Republican Zach Lahn says if he’s elected governor, he will push to offer public schools “innovation waivers” from things like mandatory testing or some high school graduation requirements, so schools create a portfolio of experiences that fit each student.
“The question is: ‘How do we make our public schools better?'” Lahn said this weekend. “And I have found some great superintendents who are wanting to work with me on this exact issue.”
Lahn made his comments during an appearance at the Mitchell County Fair in Osage, after someone in the crowd asked him about using public money for private schools. “The answer to a declining public school system that’s been declining for decades — it has — is not to eliminate the competition,” Lahn said. “On the other part of the equation is…what’s the role of the governor in this? My role is to be the number one advocate for public school students in this state, to use the experience that I’ve had in education, and experience out there, to unburden superintendents and teachers, to create more innovative models that’ll better meet the needs of students.”
Lahn said there’s value in moving toward a “mastery-based” approach rather than using multiple-choice tests to measure a student’s progress. “There’s just red tape on, you know, how much time on what subjects,” Lahn told reporters. “Are you allowing flexibility to take on some of the choice, there, on what they want to work on when within a broader plan that they have.”
Lahn said high school should be more customized and, for example, geared toward apprenticeships if a student doesn’t plan to go to college. Lahn is the co-founder of a private school in Kansas that opened in 2018. He has described it as “learner driven” where doing is more important than memorizing and students make progress at their own pace rather than being grouped into grade levels. Instructors are called guides and coaches rather than teachers.
“If there’s one thing I am very excited about doing it’s taking the eight years that I spent in education, the two years I spent traveling the country visiting the most innovative schools in existence and giving these young teachers coming out of our teaching colleges hope that they can change the educational teaching model, which they very much want to do, to meet the needs of students in a better way,” Lahn said during remarks to about three dozen people gathered near a Mitchell County GOP display on the fairgrounds.
Critics of the school Lahn co-founded say it’s geared toward highly motivated, upward bound students and doesn’t fit the public school model of serving all students, regardless of abilities or household income.