[Vision2020] Task force tweaks education reform

[Sue Hovey]

Interesting.  Wonder if John Goedde has now invested in online education stocks.  The Luna Bill gave him access to teachers on the first day of school so he could push his insurance business. With the laptops he and his cronies can place their ads on the desktop for students and their parents.  That’s exactly what happened when for-profit education vendors provided Channel 1 cable TV access for classrooms. The contract requires teachers show the opening advertisements.  Of course, there’s nothing forcing students to pay attention, but the ads were kid focused and catchy. I suppose they still are.   

Tripling professional development requirements for teachers—who’s paying that bill? Teachers themselves?  Already tight district budgets?

Of course computers for kids and professional development for teachers are not bad  ideas, just costly, and that money will come from already reduced dollars which used to go to local budgets for salaries, school busses, professional development, technology, special education. The Luna Laws mandate a progressive drop in educational funding to local districts.  There is no plan to infuse additional money into education to pay for all this. 

A decade or more ago Indiana policy makers began giving all school children computers, but they started in the early grades and planned to work their way up.  I don’t know all the reasons they ended the plan, but cost was a significant factor, and they had some pretty big grants for the initial funding.    

Sue H. 

From: Tom Hansen 
Sent: Wednesday, December 14, 2011 6:31 AM
To: Moscow Vision 2020 
Cc: Penni Cyr 
Subject: [Vision2020] Task force tweaks education reform

Courtesy of today's (December 14, 2011) Spokesman-Review.

------------------------------

Task force tweaks education reform
Idaho’s Luna hails efforts; high schoolers to get laptops
BOISE – After six months of study, a statewide task force Tuesday called for buying all Idaho high school students laptops rather than tablets, phasing them in school-by-school rather than grade-by-grade, and sharply upping the state’s investment in on-the-job teacher training to accompany the new technology push.

“The work that has been done here is historic,” said state schools Superintendent Tom Luna, who chaired the task force charged with figuring out how to implement the technology boosts in his Students Come First school reform program, which lawmakers approved last year. “We all had the same goal, and that is to assure that we’re preparing our students for the 21st century world that they’ll live in.”

The controversial reform program is up for a referendum vote in November, which could repeal it. But Luna said the task force’s work has given him confidence the reforms will survive the vote.

“Not every student has had access to the same technology, the same types of information and learning opportunities. We’ve accomplished that through Students Come First,” he said. “Just as this committee came to that realization, I think the more people see these laws being implemented and the positive effect they have, that come November of 2012, I’m very confident the voters of Idaho will say this is the path we need to stay on.”

The 2012 Idaho Legislature convenes on Jan. 9; Luna said he’ll present the task force’s 47 recommendations, which range from requiring face-to-face parent training before students would be allowed to take their new laptops home, to more than tripling professional development hours for teachers within the school calendar.

Over the past six months, the task force heard numerous presentations, took trips to visit schools in other states that have enacted programs supplying one computer to each student, and met numerous times both as a full, 38-member panel and in subcommittees.

With the change in phasing in the laptop computers, Idaho will need to adjust its new graduation requirement that students, starting with the class of 2016, complete two online classes to graduate from high school, said Senate Education Chairman John Goedde, R-Coeur d’Alene.

“I don’t think, legally, you can make the requirement and only provide some of the students with the devices, you’re denying them equal access,” said Goedde, who sits on the technology task force. “My thought would be that we stagger the graduation requirement to match the deployment of the computers.”

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"If not us, who?
If not now, when?"

- Unknown


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