Guy W. Farmer: What's next for public education?

If you're the governor of a cash-strapped state facing a public education budget crisis, you can buy time by appointing a commission to study the problem. That's what Gov. Jim Gibbons did when he named an unwieldy 28-member commission to study public education funding in Nevada.

The commission, co-chaired by Las Vegas casino executive Elaine Wynn and Higher Education Chancellor Dan Klaich, is meeting behind closed doors to make recommendations to Gibbons before the 2011 Legislature convenes next February. Media outlets and the ACLU want Gibbons to open the meetings to the public, but so far they remain private.

Although the 2010 legislative session held education budget cuts below 10 percent, the deficit will be much worse next year - a $3 billion deficit in a $6 billion budget. Gibbons says his study commission will guide the state's applications for federal grants ("free money") under President Obama's Race to the Top program and recommend ways to get more bang for the education buck from kindergarten through college.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Rory Reid has already weighed in with a plan calling for more local control over public education, pay incentives for outstanding teachers and performance standards for students and teachers; however, he didn't offer ideas to resolve the education budget deficit.

On the national level, President Obama and his innovative Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, are replacing ex-President Bush's No Child Left Behind (NCLB) program - co-authored by the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) - with their own Race to the Top initiative. The Obama/Duncan plan would shift the federal focus away from punishing under-performing schools and replace NCLB's "grade-level proficiency" standards with an emphasis on preparing high school students for college or the workforce.

That makes sense because one of NCLB's failures was that it applied a "one size fits all" approach to academic standards. Schools with large percentages of transient students and non-English speakers were held to the same standards as students at affluent schools. Some Northern Nevada schools in economically depressed areas experience 50 percent student body turnovers during a typical school year. It simply isn't fair to ask teachers at those schools to meet the same standards as those in well-established residential areas.

Time magazine recently speculated that President Obama may have found a truly bipartisan issue with his $4.35 billion educational reform plan, which would reward outstanding teachers and redefine "failing" schools. Although teachers' unions are cool to the proposal, I think the rest of us should support this Obama administration educational initiative as an opportunity to save failing public schools.

• Guy W. Farmer, of Carson City, attended Seattle public schools and graduated from the University of Washington.