Montana:
If It Ain't Broke ...

by Mary Ann Zehr

"I don't think we're big enough or unique enough to reinvent the wheel," argues Sen. Daryl Toews, the Republican who chairs his chamber's education committee. His idea for the state's revision of its standards, which were written in 1989, was just to borrow standards from another state.

State-level school reform plans tend to meet with suspicion in Big Sky country.

"Our development of standards is more in response to what's happening outside of the state than what's needed," says Jim Kimmet, the superintendent of the 16,000-student School District 2 in Billings. "School improvement should be done at the local level," he adds. "That's where the rubber hits the road."

But state education officials disagree.

The office of public instruction had asked for $1.6 million from the legislature in 1997 for school improvement, including the drafting of academic standards, for the 1998 and 1999 fiscal years.

Yet the agency received only $350,000, and no additional money was allotted in 1998.

Montana youngsters traditionally have done well on national standardized tests, such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress and the ACT college-entrance exam. That makes it tough to argue that improvements are needed.

"It's hard for people here to see, if we're doing so well, why we have to make changes," says Dori Nielson, the director of measurement and accountability for the office of public instruction.

"Other states are not going to stay as far behind us when they get a truly coordinated system," Nielson says. "We need cohesion between the parts in order to keep our edge."

The education office focused last year on writing new reading and mathematics standards, which were adopted in October and will be put in place later this year.

The state is also revising its standards for science, communication arts, and foreign languages.

The agency plans to ask the legislature for $2.2 million for fiscal 2000 and 2001 to continue its work on state standards along with other efforts intended to promote school improvement, such as reporting education information to the public on the Internet.

As part of a new requirement that student test scores be made public, the office of public instruction released a report in December giving the results of standardized tests taken by 4th, 8th, and 11th graders at each school.

But test data in the state can be confusing: Three different tests and several different versions of those tests are used within Montana's 463 districts. Before the test scores were released in 1997, the education office attempted to devise a uniform system for reporting the data--grouping test-takers as "novice," "nearing proficiency," "proficient," or "advanced"--so the public would better understand the test results.

The reporting of test data worked well, says Bruce Messinger, the superintendent of the 8,000-student Helena district. "It was accurate, and it wasn't misused in any way."

The scores reported in 1997 were for tests taken in the 1995-96 school year. In early November, the state reported scores for tests taken in 1996-97. It hopes to be able to report test scores for 1997-98 by the spring of this year.

While the accountability struggle continues, another big issue is on the horizon--the state's dwindling student enrollment.

Superintendents and state leaders say that declining enrollment, particularly at the elementary level, has become a school finance issue. Although Montana is the fourth-largest state in area, it has only 164,000 K-12 students attending 892 schools. Two-thirds of its districts have 200 or fewer students.

The state distributes education dollars on a per-pupil basis, so if schools lost students this year, they also lost funding.

But while enrollment for schools is declining, "they're losing so few kids per district, that it doesn't really allow them to cut back on their costs," Nielson of the state education office says. "At this point, they're really feeling the squeeze."

At the same time, to reduce disparities in how much schools spend on education, state law mandates a cap per student on how much money schools can raise locally.

Montana saved $12.5 million out of $463 million in the current state education budget in money that was not distributed to schools because of declining enrollment. Some administrators argue that those funds should have been given to schools instead of reverting to the state's general fund. Gov. Marc Racicot agrees and included this amount for education in his state budget proposal for fiscal 2000-01, announced last Nov. 15.

The office of public instruction plans to ask the legislature, which meets for 90 days every two years and convenes again this month, for more general funding for schools--an increase of $36 million for the next biennium. The governor has proposed an increase of $32 million instead.

State education officials argue that the increase would actually be less of a jump than it appears because it's based on several assumptions. For instance, they say, if $12.5 million was saved during the current biennium because of declining enrollment, that amount can again be made available for schools.

The education office will also ask for redistribution of money so that elementary schools receive more in proportion to secondary schools than they have in the past. It will ask for a 4 percent increase in funding for elementary schools, but only a 2 percent increase for secondary schools.

Supported by a commission on teaching appointed by the governor in 1997, Montana made great strides last year in enacting the 1996 recommendations of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, a privately organized group that aims to improve teacher education and practice.

For example, says Erik Burke, the education adviser to the Republican governor, the commission helped a pilot group of nine teachers start the process of earning certification from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. Six of these teachers earned their certification in November.

Also, at the recommendation of the commission, the state school board made it an option for teachers to renew their licenses by completing the national certification process.

The commission has recommended that the legislature appropriate $300,000 a year to pay for incentives for teachers to earn national certification.

© 1999 Editorial Projects in Education

Vol. 18, number 17, page 156