When lawmakers can move government out of the way for employers, most of them jump to do so. The same should hold true for educators, as the folks in Columbus consider a bill that would change the way teacher evaluations are handled, as well as some contracts and school screening requirements.

“Just like businesses, schools also benefit by removing unnecessary and burdensome regulations while maintaining strong accountability measures,” Tom Perkins, of the Buckeye Association of School Administrators told the Ohio Capital Journal.

State Senate Education Committee members learned earlier this week that Senate Bill 168 would “reduce burdensome and unnecessary regulations, vest more decision-making back into local communities that know their students best, and better equip our school leaders to prepare our students for the future,” according to members of BASA, the Ohio Association of School Business Officials, the Ohio School Boards Association, the Alliance for High Quality Education and the Ohio Association of Secondary School Administrators.

Among the changes would be allowing local school districts to develop their own framework for teacher evaluations, which would build on the Ohio Teacher Evaluation System in place now.

“Local control and smaller government are ideals toward which our state should aspire and this bill includes several small but meaningful steps in that direction,” Buckeye Valley Local Schools superintendent Paul Craft said. He also noted the system in use “can become more and more bureaucratic and bogged down in teacher contract language and such.”

If education professionals truly believe the changes outlined in SB168 would improve teacher performance and student outcome, there must be no clinging to the way things have always been done, or bureaucracy for bureaucracy’s sake. Get out of the way. And then, look for ways in which a similar removal of “unnecessary and burdensome regulations” could benefit industries across the Buckeye State.