Tom Luna: Idaho students must rise to higher standards

BOISE – Idaho’s education system faces a “stark reality,” state schools Superintendent Tom Luna told a special legislative committee Thursday: “Kids are meeting our standards, but they aren’t the right standards anymore.”

The state has a “very high graduation rate, one of the highest in the country,” Luna said, but one of the lowest percentages of students that go on to further education after high school. “And then we see that of those that do go on, almost half of them have to take remedial courses,” he said. “Thirty-eight percent of them do not go on to their second year.”

As a result, fewer than 40 percent of Idaho adults have some sort of degree or certificate beyond high school. “That’s in a world where 60 percent of jobs require some form of postsecondary degree or certificate.

“That’s why Idaho is moving forward with higher academic standards for all students … this school year,” he said. He called the move to the new Idaho Core Standards “a necessary and critical change in Idaho’s education system.”

Those new standards, which have been in the works for several years but have generated controversy this year, are a key point in the $350 million school reform plan recommended by a 31-member task force appointed by Gov. Butch Otter. The recommendations also include restoring $82.5 million a year cut from the state’s school budget in recent years, boosting Idaho teacher pay through a new “career ladder” program, a new system to advance students to the next grade only when they’ve mastered the material, and changes in professional licensing and teacher training.

The governor’s task force sent Otter its final report last week; now, a joint committee of House and Senate members is beginning its work, looking both at the task force recommendations and other issues.

“We’ve got a huge task ahead of us,” Senate Education Chairman John Goedde, R-Coeur d’Alene, declared as he convened the first meeting of the legislative panel. “Our challenge, as I see it, is taking all these recommendations into consideration and moving forward. An interim committee report or a task force report that sits on a shelf someplace is worth nothing, so the challenge is implementation.”

The legislators are expected to consider teacher contract issues from which the governor’s task force steered clear, including several bills that passed this year to temporarily revive portions of the voter-rejected Students Come First school reform laws, which sought to roll back teachers’ collective bargaining rights.

House Education Chairman Reed DeMordaunt, R-Eagle, who is co-chairing the legislative panel with Goedde, said the committee will “look back at some of the things we have done, recently done, and make sure they are working the way they are intended. We know the old phrase, if you fail to learn, then you’re doomed to repeat, something along those lines. So it is important that we learn.”