Little Budget Help For High School Learning Targets Committee Slashes Funds Requested By Education Panels For Exit Standards

Despite strong support from the public and from lawmakers who held hearings on the issue, the Legislature’s budget committee on Wednesday nearly killed an effort to set “exiting standards” for what Idaho’s high school graduates should know.

The Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee deadlocked 10-10 on a motion to eliminate all funding for the push in the coming budget year. Then, when that move didn’t succeed, it passed a budget for the Superintendent of Public Instruction that provides less than half the money requested to develop tests on the standards. That’s in line with the recommendation of Gov. Dirk Kempthorne.

“I think it’s a slap in the face for all the people that worked so long to develop the exiting standards,” said Sen. Gary Schroeder, R-Moscow, Senate Education Committee chairman. “This Legislature cares less about education than any legislature since I’ve been here, and this is my eighth year.”

The exiting standards were developed by hundreds of volunteers across the state, working with a commission set up by the state Board of Education and funded largely through a grant from the J.A. & Kathryn Albertson Foundation.

“The exiting standards were a response to the general public and industry telling us that the students from our schools do not have the skills to compete in today’s marketplace,” Schroeder said.

JFAC is the only legislative committee that takes no public testimony. Instead, it merely hears from state agencies and the governor’s budget experts, then decides how to spend the state budget.

But this year, both the House and Senate Education committees held special hearings to make recommendations to JFAC on budget issues, including exiting standards. They also held extensive public hearings on the standards themselves, before voting to approve them. Both committees endorsed full funding of the $1.15 million the state Board of Education requested to develop tests that will show whether students meet the standards.

“We’re the ones that conducted the public hearings,” Schroeder said. “We listened to the people. JFAC didn’t listen to any people.”

Rep. Jim Clark, R-Hayden, and Sen. Clyde Boatright, R-Rathdrum, who both voted for the no-funding move, said the state doesn’t know how much the standards effort will cost in the long term, when students start failing the tests and need special help to catch up.

“When the Department of Education comes back and tells me what it’s going to cost us, then I could possibly support them. I still think it’s a deep black hole,” Clark said.

Boatright said the House and Senate Education committees “don’t have a vision of the bottom line of the budget.”

Schroeder scoffed at that, noting that by some estimates, this year’s projected $54 million general fund surplus has grown to as much as $90 million.

Kempthorne recommended only $500,000 instead of $1.15 million to develop tests on the standards, saying he wanted tests developed only for the reading, writing and math portions of the standards. The standards also cover science and social studies.

Schroeder attributed that reluctance to squeamishness over standards that include subjects such as evolution - though the many who testified at the hearings on the standards, including several religious leaders, said the standards took the right route.

Religious leaders from several faiths who testified “told us, `You leave the teaching of creationism to us,”’ Schroeder said. Rep. Don Pischner, R-Coeur d’Alene, voted against the no-funding plan, which would have eliminated all funding for the exiting standards commission along with the test-development money.

But Pischner said, “I almost could’ve supported it. I got a lot of mail opposing exiting standards.”

“I guess I have a problem with all this stuff that we’re constantly bringing into the school system - testing, different programs,” Pischner said. “I want to see teaching.”

Once JFAC sets a budget, it’s rare for the full House or Senate to reject or amend it. Typically, budget bills pass as-is and go on to the governor for his signature.

Schools superintendent Marilyn Howard said she’ll price the various options and figure out how to proceed on developing tests. “We recognize the costs of test development. I think there was never an attempt to do everything with fewer funds.”

If the state developed tests only for the language arts and math parts of the standards, school districts would be on their own to figure out if students are meeting the science and social studies standards, she said.

Pischner said he’s not bothered by the budget committee making such calls without public testimony.

“That’s the power of the appropriations committee, I guess,” he said. “We do have a lot of influence on policy, because without the money, it isn’t going to go anyplace.”