Gregoire pushes math, science
SEATTLE – Gov. Chris Gregoire, responding to what she termed a crisis in math and science, urged lawmakers Monday to plow nearly $200 million into classrooms to help struggling students and recruit a new army of qualified teachers.
She called the plan the strongest, most expensive commitment yet proposed for fixing public schools’ math and science shortcomings and dismal test scores. She likened her crash program to President Kennedy’s pledge to put a man on the moon in the 1960s.
Education advocates, including state schools chief Terry Bergeson, key lawmakers and the Washington Education Association praised the governor’s initiative. Many features were crafted by Washington Learns, a blue-ribbon education reform panel that Gregoire and the Legislature created last year.
The governor’s sweeping proposal includes smaller middle school and high school math and science classes, recruiting hundreds of math and science teachers, offering master teachers as much as $10,000 in annual bonuses and expanding tutoring and other help for struggling students. She also wants to beef up districts’ curricula to “world class” standards and then design achievement tests accordingly.
No other state has put together such a bold and comprehensive plan to fix a problem the whole country faces, Gregoire said.
The governor picked two high schools – inner-city Garfield in Seattle and suburban Clover Park in Lakewood – to roll out her plan.
She told a ninth-grade math class at Garfield, “We’ve got to accept that we’ve got a crisis in math,” with nearly half of last year’s 10th-graders flunking the math portion of the Washington Assessment of Student Learning and even more failing the science questions.
Gregoire and Bergeson recently asked the Legislature to postpone until 2011 a requirement that high school students pass the math test to graduate. Without the freeze, many students risk not graduating on time, starting in 2008.
Science is a problem, too. Only about 34 percent of last year’s 10th-graders met the science standard and in 2010 it becomes a graduation requirement unless lawmakers intervene.
Gregoire told Ginny Burton’s math class that students will need the skills in the highly competitive global economy.
“I absolutely believe our future, your future, depends on us getting it right in math and science,” she said. “We’re going to change the entire system for middle school and high school. It’s our greatest single reform, our biggest investment ever” in these math and science areas.
Gregoire will send the plan to the Democratic-controlled Legislature next week. Her education plan was the first of a series of budget rollouts planned this week across the state.
The price tag, $197 million for two years, would be a big boost in K-12 spending. The state spends about $13.8 billion on public schools every two years. The state has 1 million pupils.
Bergeson, who is sending lawmakers her own budget ideas, termed herself “very pleased and excited” about Gregoire’s plan.
“This is the level of investment we need to ensure that all our students get the math and science skills they need to be ready for college, work and life in the 21st century,” she said.