Jon Ralston says Democrats have started ball rolling on education; now it’s time for GOP to say where it stands

Wednesday, April 19, 2006 | 7:23 a.m.

So the Democrats have an education plan and they call it a "new approach" that offers "investment" and "accountability" and "measurable results."

It's so easy to unleash the sarcasm and cynicism. And with a $100 million price tag, significant raises for teachers and ideas that seem to have been submitted to the union for approval, there seems to be a lot of investment and not nearly so much accountability or measured results.

But there is something about this plan that is undeniably significant: It is a plan. And it is the only one right now.

As presumptive Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley put it, "The fights in Carson City are obscured from view. Let's start the discussion now."

Indeed, this is heresy: Starting a discussion of substantive ideas - like them or not - during a campaign where colloquies often are distilled to vacuous sound bites and rhetorical heft is sacrificed for an unbearable lightness of platitudes.

So unlike the Republicans, who have been sniping about lightweight initiatives ("Education First" sounds nice, but it doesn't even have sound and fury as it signifies nothing), the Democrats have started a real discussion about the issue that is highest on the public's agenda. Here's what it sounds like:

This is only a start. But the decision to fully fund all-day kindergarten is the most important education reform in this state as too many parents (myself included) bypass the gateway to the public school system and pay for private school rather than put their youngsters into a few hours of preschooling redux. Better prepare kids for first grade and the better chance they have to prosper later. It's common sense.

The rest of the stuff has potential, although a lottery is a regressive, feel-good measure that allows politicians to abdicate their responsibility to find a stable source of funding. The ends do not justify the means in this case, although the ends are admirable.

It is interesting - and surely political - that the Democrats did not propose any dramatic increase in the per-pupil funding formula that places Nevada in the bottom tier of states. And I don't see anything in the plan to make it easier to fire poorly performing teachers - no, the Nevada State Education Association would have none of that.

Buckley is correct that the plan may be a way to "motivate and reward teachers who produce phenomenal results. They get the reward and the teachers who are just punching the time card don't."

Great. But it is the Democrats' fundamental inability to jam the phrase "merit pay" into their lexicon that has left them so open to criticism from the right. If the new plan can be caricatured as just another tax increase in disguise or a performance by teacher union marionettes, it will be a waste.

Buckley is dead-on when she says a fundamental problem is not being able to recruit and retain teachers and then motivate and reward them when they are here. But that is just the beginning, and they will need help from their gubernatorial candidates to see this plan gets the attention it deserves.

State Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus and Henderson Mayor Jim Gibson received a sneak preview of the Democratic agenda before it was released Tuesday, and both embrace the major points.

Fine.

Now is the time for the Republican gubernatorial contenders and GOP legislators to do more than criticize and point fingers. All the polling shows that the public cares more about this issue than about anything else, including who is the most corrupt and who will keep your taxes low.

My guess is many voters of both parties will like parts or most of this Democratic beginning. And even though it is merely a start, the question for the Republicans is a simple one:

What's your plan?