OPINION
The Sunseri Agenda The new head of the House Education Committee thinks that Oregon's School Reform Act is a socialist plot. To get some idea of the challenges facing Gov. John Kitzhaber and recently elected Superintendent of Public Instruction Stan Bunn, you need look no further than Gresham. There you will find legislator Ron Sunseri, whom House Speaker Lynn Snodgrass picked to chair the Education Committee during the upcoming legislative session. It's insufficient to say that placing Sunseri in this position is akin to giving a fox keys to the henhouse. Rather, having Sunseri in charge of education is like giving crackheads the run of the district attorney's office. In many respects, Sunseri's ascension to House Education chairman fulfills a decade-long ambition for the Republican, who has represented District 22 off and on since 1990. On a wide array of public issues, Rep. Sunseri has expressed strong views. His antipathy toward environmental regulation earned him a zero rating from the Oregon League of Conservation Voters. His lack of concern for civil liberties earned him the same grade from the ACLU. He has done far better in the eyes of the National Rifle Association. Last session he sponsored a bill that would expand the rights of those who hold permits for concealed weapons. Sunseri has also freely adapted his interpretation of the Bible to legislative concerns. In a remarkable paper entitled "God's Principles Applied," which he wrote four years ago for the Eagle Forum, Sunseri stated that "the primary biblical purpose of civil government is unchanged from Genesis to Revelation." He goes on to say that society needs "to look somewhere other than civil government to solve many of its present concerns like welfare and health care and social security. In other words, providing for these areas of life are [sic] not a function of civil government." Sunseri's true calling, however, is education. Though he does not have a college degree, Sunseri has spent a good portion of his adult life thinking about education policy. Although he currently claims that his greatest priority will be the passage of charter schools legislation, his past suggests a far more ambitious agenda. In 1994, Sunseri published a book, Outcome-Based Education: Understanding the Truth about Education Reform. The book is a scud missile targeted at Oregon's 1990 School Reform Act. Identifying Oregon's reform as part of a national effort to rethink education, Sunseri smelled a conspiracy. In his book, he points to a communication between federal education experts as evidence of a desire "to put OBE [outcome-based education] in every school in the nation. Clearly, these are the building blocks of a national system of education.... This is simply too coincidental not to have been engineered by the federal government and other national organizations." Outcome-based education has become the far right's bogeyman of the '90s. Sunseri's views are in sync with those of the Christian Coalition, which has taken Oregon's School Reform Act to court. The case claims that Oregon's restructuring of education steals parents' authority and imposes beliefs, values and even mind control over schoolchildren. Next year, Kitzhaber and Bunn need to busy themselves with the job of providing stable funding for Oregon schools. But if Lynn Snodgrass doesn't keep Ron Sunseri on a very tight leash, Oregon's education leaders will instead be battling rear-guard actions to undermine education reform.
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