|
|
              
|
Events in Pearl, Miss.; West Paducah, Ky.; Jonesboro, Ark.; and Springfield, Ore., in late 1997 and early 1998 had as much to do with state education policy as test scores, teachers' unions, or tax rates. School safety, always a bread-and-butter issue, quickly rose to the forefront as the nation watched those four communities, in close succession, suffer tragic multiple shootings on school campuses. The widespread public concern generated by the spate of killings quickly spread to state capitals. In Kansas, Gov. Bill Graves launched a safe-schools initiative that called for a host of new penalties for students engaged in violent behavior, and offered teachers "hazard pay" for working with violent students who have been expelled. Michigan lawmakers debated more than 15 bills aimed at school safety, and the Tennessee legislature set aside $10 million to make schools more secure.
At the same time, many of the other perennial school-related topics percolated through committee rooms and conference chambers during an election year that was dominated by education issues. Foremost on the agenda, of course, was money: How much of it, who should pay, what to spend it on, and where it should go. In Hawaii, for example, "the single major issue is the budget," said a spokesman for the state education department, "and it's been insufficient." In Alaska, the legislature overhauled its school finance system to give urban districts a bigger slice of the funding pie. Pennsylvania struggled with little success to find a way out of a long-running debate over the fairness of its funding system. Both rural and urban districts there are unhappy, with each side claiming that too large a chunk of the state's education money goes elsewhere. And after years of attempts to come up with a more equitable funding system, the Arizona legislature's latest effort finally won approval from the state supreme court. California, meanwhile, ponied up $250 million for textbooks, $195 million to help schools lengthen the school year, and $1.5 billion for the state's effort to shrink class sizes--up from $1 billion the year before. Overall, the state's education budget rose nearly 7.2 percent, to $31.3 billion. And in November, California voters approved a $9.2 billion bond issue for school construction in an attempt to repair aging or rundown buildings and to accommodate soaring enrollment.
As important as improving the school buildings themselves is making sure they're staffed by qualified, well-paid teachers. Seldom has that concern been so pressing, as the teaching workforce is buffeted by forces that are increasing the demand for good teachers while restricting the supply:
If students are to reach high standards, it has become painfully clear, they need high-quality teachers to help them get there. That means tougher requirements for beginning teachers, more stringent evaluations for veteran educators, and stronger efforts to reward outstanding teachers and get rid of bad ones. Nowhere was the issue of teacher quality more painfully evident than in Massachusetts, where a new test for prospective teachers was given for the first time in April. News that 59 percent of would-be educators had failed, and that nearly half flunked when the test was given again, dominated education news for most of the summer and into the fall election season. Meanwhile, some 30 states now have incentives for teachers to seek certification from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. A leader in that effort last year was Florida, where the legislature appropriated $10 million to pay the application fees for teachers interested in seeking board certification, and offered 10 percent raises to teachers who successfully complete the process. Colorado was one of the states that took up the issue of teacher evaluation and dismissal. The state ended up with two compromise measures. The first reduced the time it takes to dismiss teachers. The second calls for student performance to be factored into teacher evaluations, though leaving it up to individual districts to decide how to do that. In Georgia, the state board that governs higher education focused on the issue of teacher quality, approving a 10-point plan for the preparation of beginning teachers. The plan includes a "guarantee" that teachers who graduate from the state university system will be ready for the classroom or the university will retrain them for free. Pennsylvania raised the cutoff score on the test that prospective teachers must pass to receive their certification, and the state school board was considering tougher standards for entry into, and graduation from, teacher-training programs. Maryland, too, took a look at teacher quality. The state school board passed a measure requiring new teachers and those seeking recertification to undergo training in reading instruction. And the board voted to limit the number of teachers with provisional certificates that a district can have.
As many of these issues played out, one national trend continued to roll forward: Charter schools moved ever closer to the education mainstream. Several new states passed laws permitting the independent public schools, and others expanded their existing laws. Thirty-three states now allow charter schools in some form. Florida last year doubled the number of charter schools it allows in districts of various sizes, and the legislature gave charters limited access to public money for construction and repairs. Georgia opened up its legislation to allow individuals and businesses to start charter schools. Previously, only existing public schools were allowed to obtain charters. And Idaho took a careful first step into the world of charters in March when the legislature approved the creation of 12 a year for five years. The news for charter school advocates wasn't all good, however. In Arizona, which has more charters than any other state--about 250--efforts to expand the number of new ones allowed each year didn't pass. And charter school proposals failed in a few of the states that don't allow them, including New York, South Dakota, and Tennessee.
Around many of these debates--choice, fund-ing, and teacher quality--swirled the recurring theme of accountability. Tests, test scores, and what to do with them occupied lawmakers in state after state as the final pieces of the school reform puzzle, started several years ago with the move to set high standards, began falling into place. In many cases, states that already had adopted academic standards moved to the important but confusing tasks of choosing assessments, determining how to interpret the scores on those tests, and providing incentives and sanctions for participants at all levels of the system to reach the standards. Connie Blackketter, the chairwoman of the Indiana school board's standards committee, might have been speaking for most states when she described the continuing work in her own: "We want the curriculum and the standards and the testing to all flow together. We don't think we're there yet," she said. But "we do feel we've moved forward." --Steven Drummond
|
||||||||
   | |||||||||
Vol. 18, number 17, page 125 |
ccountability wasn't the only school-related subject bouncing around the halls of statehouses last year. 