Let Local Schools Decide The Issue

Barring a political train wreck, the Washington Legislature will finish work this weekend and go home.

If they have regained their fiscal senses, the budget they send to Gov. Gary Locke will restore $16 million in federal Goals 2000 funding. Locke earlier vetoed language rejecting those education dollars.

Why did the normally cost-conscious Republican lawmakers think the state and local school districts could afford to forgo $16 million? Strings, that’s why. Strings they and their grassroots allies insist are tied to Goals 2000 funds.

They fear that accepting federal dollars means turning control of local school programs over to distant corporate and political interests.

For at least 20 years a nationwide discussion has been going on over how to reform the public school system, how to hold it more accountable, how better to prepare children to take their places in a world marked by racing technological change. Goals 2000 is a response to that discussion.

Since 1950 the share of the workplace claimed by professions that require a college education has been about 20 percent. But unskilled workers who once accounted for most of the other 80 percent are on their way to extinction, and schools have been slow to respond in the way they educate non-college-bound students.

Consequently, with a lot of input from concerned business interests around the nation, school-to-work emphasis is a critical component of the Goals 2000 concept.

So yes, acceptance of Goals 2000 money obliges states and local districts to incorporate school-to-work planning and training. But precisely how that is done is up to local educators, local school boards and, if they choose to involve themselves, local citizens.

If local control is truly the issue, individual school districts, not the state, should decide whether to apply for their share of Goals 2000 money.

Strings or no strings, most districts are moving by choice in the direction of such concepts as school-to-work - in a variety of ways that reflect local considerations.

But if the state stubbornly refuses $16 million in federal money, the local districts will have to stretch state and local dollars that much farther and, in many cases, cut other programs that their communities desire.

State lawmakers would best honor local control by accepting the Goals 2000 money - which comes in part from their own constituents’ taxes - and let local districts decide whether to seek it.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Doug Floyd For the editorial board