COMPULSORY KINDERGARTEN

PARENTS WIN ONE IN THE STATE SENATE

Wednesday, April 14, 1993

By Robert Holland 

Whose children are these, anyway -- the parents' or the state's? 

That old question is being raised with new urgency as a result of such abominations as multicultural revisionism, attitudinal indoctrination, and co-operative (no-failure) learning currently in vogue with central education bureaucracies. 

A resounding reply -- the parents' --came from the State Senate during the General Assembly's recent veto-override session. 

In a vote lightly reported in the state press, yet of potentially profound significance for parental rights, the Senate rejected 29-11 an amendment offered by Governor Douglas Wilder that would have given elementary school principals veto power over a parental decision to withhold a 5-year-old from kindergarten. 

It is important to note that principals seem not to have wanted that power.  Republican Delegate Jack Reid, a former principal and current administrator in the Henrico school system, wondered how guidelines ever could be developed to enable principals to make an objective call on such a personal matter. 

Democratic Senator Ed Houck of Spotsylvania -- an assistant high-school principal -- was among those voting to leave the final say with parents. 

Indeed, the parents'-rights majority crossed partisan and ideological lines.  All 18 Republican Senators voted with the majority.  But among the Democrats joining them after a spirited 40-minute debate were several ho have favored state government expansion. 

Environmentalist Senator Joe Gartian of Mount Vernon, for example, ringingly denounced the empower-the-principal measure as "bureaucratically and governmentally invasive." 

The chief sponsor of mandatory kindergarten was the chairman of the Education Committee, Elliot Schewel of Lynchburg, who has deplored "loopholes" in current law that let parents decide their 5-year-olds aren't ready for formal schooling. 

Schewel pushed a bill through the Senate that would have let no parent opt a 5-year-old out of kindergarten unless approval were secured from the local and state boards of education, the school principal, and the school superintendent -- a line of resistance that lacked only Hillary Clinton and the Children's Defense Fund to be completely parent-proof.  On the House side, however, Delegate Jay O'Brien of Fairfax, working with other young Republican Turks, successfully amended Senate Bill 913 in the Assembly's final days back in February so as simply to hand back the final decision to parents. 

That was the bill that Wilder asked the veto-override session to amend.  While less onerous on its face than the original Schewel version, Wilder's measure would have kept the administration educrats happy, because by regulation they could have obliged principals to grant few, if any, exemptions. 

Indeed, the real loser in all this is the State Department of Education leadership.  Compulsory early childhood education for all (not just for "at-risk" children) is the very cornerstone of DOE's grand design for "transformational outcome-based education" (OBE) -- or World-Class Education -- for Virginia schools. 

After securing a General Assembly go-ahead to round up the 6,000 or so 5-year-olds not voluntarily in kindergarten already, DOE planned to return soon with a bill for mandatory enlistment of all 4-year-olds. 

An early-childhood component is first in DOE's implementation timetable for a Common Core of Learning, which would replace conventional measures of basic academic skill with 38 "real-life" outcomes, such as being a fulfilled individual and an environmental steward.  Demonstration OBE early-childhood classes already have been funded for this fall. 

The State Board of Education's Vision Statement adopted last fall asserts that "it is absolutely critical that early childhood experiences, beginning at age four, be provided for all children, particularly those at risk of school failure.  The data concerning the efficacy of early childhood education programs are irrefutable." 

Actually the data are no such thing.  Studies of Head Start have shown that any academic gains made by preschoolers in that program are dissipated within three years.  Of course, that hasn't stopped President Clinton, who sees government as the cure to everything from athlete's foot to crabgrass, from doubling Head Start outlays. 

Last week's setback in the Senate doesn't mean DOE won't be back in 1994 in hot pursuit of those 4-year-olds.  But if department panjandrums would like a little common-sense advice from an educator, they might talk to Senator Houck, who says he would rather see the schools refine and improve their work within their current mandate without compelling parents to send their 4-year-olds too. 

"Our platter is rather full right now," says Houck. 

But Ed-Central seems bent on the expansive, nanny-government-knows-best approach. The educrats seem oblivious to the growing discontent with such authoritarianism among parents and other citizens