Recently, Governor Patrick Morrisey said schools need to be held to higher standards. I want to be clear: every educator I know agrees that accountability matters.
But accountability without context isn’t accountability.
It’s politics.
In a few weeks, I’ll begin my tenth year as a public school superintendent in West Virginia.
Frankly, I’m frustrated.
Not because I don’t believe in public education. Quite the opposite. After more than twenty years serving as a teacher, school administrator, and superintendent, I believe more than ever that our public schools are one of the greatest institutions in this state.
I’m frustrated because the conversation about public education has become increasingly political and increasingly dishonest.
So here’s the real question:
How effective are West Virginia’s public schools?
It’s a fair question.
But before we can answer it, let me ask you this…
what, exactly, are public schools expected to do?
Today I heard a veteran educator share that forty years ago, many teachers were surprised when the state expected them to begin teaching drug prevention. It seemed like a responsibility that belonged at home. Most assumed it would be an exception.
It wasn’t.
Instead, it marked the beginning of a fundamental shift.
Over the next several decades, public schools gradually accepted responsibility after responsibility because there were needs that had to be met.
Today, long before the first bell rings, school employees have already fed hungry children, checked on students who didn’t arrive, comforted children struggling with anxiety, responded to mental health crises, supported grandparents raising grandchildren, and
made sure children have clean clothes. For many children, school is the one place where an adult will put down the phone, look them in the eye, and truly listen.
None of those responsibilities appear on a state assessment.
Yet they happen every day in schools across West Virginia.
These are the things that must happen before we begin the work most people think of as education: teaching children to read, write, solve mathematical problems, understand science, think critically, and prepare for careers, college, and life.
The public conversation, however, has become remarkably simple: taxpayer dollars should produce measurable academic results. If test scores aren’t improving fast enough, schools must not be using those dollars effectively.
It is politically convenient to judge public education by a single test score while ignoring everything schools are expected to accomplish before the first lesson of the day even begins.
At the same time, the West Virginia Legislature has chosen to invest millions of dollars in expanding educational choice through initiatives like the Hope Scholarship while public schools are being asked to expand mental health services, behavioral supports,
academic interventions, and school safety under a funding formula that continues to reduce personnel.
Supporters of school choice believe those programs provide families with more options, and that is a legitimate debate. But there is another debate that is begging for front page attention.
How do we continue asking public schools to do more while a broken funding formula takes away the positions needed to do it?
Public schools still educate more than ninety percent of West Virginia’s children, including students living in poverty, children with disabilities, students experiencing homelessness, and those requiring intensive behavioral supports.
If society expects schools to address food insecurity, mental health, substance abuse, chronic absenteeism, and the countless barriers that prevent children from learning, then those expectations should be reflected in our funding priorities.
If schools are expected to provide social and emotional supports, then social workers should not be optional.
If schools are expected to respond to a growing mental health crisis, then counselors and school psychologists should be funded through the State Aid Formula as full-time employees in every school.
If we believe every child deserves individualized intervention and specialized services, then schools should not have to eliminate agriculture programs, assistant principals, or other essential positions because an outdated funding formula fails to recognize
today’s realities.
These people aren’t luxuries.
They’re the people who are necessary to educate the children in WV’s public schools.
Imagine asking a hospital to care for more patients after reducing the number of doctors and nurses … no one would expect better outcomes.
Yet that’s exactly what we continue to do in public education.
We judge schools almost entirely by academic outcomes while pretending the dozens of additional responsibilities they have assumed somehow don’t count.
That’s not an honest evaluation of public education.
For decades, educators have answered nearly every new expectation with the same response:
“If it’s what children need, we’ll do it.”
Because that’s what educators do.
But somewhere along the way, we forgot to ask whether continually expanding the mission of public education without expanding the resources to support it was sustainable.
It isn’t.
Public schools remain one of the few institutions that welcomes every child, every day, regardless of income, ability, or circumstance.
We’re not asking anyone to lower expectations.
We’re asking for accountability that reflects the full reality of the job we’ve been asked to do.
Hold us responsible for educating children. Measure our results. Expect excellence.
But don’t continue adding responsibilities that once belonged to families, communities, healthcare systems, and social service agencies while simultaneously reducing the people and resources needed to carry them out.
Because when public education becomes a political punching bag instead of a public priority, the people who lose aren’t superintendents, principals, or teachers.
They’re West Virginia’s children.
West Virginia Legislature – fix the funding formula and fund WV Public Schools.
