Idaho state Superintendent of Schools Tom Luna has been named to a 19-member “Education Policy Advisory Group” by GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney. “I am proud to announce the support of this impressive group of policy leaders who are devoted to expanding educational opportunities for students,” Romney said in a statement. “Our education system is failing too many of our kids, and I look forward to working closely with these leaders to chart a new course that emphasizes school choice and accountability, the importance of great teachers, and access to quality, affordable higher education.”

Luna is the only state school superintendent named to the group; the other members all either work for private education companies, think tanks, universities or the federal government. Among them are K-12 education co-chairs Nina Rees, senior vice president for strategic initiatives at Knowledge Universe; and Martin West, a professor with the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Rod Paige, former U.S. secretary of education, was named a “special advisor” with the group; Luna worked for Paige under the Bush Administration.

Luna, in a news release sent out by the Idaho Republican Party, said, “I am excited to work with Gov. Romney to improve education across the country. As governor, he showed how states can truly put students first and raise academic achievement for all children. We have worked toward the same goals in Idaho, passing the most comprehensive education reform in the country to ensure every student can graduate from high school and go on to postsecondary education without the need for remediation. Now, we must make this is possible for every child in every state.”

Idaho Statesman columnist Dan Popkey points out that three members of the Bush Administration who are are advocates of for-profit education companies join Luna on the new advisory group, and also contributed to Luna's 2010 re-election campaign; you can read his report here. Click below for the full Idaho GOP news release; you can read Romney's full announcement here about his advisory group.

Idaho is now taking bids on the contract to provide every high school student and teacher in the state with a laptop computer, as part of its “Students Come First” school reforms. That AP reports that computer manufacturers have until May 25 to submit their pitches, and the state is looking for devices that weigh 6 pounds or less, have at least a 12-inch screen and a physical keyboard, and are durable enough to withstand the occasional spill, according to the request for proposals; click below for a full report from AP reporter Jessie Bonner. The state estimates the first five years of the phased-in laptop program will cost $60 million, if voters don't overturn the reform law in a November referendum.

State Schools Superintendent Tom Luna is headed off on a tour of school districts around the state, to update them on new legislation and the implementation of his “Students Come First” reforms, the Associated Press reports. The plan, as originally passed last year, shifted money away from salaries over several years to help pay for new classroom technology and teacher merit bonuses. “I think it's safe to say this was probably the most unpopular part of these laws for most people,” said Luna's deputy chief of staff Jason Hancock. This year, lawmakers partially reversed that move, cancelling scheduled salary cuts for future years, while maintaining the reforms as the top funding priority in the school budget. Cuts already made this year weren't reversed.

Luna's tour started in Nampa, with additional stops planned in Idaho Falls, Pocatello, Burley, Coeur d'Alene and Moscow; click below for a full report from AP reporter Jessie Bonner.

After six months of meetings, lots of presentations and visits to schools across the country, the 38-member “Students Come First” technology task force is meeting this morning to hear - and vote on - the recommendations from each of its subcommittees, on how to implement new technology initiatives in Idaho schools, including phasing in providing a laptop computer for every Idaho high school student and teacher and a new focus on online learning. “The work that has been done here is historic, and it's definitely unprecedented in its scope and in its focus,” said state schools Superintendent Tom Luna, the task force chairman and the architect of the “Students Come First” reform plan. “Every member of this committee brings a different background and a different opinion, but 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.”

Before beginning the subcommittee reports, Luna went over the budget request that he's prepared for public schools for next year. “There is good news in this budget proposal, because it's the first time in a number of years that we've been able to request an increase and justify it,” Luna said. He's calling for a 5.1 percent increase in state funding for schools next year, including additional state funds to pay for the laptops and a new teacher performance-pay bonus plan; the Students Come First law, passed by lawmakers this year, calls for cutting teacher pay to fund those items. “This budget backfills that so that there will not be a decrease in salary-based apportionment,” Luna said.

The entire Students Come First plan, which also includes removing most collective bargaining rights from teachers, is up for a vote in November of 2012 in a referendum, which could repeal it.

A new report released today shows Idaho has met all 10 goals in a national project to collect and monitor data on student achievement, but the state still needs to improve when it comes to effectively using the information being collected, reports AP reporter Jessie Bonner. Idaho was among the last states to launch a longitudinal data system to track student achievement; it started operating the system last school year amid strenuous complaints from school districts around the state about difficulties with the new system. The state Department of Education says it's gotten better; click below for Bonner's full report.

Here's a news item from the Associated Press:  BOISE, Idaho (AP) — State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Luna is commending efforts in Congress to reform the federal No Child Left Behind law to measure student academic growth from year to year. Luna is president-elect of the Council of Chief State School Officers and testified Tuesday before a U.S. Senate panel, saying he supports efforts to overhaul the nation's governing education law. Idaho was among three states that vowed to ignore the latest requirements under No Child Left Behind, saying the education program sets unrealistic benchmarks for schools while failing to accurately measure student growth. Idaho and other states are implementing new statewide accountability systems. President Barack Obama announced in September that since Congress had failed to rewrite No Child Left Behind, he was allowing states a waiver to get around it.

Idaho state schools Superintendent Tom Luna is headed around the state for classroom visits, tours and community speeches, from New Plymouth and Horseshoe Bend on Tuesday to Sandpoint and Coeur d'Alene on Friday. In the four days, his schedule includes five elementary school visits, four secondary school stops, two school assemblies, two Rotary Club speeches, and a talk at a community breakfast in Gooding.

Luna this year pushed through controversial and far-reaching school reform legislation; it's up for a referendum vote in the 2012 election. Luna's office said in a statement that the tour is his usual practice; “Every school year, Superintendent Luna travels across the state to visit classrooms and hear directly from students, teachers, school administrators and parents.”
  

Idaho has been awarded a $23 million federal grant to continue the GEAR UP program to help prepare kids for higher education and add 6,000 additional students to the program. The state currently has just under 6,000 kids in its first class of GEAR UP participants, which started in 2006 with an $18 million grant; the program includes concerted efforts to ready students for higher education, starting in the 7th grade. The program is available to middle schools where at least 50 percent of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch; the school districts apply to participate.

“Our goal is to ensure every student graduates from high school prepared to go on to postsecondary education, and once there, they will not need remediation,” said state schools Superintendent Tom Luna. “GEAR UP has proven to be a successful program in helping more students accomplish this goal, and I am proud we will continue this program in the coming years.” Signs of success in GEAR UP students include increasing academic achievement and taking more rigorous courses; schools, colleges, foundations and other groups provide matching funds or services to bolster the federal grant money. The acronym GEAR UP stands for Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Program.

Idaho state schools Superintendent Tom Luna was among more than a dozen state school chiefs invited to joint President Obama and his education secretary, Arne Duncan, at the White House this morning to unveil a new waiver process for states under the No Child Left Behind Law. Luna said Idaho, which earlier refused to comply with changing rules in the program, will be among the first states to apply for one of the new waivers in November.

“Idaho has been extremely vocal on what the waiver process should look like, so I'm not surprised they invited Supt. Luna,” said Melissa McGrath, Luna's spokeswoman. After the White House ceremony, Luna said in a statement, “This will not be a waiver from accountability, but it will give the necessary flexibility states need to increase accountability and focus on making sure every student in Idaho is growing academically every year they are in school. I believe this is a symbolic shift of power from the federal government back to the states.”

Luna made the trip to the White House from New York, where he was attending a conference on education technology hosted by the New York Times. After the D.C. ceremony, he's scheduled to fly back to New York to participate in NBC's “Education Nation” school-reform summit, part of which will be televised on Sunday on MSNBC. Luna is due back in Idaho the evening of Sept. 29. Click below for a full report on the new waiver process from AP reporter Jessie Bonner, and you can read Luna's full statement here.

Here's a news item from the Associated Press:  BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Public schools chief Tom Luna says education would get about a third of the projected $180 million budget surplus Idaho is expected to carry into the next fiscal year, under a spending plan he's submitting to the governor. Luna told The Associated Press on Wednesday he wants at least $61 million of the surplus to go toward public education in the 2012-2013 school year. Under Luna's budget request, more than $20 million of that extra money would be used to replace funding that would be taken from funding for salaries to pay for new education changes backed by Luna and the governor, such as teacher merit pay. The shifting of money from salaries to pay for classroom technology and pay-for-performance was among the most debated parts of Luna's education changes.

All Idaho high school juniors can now take the SAT for free, state Superintendent of Schools Tom Luna announced today. Lawmakers in 2007 approved requiring completion of a college entrance exam by the end of the junior year as a graduation requirement, starting with the class of 2013; this year, they appropriated $963,500 for a statewide contract to pay for the tests. After a competitive bid process, the State Department of Education selected the SAT, and signed a one-year contract with the College Board.

“Our goal is for every Idaho child to be college- and career-ready,” Luna said. “For the first time, every Idaho student will have the opportunity to take a college entrance exam, paid for by the state, and to know whether they are prepared for the rigors of postsecondary education.”

Under the contract, students will take the SAT for free during their school day. They can still take other college entrance exams, like the ACT, at their own expense in addition. The contract, for $920,000, also covers various test-prep tools for students. Click below for Luna's full announcement.

State schools Supt. Tom Luna issued this statement today on the failure of a recall drive against him over his “Students Come First” school-reform laws: “Students Come First has always been about reforming education so we can educate more students at a higher level with limited resources. Opponents of the laws have tried to make it personal. Reforming education has never been about me; it’s about giving our students more opportunities.  Our focus and priority has been and will continue to be implementation of the laws.” You can read my full story here at spokesman.com.

The effort to recall state Superintendent of Schools Tom Luna has officially failed, with backers falling well short of the 158,000-plus signatures needed by today's deadline to force a special election in August. An effort to target two Boise legislators for recall, GOP Sen. Mitch Toryanski and Rep. Julie Ellsworth, for their support of Luna's school reform bills, also fell short, gathering only about a quarter of the required signatures. Morgan Hill, campaign manager, said, “It's not that we didn't have support for it. I think that people all over the state were looking to sign a recall petition. We're still getting people even today who are coming up to us. But a lot of people didn't have access to us, they didn't know about it. … A lot of folks didn't even know who Tom Luna was to begin with, which was the most surprising thing.”

Hill, a Boise pilot, said the campaign raised only about $4,500, plus another $15,000 worth of in-kind advertising donations, and relied entirely on volunteers. Though it reported in early June that it had more than 75,000 signatures, Hill said an “error in the numbers” forced a recount yesterday, which led to the conclusion late last night that the campaign had gathered only about 50,000 signatures for the statewide recall petition. “Yeah, the bar was very high, and maybe unachievable, but we did a very great thing, and that's involving people in the political process,” Hill said. “Something we can look forward to in the future is that we have so many more people, tens of thousands more people now, who are involved in the political process who would not have been otherwise.”

Hill said the campaign also was hurt by the Idaho Education Association's decision not to support the recall effort; the teachers' union backed a successful referendum drive that will place all three of Luna's controversial new school reform laws on the ballot for possible repeal in the November 2012 election.

Hill will hold a press conference on the state Capitol steps at 4 p.m. today, and he said the campaign consider forming a new nonpartisan watchdog organization. “This was all started because of one man's reckless leadership and his intention to basically deconstruct the education system and basically feed it off to special interests,” Hill said. “The people came together because of that. Despite that we didn't make it, we did accomplish a much bigger goal, which is involving so many more people into the political process. I think that is the real victory, that a lot more people are aware now.”

Idaho state schools Superintendent Tom Luna has sent a letter to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan saying Idaho won't increase the “benchmarks” its students have to reach under the federal No Child Left Behind law next year, as the law requires, because the law measures only proficiency, not student academic growth from year to year. Instead, Idaho will use its own system for gauging student achievement, and not comply with that provision of No Child Left Behind until the federal law is overhauled to use better measures, the AP reports; click below for a full report from AP reporter Jessie Bonner. You can read Luna's letter to Duncan here.

Here's a link to my full story at spokesman.com on this morning's visit from former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and former West Virginia Gov. Bob Wise to boost state schools Supt. Tom Luna's “Students Come First” school reform plan; Bush proclaimed Idaho's new laws requiring online courses and funding them “one of a kind,” and said he thinks they “will be the models for the rest of the country.” And here's a link to an April New York Times story on how Bush is pushing his “Florida Formula” for education reform around the nation.

Idaho state schools chief Tom Luna opened the deliberations of a 39-member task force today that'll help determine how to implement big new school technology investments, even as the Idaho Secretary of State's office issued certificates officially placing three referendums on the November 2012 ballot to overturn the reforms. The final tally, issued Monday, showed each of the three referendum petitions on Luna's “Students Come First” reform bills received more than 74,000 signatures, far more than the required 47,432.

Nevertheless, Luna said today, “We're implementing the law. … It's the law of the land. We can't have the education system in Idaho in limbo, so our job now is to implement this properly. … That's why this committee is meeting today.” House Education Chairman Bob Nonini, R-Coeur d'Alene, who serves on the task force, said, “We've got our work ahead of us. … We'll just move forward as if the referendums are not going to pass.”

After a full day of meetings today, including afternoon gatherings of five subcommittees, the task force scheduled to hear Tuesday from former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and former West Virginia Gov. Bob Wise; you can watch live here. “This is just the beginning,” Luna said. “There's meetings every month from here on out.” You can read my full story here at spokesman.com.

Here's a news item from the Associated Press: BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Public schools chief Tom Luna says two former governors will visit Idaho next week to help him kick off the first meeting of his technology task force. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and former West Virginia Gov. Bob Wise are expected to make presentations Tuesday when Luna's task force convenes at the Idaho Capitol in Boise. The task force was formed as part of Luna's new education reforms and the group will study the implementation of a laptop program for Idaho high school students. The state will also limit teachers union bargaining rights, introduce merit pay and shift money from salaries to classroom technology as part of Luna's education reforms. Some teachers, parents and students have criticized the measures, prompting a referendum campaign aimed at repealing them.

Though rumors are rife that the Idaho state Department of Education has added highly-paid staffers to implement the new “Students Come First” school reform plan, Luci Willits, chief of staff for state schools Supt. Tom Luna, says it's not true. “We're doing what we're asking school districts to do, which is to do things differently” with existing funding, Willits said. “At this point we haven't hired anyone new. All we've done is repurposed positions.” She added, “Everyone's job at the department will be changing under Students Come First.”

Two positions already are changing: Deputy Superintendent Mary Beth Flachbart has been assigned to oversee the implementation of the reforms, which include shifting teacher salary funds to technology investments, implementing a teacher merit-pay bonus program, and phasing in a program to provide one laptop computer or other computing device for every Idaho high school student. Flachbart, who oversees federal programs, special education, Title 1 and school improvement efforts, will continue to be a deputy superintendent; her salary of $89,315 a year (before furloughs) won't change because of the new assignment.

Camille Wells, a program specialist at the department for communication and governmental affairs, will be promoted to a “coordinator” position in which she'll work full-time on Students Come First, Willits said. That will move her up a pay grade; her new salary hasn't been set, but it will rise from the current $34,507 a year (before furloughs) to at least $44,034 a year in the new pay grade. Willits noted that the reform plan is phased over several years. “Some things happen now, some in the future,” she said.

Luna's Department of Education budget for next year will see a 10.5 percent boost in state general funds, but that's in part because a federal grant ended to fund the state's student longitudinal data system and the state is having to pick up those costs, including six positions. The department's budget in total funds will be up 2.8 percent. “We had a 3.5 percent cut overall in the department if you look separately from the longitudinal data system,” Willits said. That system, to track student achievement, was a requirement of receiving federal stimulus funds; Idaho was the last state to implement one. “Those longitudinal data funds can't be used to fund something else,” she said. According to state budget documents, the number of authorized full-time positions at the department will rise from 130 this year to 133 next year; three positions were eliminated due to budget cuts.

Idaho state Superintendent of Schools Tom Luna announced today that he's expanding the 28-member technology task force that will oversee implementation of his “Students Come First” tech plan to add seven additional members - two parents, three local school board members, and two “at-large” members. Of the 28 members already called for in SB 1184, the school reform bill that included the task force, Luna is charged with appointing 17. “Because of overwhelming interest from across Idaho, I have added positions for parents, school board trustees and at-large members to ensure we have broad-based and balanced representation on this task force, which will play a critical role in the implementation of Students Come First,” Luna said. Click below for his full announcement; he's accepting applications and nominations for his appointees to the panel.

Luna can do this because the clause of SB 1184 that calls for the task force, on page 21 of the 24-page bill, says he'll serve as the chairman of the task force and designates particular types of appointments he'll make to the task force “at a minimum,” including four school district superintendents, one head of a virtual public charter school, two secondary school classroom teachers and so forth. The others who get to appoint task force members - the House and Senate, which get two appointments each; the governor's office, which gets one; and the Idaho Education Association, Northwest Professional Educators, Idaho School Boards Association, Idaho Association of School Administrators, Idaho Business Coalition for Education Excellence, and Idaho Digital Learning Academy, each of which get one appointee - don't have that “at a minimum” language.

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.