KINDER'S COMMENTARY: MISSOURI'S EDUCCRATS STILL SAFELY IMMUNE TO ACCOUNTABILITY

Nearly three years after this writer began trying to inform Missourians exactly how our public schools are being hijacked by an arrogant bunch of educrats, how go the school wars? Well, as usual, there is both good news and bad.

On the bad front, the same bunch of unelected state bureaucrats remains in charge, and none has been punished. That is to say, Bob Bartman is still commissioner of education, an unelected schools chief answering to an unelected state school board. Our public schools in Missouri are wrapped inside two layers of unaccountability -- literally two layers of untouchability by ordinary Missourians.

Consider: Dr. Bartman will shortly embark on his annual series of regional education conferences here in Cape Girardeau on Thursday, Oct. 9. At 2 p.m. For the 50th time, I will observe that a state agency genuinely interested in public input and true dialogue would hold such meetings in the evenings when ordinary working folks might attend. But not DESE. Moreover, the format doesn't permit Q&A from the floor. God forbid Dr. Bartman should submit to questions.

When I tell fellow lawmakers from other states that we don't have an elected schools commissioner in Missouri, that we don't elect state school board members, but rather have the governor appoint them to eight-year terms -- every bit as long as our senators and representatives can serve now under term limits -- they are disbelieving. In other states where they elect a schools commissioner every four years (as Missouri did until 1945), or state school board members, at least the public has a chance to be real participants in a debate over our schools. Not in Missouri.

Dr. Bartman and most of his 2,000 or so minions in the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education are still committed, sheeplike, to the highly dubious, relentlessly faddish set of "reforms" mandated in the Outstanding Schools Act of 1993. This emphatically includes Big Education's biggest fad of the 1990s, "performance-based learning" and "performance-based assessment," through which poor, overburdened Missouri teachers are currently slogging their way. Hillary and Bill Clinton, Ira Magaziner, Bob Bartman and all the rest chatter drearily on about "world-class standards." Those of us who want to zero out federal intrusions such as Goals 2000 and pigeon-holing, Central Planning schemes such as "School-to-Work" have, in Missouri, been stymied.

The battle, however, continues. There exist as many reasons for optimism as for pessimism. As the mandarins of Big Education have piled fad upon fad, something has happened to their collective reputation. Simply put, folks just don't trust them any more. Case in point: The unfolding rout of nationally standardized tests.

Week before last, the U.S House of Representatives blew away the Clinton-backed national testers, racking up 295 votes against the latest fad. Across the U.S. Capitol, where the Senate had voted 87-13 for national testing a few weeks ago, Missouri Sen. John Ashcroft is turning the tide. This week Ashcroft announced his effort to thwart national tests had doubled the opposition, signing up 27 opposing senators and gaining.

Is national testing, per se, a bad idea? No. It is being routed because the educrats of Big Education simply aren't trusted any longer to get it right. We're better off without any they would foist on us.

Bring on competition in schools, in whatever reasonable form -- charter schools, parental choice, privatization, home schools. The Bob Bartmans and the NEA crowd -- swathed in monopoly funding and layer upon layer of unaccountability -- badly need a wakeup call.

~Peter Kinder is assistant to the president of Rust Communications and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.