Tougher graduation requirements rejected

BOISE – A Senate panel voted Thursday to reject increased graduation requirements at Idaho’s high schools, saying there were too many unanswered questions about the details of the plan and its cost.

Earlier Thursday, the House Education Committee cast a tie vote on the rule, effectively postponing action on the matter there until next week.

The two votes were a sharp disappointment to a committee from the State Board of Education that has been working for several months to come up with the wide-ranging curriculum redesign plan. And they were a surprise, said board President Rod Lewis. He thinks many lawmakers are still hearing from constituents who don’t realize the state board scaled back controversial areas of the plan.

Parents, educators and others packed Capitol hearing rooms this week to testify about the state board plan, which was released last summer in response to discouraging statistics about educational quality in Idaho – including that 40 percent of Idaho college freshmen must take remedial courses when they get to college.

The board trimmed back its recommendations after Idahoans protested that the plan would reduce students’ access to electives. The new version eliminated new academic requirements for middle-schoolers. It retained a recommendation that high school students add two years of math and one year of science, and that seniors complete a yearlong project. Idaho now requires four years of English and only two years of math and two years of science for high school graduation.

The new version has the support of Gov. Dirk Kempthorne, most education and business leaders and the chairmen of both the House and Senate education committees. Sen. John Goedde, R-Coeur d’Alene, chairs the Senate committee.

But members of both committees said Thursday they worried passage of the rule might not be followed by a guarantee of payment from the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee, the Legislature’s budget-writing committee – for this year or in later years. The cost of the plan is expected to start at $1.5 million annually and gradually increase to $17 million annually by 2013.

“We don’t obligate any Legislature after us,” said Democratic Sen. Bert Marley of McCammon, a teacher. He voted to reject the rule. “Someday it will unravel. School districts will be left behind with yet another unfunded mandate.”

Many also said they thought the matter of curriculum design was so far-reaching that it should be handled by the full Legislature, as a statute. Because it comes as a rule, not a statute, the plan goes into effect unless both the House and Senate education committees reject it.

“Is this the place for a major decision like this to be made, by rule?” asked Rep. Mike Mitchell, D-Lewiston, who voted not to approve it. “We don’t represent all the people of the state of Idaho.”

Lewis said it was appropriate to handle the curriculum redesign through a rule and not a law.

“This is a very normal process,” he said. “Graduation requirements are not a matter of statute.”

Business leaders and other proponents testified that curriculum redesign was badly needed to help students get into college and stay there – especially the ones who weren’t steered in that direction by parents and teachers.

But opponents of the plan said it might lead students who were already struggling to drop out.

“It is extremely difficult to teach Algebra II to anybody, let alone the ones that don’t want to be there,” said Rep. Joe Cannon, R-Blackfoot, who voted not to approve the rule.

Senate committee Vice Chairman Sen. Mike Jorgenson, R-Hayden Lake, voted to reject the rule. He said the state needs to further explore the problem before coming up with a solution.

“When we talk right now about restructuring education, here’s my fundamental problem: We don’t even know what the darn problem is,” Jorgenson said.

Jorgenson questioned the validity of the data presented to the committee and said the statistics about the number of college freshmen taking remedial courses fails to consider that many of those freshmen are nontraditional students who haven’t been in a classroom in years.

He said college entrance rates are low throughout the Northwest.

“That tells me that it’s a cultural problem; it’s a geographical problem,” Jorgenson said. “Not just necessarily our K-12.”

The House committee vote was 9-9. The 18-member committee’s three Democrats voted against approving the rule. The Senate committee vote was 5-4 to four to reject it, with the committee’s two Democrats voting to reject.

Now the matter returns to the House Education Committee, which will consider it again Wednesday.