School levy elections may lack the dramatic flair of a rescue mission, but that’s what it was Tuesday when voters approved most of the levies and bonds put before them in Spokane County. They weren’t just rescuing the schools, which need the funding, they were also rescuing the Washington state Legislature.

If lawmakers had met their constitutional duty to pay for basic education, many of Tuesday’s levies could have been reduced or eliminated. The Legislature can ignore its duty, however, because voters take it off the hook.

Even the school items that lost came close to the 60 percent supermajority required. In those districts, disappointed officials inevitably will ask why a significant minority of voters said no. But in all the districts, officials and residents might ask why so many people said yes.

The same public that routinely opens its wallet for the public school system decries the quality of education taking place within. Political leaders elected by the same voters respond to their concern with programs such as President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act and the state’s Washington Assessment of Student Learning, or WASL, tests. Business leaders complain about the threat to U.S. competitiveness in a global economy, and high school dropout rates increase.

This dichotomy between dissatisfaction and fiscal generosity by voters is not a recent phenomenon. It burst into public consciousness in 1983 when Education Secretary Terrell Bell received from the National Commission on Excellence in Education a report titled “A Nation at Risk.” That report put a startling phrase on the lips of America – “a rising tide of mediocrity.”

The United States was losing its educational lead on the rest of the world, the report concluded. “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today,” it said, “we might well have viewed it as an act of war.”

The response to that warning has been a steady demand for educational reform, ranging from charter schools to the above-mentioned state and federal programs. Yet many of the shortcomings persist.

“A Nation at Risk,” for instance, described the shortage of qualified math and science teachers in 1983 as “particularly severe.” Children born that year are graduating from college about now. Yet the president called in this year’s State of the Union address for more effort to recruit qualified science and math teachers.

Why then do voters keep rewarding the schools and bailing out the Legislature by pouring their tax dollars into a troubled system?

One obvious answer is the kids. Disrupting their schooling would be even worse than allowing it to stumble along under less than perfect conditions.

Another is hope. Between the dedication of classroom professionals who deal with youngsters and the eternal potential of young minds in their malleable years, voters cling to a vision of promise.

School systems and the administrators who run them, meanwhile, interpret voter approval percentages ranging from the high 50s upward as an endorsement of the status quo. They focus on maintaining public goodwill. And they count on voters’ consciences to keep the funds flowing.

If lawmakers assumed their funding responsibility, perhaps school leaders could turn their attention back to education.