Time for Real Choice in Education

by Wyoming Liberty Staff

The 2015 Wyoming Legislative Session is over but our work here at the Wyoming Liberty Group for 2015 doesn't end as we continue to focus on a parent's fundamental right to raise their children without government interference. Recently we went to Washington D.C. with a group of mom's from around the state to speak to Wyoming's Congressional delegation about education issues. At the heart of their discussion was a call for more freedom for parents to direct and choose their children's educational path as well as the real and urgent need for the federal government to remove itself entirely from the education policy arena.

Parents need real choice in education. Which meant for the Washington trip, our message focused on the reality that any new federal education legislation must get the federal government out of the way of providing real and clear distinctions in education for parents. And at the state level, we continue to speak against artificial government "accountability" measures that have been shown to be a failure in the past (think - No Child Left Behind).

Parents are the only ones who can drive accountability and excellence in education. These state accountability schemes simply serve to grow education bureaucracy at the state and district level, tighten and expand education regulation in all areas, both public and private, and bring conflict and doubt into the parent-teacher relationship at the classroom level.

Our ongoing goals in education include continuing to strengthen parental choice in education, support and foster clear distinctions in educational delivery – including fighting "conformity" schemes like the Common Core State Standards, promote educational diversity from homeschooling to private schooling and fight against artificial government solutions that do nothing to educate the whole child.

And what about this idea of educating the whole child? It is one we recognize needs more discussion and 2015 seems as good a time as any. We miss something vitally important when we look at public policy only through sterile eyes. The end result of policy is people, or in this case, children. What does it look like to educate the whole child? Also, how does this policy affect the education of a whole child?

Rafe Esquith wrote in his book, Real Talk for Real Teachers, "Doing something new each year can keep things fresh for both the teacher and the students, but doing one thing really well over many years is just as important and revitalizing." Esquith is speaking to teachers about classroom teaching, but this statement seems fitting in discussing what we know about education policy.

The reality of ever changing, ever-interfering education policy, such as the federal and state quest for education accountability using the government carrot and stick approach, the dangerous and misguided obsession with the creation of "college and career ready, twenty first century learners" through uniform national standards (think - Common Core State Standards,) and endless new rounds of state and federally mandated testing, testing, testing, is that it isn't revitalizing, it's destructive: to the child -- to the education of a whole child.

Terrence Moore, in his book The Story Killers, A Common Sense Case Against the Common Core, gives us a glimpse of why it is so important to look beyond sterile education policy and at the deeper results these policies will create; results that will stay with a child his whole life.

"The simple answer would be to invoke Plato's lesson again: he who controls the stories of a society holds the reigns of power. On the other side of the equation, imagine how powerless one is who does not know his own story, or any story about the thriving of human beings. Through stories we know who human beings are. We know how they – we – flourish and, alternatively, how we wither and perish. In stories we find ourselves, as individuals and as a people. Without stories – without the narratives that reveal the sources of human happiness and flourishing – we are lost. As human beings we must learn who we are and how we ought to live."