State school board candidates selected by political parties? Utah lawmakers can't be serious. The sponsor of the bill claims it would solve the problem over the lack of candidates applying for the school board. The sponsor says that by having the political parties recruit and screen the candidates, it would increase the pool, and argues that, "It's not partisanship that's driving it." Give the voters a break.

If that process is so good at recruiting candidates to run for public office, then the political parties should screen and select who would be eligible to run for a state legislative office. That way, we could get the special-interest groups more involved.

The problem is not in recruiting candidates to run for the school board. Rather, the bill represents the multitude of attempts by legislators, over many years, to make minor adjustments to an outdated system without taking the time to understand how the world has changed, and how to redesign education to meet the current needs of our state and society. The process for selecting candidates for the board is a complicated gauntlet that includes a committee made up of the stakeholders, a k a, people who are part of the system and special-interest groups, to screen candidates, and select those they think are qualified for the position. Finally, from that list, the governor decides who could run for office. The proposed bill seems to give the special-interest groups an even greater voice than the average voter.

All too often, policymaking is the result of giving in to interest groups and their lobbyists, rather than to the public. Such appears to be the case with this bill, without helping the public understand how it will improve education.

It is naive to believe voters will think the bill would improve education and get candidates to run for the state school board. If anything, lawmakers are part of the reason public education is in the mess it's in. They keep coming up with more hurried-up, patchwork ideas that bloat the bureaucracy with more regulations. Furthermore, it creates an untenable workplace for teachers and is one of the reasons many of the new ones leave after only two years.

Legislators who are truly interested in renewing our education system so it can respond to the changing needs of our economy ought to come together to study and review the recommendations of the recently released report by the Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, "Tough Choices or Tough Times." As Mark Tucker, the vice chairman, said, "We've squeezed everything we can out of a system that was designed a century ago ... we've ... tried every program we can think of and not gotten significantly better results. This is the sign of a system that has reached its limits."