Curriculum redesign has speaker’s support

BOISE – House Speaker Bruce Newcomb is giving the state Board of Education until March 1 to revise its high school curriculum redesign plan and respond to criticism about its cost and effectiveness.

“I would like to see it pass,” said Newcomb, R-Burley, on Wednesday. “What I have a problem with is, how are you going to make this work?”

The Board of Education’s curriculum redesign plan calls for the state to raise math and science requirements for high school graduation and outlines other changes aimed at better preparing students for college and the workforce.

Last month, the House Education Committee cast a tie vote on the proposal, effectively postponing action until later. Then the Senate Education Committee voted to reject it, saying there were too many unanswered questions.

That leaves the future of the plan in the hands of the House panel. A rejection there would stop its passage; acceptance would allow the rule change to go forward.

Newcomb has put together a group of lawmakers and asked them to work with the state Board of Education to try to move the plan forward.

Many business leaders, school officials and members of the public who testified in hearings last month on the rule change said they were worried budget-writers wouldn’t approve payment for it – estimated to start at $1.5 million and to rise to $17 million each year by 2013.

There were also concerns about finding math and science teachers, already in short supply, for the added positions. Officials from rural areas said compliance would be doubly hard for them. Many urban districts are requiring the proposed changes already.

And many critics said they feared the new requirements would cut into time spent on electives such as religious education, music and art.

Newcomb shares some of those concerns and thinks the Education Board touted the matter as a major change, and that provoked resistance.

“In fact, it really isn’t that great a shift,” he said. “There’s a lot of schools already doing this.”

Some critics of the proposed changes have said they think they should be handled through a statutory process, where all members of the Legislature are involved in the decision.

The State Board “is perfectly within their authority to do this by rule,” said Newcomb. But he’s asking the committee he put together to look at areas of the plan that could be handled by statute, perhaps this year.

There is a lot of work going on in both the House and the Senate now to smooth the passage of the initiative. Several bills aimed at attracting more math and science teachers have been introduced.