Two visions of education will be considered by the General Assembly this session and next year as well.

Last week, Governor Hogan declared that we needed the Office of the State Education Investigator General to investigate “complaints of unethical, unprofessional, or illegal conduct relating” in our public schools.

At his budget press conference yesterday, the governor stated, “The budget leaves nearly $1 billion in reserves and continues – for the fourth straight year – to fund K-12 education at an all-time record level.”

Our public schools were also the subject of a legislative hearing yesterday.

Brit Kirwan, the former Chancellor of the University System of Maryland, is now chairing the Commission on Innovation and Excellence in Education.

Before yesterday, if you had asked me what the Commission is studying, I would have told you, “the formula that determines how much money the state provides our 24 local school systems every year.”

It’s that formula, written into law, that mandated Governor Hogan’s record funding for the fourth straight year.

But that’s not all the Kirwan Commission is doing.

Our students are not performing well on assessments of what they’ve learned, Kirwan said.

We must better prepare teachers for the classroom and expand the number of high quality teachers and principals. Schools serving poorer students are underfunded.

Accountability will be crucial to persuading the public to bear these costs, he added.

In the public debate that we will have, will our focus be on improving our students’ performance or penalizing those administrators who have failed?

I’m hoping and betting on the former.