Brian Sandoval's Education Plan- Is It Realistic?

A few months ago, Rory (I have no last name) Reid put out his education plan. It basically says, improve education while not raising taxes. It was debunked as being not very realistic and in fact helps to worsen eduction: http://lasvegasbadger.blogspot.com/2010/03/rory-reid-sees-his-shadow-and-proposes.html
Now, Sandoval has put out his education plan and here is my take on it.
Simply put, it's a lot of nice words, but not very realistic, especially considering today's economic circumstances.
To start, I am a 4 year teacher in the CCSD and have about 13 years teaching experience and I consider myself a conservative teacher.
From the Sandoval Plan: Accountability- he wants to grade schools A-F. Nice, but who will grade the schools- the district? The State? And if the State, who will grade the schools and can the state afford to hire a bunch of people to grade schools?
Further, if the administrators cannot turn around a school in two years, then the administrators are dismissed or replaced. Does he mean fired from the district? The school? With this policy in effect, why would someone want to be an administrator or principal in the school district? Further, sometimes it takes more than two years to turn around a school. at the school I teach at, we got a new principal 4 years ago. We continue to make strides in improving our school but it takes time. A new principal needs to get rid of teachers that are not working out, need to gain the confidence of the staff, students, parents and bureaucrats in the administration. Most of the time, there is no magical fix and those fixes take times. So, two years is not realistic, unless you get really lucky.
End teacher tenure and pay teachers and administrators based on student achievement. Ok, fine, but how do you pay an art teacher, special education teacher, gym teacher etc.?
Ending social promotion. Easy to say, hard to do.
Improve Teacher Licensure: Allow a potential teacher who has real world experience in areas such as cooking, shop, art etc. an easier way to get a teacher's license and make it easier for teachers from out of state to get a teaching license. If you want to make it easier for an out of state teacher to get licenced, then you willing to dumb down the licencing process?
School Choice: This allows parents to take their kids out of failing schools and put them in more successful schools. Good idea, but for the most part, it is already being done in CCSD.
Increasing charter schools is a good idea but it's a hit and miss. There are times when charter schools hit home runs and other times when charter schools strike out swinging, especially if they are into teaching fads such as new math and spelling.
Vouchers: Clark County is kind of unique in which there are not a lot of private schools compared to other counties and cities. There are more Catholic schools in Wood and Portage County, in Wisconsin (total population of about 100,000 or less people) than in in Clark County. There is not a lot of places to go and many private schools are already filled up. That's not to say vouchers don't work, they do, but you also need the space.
Privatize Different School Functions: This is not a bad idea. Not may large school districts have their own bus fleets and school's can always privatize janitorial services and cafeteria services. However, from what I have seen, CCSD does a good job with these services and they run them efficiently. If it can done at a significant savings, perhaps. Something to check into.
You can read Sandoval's ideas here: http://www.briansandoval.com/pdf/Raising_The_Bar_For_Education_Brian_Sandoval_Education_Plan.pdf
In all, I think Sandoval's ideas are better than Reid's. The biggest reason is that Reid wants to eliminate proficiency exams and other testing. Also, Reid is very unrealistic when it comes to funding. I would give the edge to Sandoval over Reid in their education plans, but just barely. Neither one of them seem to have a clue about what really happens in schools and what it is like in the trenches.
No matter who wins, the winner will have to try to bring up educational standards with less money than is currently available now.