In the “Idaho Debates” tonight on Idaho Public TV, Republican Sherri Ybarra and Democrat Jana Jones, the two candidates for Idaho state superintendent of public instruction, have debated questions about student achievement in reading, math and more. Among their responses:

Both Ybarra and Jones, asked how they’d improve student achievement in Idaho so Idaho’s students will be prepared for jobs, pointed to the new Idaho Core standards, saying Idaho needs higher standards for its students. “It’s an opportunity to do things different and improve,” Ybarra said.

Jones said Idaho’s math initiative has fallen short because the “new math” hasn’t been well enough explained to parents. “We need to work with our families a lot better, so that they can support their kids in a much more meaningful way when it comes to the math,” she said.

Jones said the state’s “star” rating system for school achievement isn’t working well, while Ybarra said it is. “You need to have multiple indicators of how a school is doing … not just one assessment,” Jones said. She called for working with school districts around the state to “let them help us define what that star rating should look like, what should be the indicators we use … rather than putting it on hold until we get SBAC results in the spring.”

Ybarra said, “The star rating, that was based on growth, and that fits in nicely with my platform of address the whole child. We all know that each one of our students is different. So the old method before, that was called Adequate Yearly Progress by the government … it fit every one of our students into a box … a certain score on the test. … So we applied for a waiver and we went to the growth model … which worked very well for the schools and they enjoyed it.”