Although this article is primarily focused on Governor Daniels, and not Dr. Bennett, the two leaders’ missions are intertwined. Daniels’s states that he’ll seek merit pay for the best teachers and the freedom to dump the worst; more options for parents to move their children out of failing schools; and the repeal of laws and regulations that tie the hands of school officials.
By applying Edelman’s lenses under the Construction and Uses of Social Problems, we find:
Damaging Conditions that do not become problems: By focusing on merit pay for the best teachers, we are not focusing on what factors are contributing to teachers being unsuccessful; that problem is left off of the agenda. By discussing giving parents more options to move their children out of failing schools, we are not discussing why those schools are failing!
Problems as Benefits: The current economic climate in Indiana politically benefits the new republican legislature as they will construct and define problems within a discourse that suggests that democratic ideologies caused the problems and that only the republican house can pull the state out of the current situation.
Problems as ambiguous claims: Although Daniels is not audacious enough to create a label for his reforms that rivals the “New Deal”, simply suggesting a “balanced budget” implies that previous legislatures were imbalanced, and the implication of school “reform” suggests that previous leaders created a troubling situation with schools that even requires reform.
Justify Solutions: As a business conservative, Daniels opponents accuse him of wanting to privatize schools in Indiana, and those opponents could justify this viewpoint through Edelman’s “justify solutions” lens. In other words, Daniels wants to privatize schools and move to merit pay regardless of the current problem in the sake of the value of efficiency and the underlying value of business conservatism. By framing the school problem in the manner that he does, he’s able to justify these two solutions.
