality of instruction in the 524 public school districts in Missouri.

To make the financing process even more complex than it is now, it must be recognized that much of our welfare expenditure goes to reinforce the family lives of our young students, and without this expenditure, our kids' ability to learn would be greatly diminished. We seem to forget, or don't want to remember, that our poorest students generally come from our poorest homes, where the lack of economic security leads to countless obstacles in young children's lives and thus their ability to learn.

Missouri's high-achievement academic testing scores come form urban suburbs and affluent outstate districts where family existence is less threatened and where property values assure near-adequate funding for public classrooms.

Whatever commodity scarcity exists at any given time, whether it be gasoline or Harry Potter books, none even approaches the need for superbly trained, dedicated and professional teachers who hold the key to better schools in their assignment books. This does not mean to say we are not blessed with such teachers. We have them and, thankfully, their work is dedicated and effective since they are motivated to produce scholars where once there were undisciplined minds. They are a combination of professorial instructors and emotional parents, often filling a role that was once assumed by two-adult homes and one full-time parent.

Whether we want to admit it or not, this transformation to two working parents has produced an environment that is not always helpful for our children and is sometimes quite damaging to their intellectual, to say nothing of their emotional, state of being. Sure, we have some lousy teachers, just as we have bad plumbers and incompetent doctors, neither one of which affects the lives of our next generation as unilaterally as unmotivated, stressed, traumatized teachers.

Our new president has claimed the only way to leave no child behind is to test them, a solution he would hardly advocate for occupants of the Oval Office. Tests prove only two things: students learn what those who write the questions believe they should know, and they underscore a lack of trust in a system that should be devoted to imparting knowledge, not achieving a passing grade.

George W. Bush has started the engine on a new race for better schools. It's about time someone decided the trip would be prudent after all.

~Jack Stapleton is the editor of Missouri News and Editorial Service.