Saturday, April 25, 1998 | 11:53 a.m.
BILL HANLON is a school district administrator and a member of the State Board of Education. He can be reached on the Internet at bhanlon@ accessnv.com
WE ARE IN the wrong business! I've been working hard selling math video tapes as a side business; what I should have done was hang out a shingle saying I am an educational consultant. That's where the bucks are!
Thirty-five states have passed educational reform legislation in the last few years. Most, if not all, felt a need to hire outside consultants to "fix" their problems. Nevada is no different.
The bill the state is paying for these out-of-state experts might surprise you. The Council to Establish Academic Standards hired the Council for Basic Education to help create new, higher academic standards over the next two years for $130,000. Last week, with about six months under its belt, CBE was asking for another $80,000.
The academic council passed that on to the Legislative Committee on Education. The council had already paid former Nevada Superintendent of Public Instruction Eugene Paslov $5,000 to help it get organized. And it gave him another contract for $20,000 last month. Add that to the $100,000 contract for A+, a public relations firm hired by the council and state department to keep the public informed, and you can see there is money to be made in the educational consulting business.
And let's not forget our governor: He hired his former education adviser, Kathryn Cunningham, to attend council meetings and report to him for $18,000. I wish I could attend a meeting every five or six weeks and make that kind of money. Add to that, the Technology Commission also hired an out-of-state consulting firm. That cost is in the neighborhood of $150,000.
So why is CBE coming back for another $80,000? It's probably talking longer because of the controversy in creating academic standards.
Being an elected member of the State Board of Education, I have a little bias here. The board took a great deal of heat over developing standards. In fact, the controversy spilled over into the media when board members argued openly about the English Language Arts standards. Board members believed that phonics, spelling, vocabulary and grammar should be taught. Writing team members, led by UNR professors, balked. The state board disbanded that group and established a new writing team to ensure those standards were included.
Another area the media covered was having basic math facts and procedures in the state course of study. The governor called for increased educational standards in his State of the State address in January. During that speech, he incorrectly stated that Nevada students were not required to learn their basic math facts.
Had his education adviser been up on events, the governor would have known those facts were restored four months before that speech. Where was he the year before when his office was asked for help in this issue? Where was he when he was asked to use his bully pulpit to get rid of substitutions in the academic core curriculum?
I support the Nevada Educational Reform Act. I also support the Academic Council's role in creating new, more rigorous academic standards. But fair is fair. The state board openly debated establishing higher educational standards. After the debates, the board got it right.
Arithmetic facts and procedures were restored and the English Language Arts people were sent back to the drawing table when they did not include phonics. And, according to CBE, the science standards looked pretty good.
The Legislature is now turning its attention to teacher training. It was the state board members that testified before the Legislature about the need for teachers to be current and competent two sessions ago. Yes, it was controversial and the board received quite a bit of criticism because of that stand. The Assembly killed the bill on a partisan vote. The governor refused to address the issue. It's now back!
The $64,000 question has been inflated to $80,000. Why does this out-of-state consulting firm need another $80,000? What irks me is that, as an elected board member, I had to fly to Carson City at my own personal expense to testify about educational bills. Fortunately, when Sen. Bill Raggio's committee heard of my plight, it put money in the state account so board members could participate during the session.
What the state board has received for its openness is a lot of criticism and a shortchanged budget. While outside consultants are raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop standards, the board has had to beg for hundreds of dollars to do the same work.
Although public and sometimes messy, the State Board of Education got it right when it came to creating standards, implementing more rigorous testing and recommending increased teacher licensure standards. The board didn't duck the issues, and it was done at a fraction of the current cost.
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