Posts tagged: Idaho Education Association
The Idaho Education Association has released a report on its recommendations to improve public schools in Idaho, a year in the making from the IEA’s Education Excellence Task Force, which included a dozen top teachers from around the state. The recommendations range from making preschool universally available to low-income families in Idaho and moving to full-day kindergarten to an end to social promotion; from a streamlined dismissal process for underperforming teachers to a“state clearinghouse of quality online courses developed and taught by Idaho teachers.”
“We believe that there’s something here for everyone,” said IEA president Penni Cyr. “We understand that not all of these ideas may be immediately embraced, and we’re confident many other good ideas will come out of the (governor’s education stakeholder) task force, but we believe we’ve offered a useful framework for addressing the different areas of our school system where meaningful change is not only possible but could pay significant dividends for our children, our workforce, and our state.”
You can read the IEA’s full report here. IEA spokeswoman Whitney Rearick said, “Everybody’s asking us what are our ideas and thoughts. Now we’ve come out with it.”
The Idaho Education Association has released partial results of a poll it commissioned both last year and this year, showing that likely voters in Idaho continue to have strongly favorable views of teachers, but give state schools Supt. Tom Luna considerably higher unfavorable ratings now than a year ago. “Superintendent Luna is currently on a taxpayer-funded tour to try and sell the bad laws that he pushed through the Idaho Legislature this year,” said IEA President Sherri Wood. “But Idahoans rightly remain skeptical of these laws that impose costly new mandates on our school districts and will lead to larger class sizes and lost Idaho jobs.”
The poll, conducted by Grove Insight of Portland, Ore., queried 600 registered Idaho voters likely to vote in November 2012 from March 13-15 this year; it had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent. When asked about their impression of teachers, 75 percent of respondents had favorable views, compared to 77 percent a year ago. Just 6 percent had unfavorable views, down from 7 percent in March of 2010. Asked about Luna, respondents were 25 percent favorable and 41 percent unfavorable, compared to last year's results of 30 percent favorable, 18 percent unfavorable. Respondents who were neutral on Luna fell from 51 percent to 30 percent.
Asked their view of the IEA, the Idaho teachers union, respondents were 47 percent favorable, up from 39 percent a year ago; and 19 percent unfavorable, down from 22 percent in March of 2010. You can read the IEA's full statement here.
Betsy Z. Russell covers Idaho news from The Spokesman-Review's bureau in Boise.
Named best state-based political blog in Idaho for 2013 by The Fix
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