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Questions
The League of Women Voters has made every effort to present accurately the candidates' responses as they were submitted.
1. What are the major issues facing the State School Board today?
1. Improving outcomes for students.
2. Differentiated compensation and merit pay for teachers.
3. Graduation Requirements.
2. What is your position on these issues?
For what policies will I advocate while in office? I believe Utah education can reach world class status. But we're certainly not there yet--we've got a lot of room to grow. Yet improving is exactly what we're not doing. While Utah ranks among the middle of the pack in terms of student achievement among other states, we're nearly last if you measure growth in achievement in the last four years! That's going in the wrong direction. Our kids deserve better and will require us to hold them to higher standards if they are to compete for jobs in the global economy and drive the Utah and US economy back to its days of prominence.
1. How do we improve outcomes for Utah's students?
Utah's children need to be challenged individually to reach their potential. Strategically lowering class size, making student performance more transparent, thus empowering parents, and making school spending more student-centered are important initiatives that will help in this area and can be accomplished by a more thoughtful and productive allocation of our current resources. But I'm increasingly concerned that while No Child Left Behind has begun a much needed legacy of measurement in our schools, its core principals have been taken to scary extremes. As a state school board member, I will champion policies that encourage the comeback of non-tested subjects and activities that will help children reach their life potential such as technology and computer science, the arts, music, and physical activities. Utah's child obesity numbers are rising at alarming rates so regular physical activity along with enrichment with the arts and sciences will make a serious comeback under my leadership.
2. Where do you stand on differentiated compensation for teachers?
First of all, I applaud the legislature for pushing through legislation that compensates math and science teachers more for their relative expertise, scarcity, and required time to prepare and deliver effective instruction.
However, merit pay, which is being experimented with in Utah during the 2008-2009 school year is a complicated issue. On the one hand, the private sector has been successfully compensating people on merit for centuries. Those whose skills are most honed and who produce the best outcomes are paid commensurately.
On the other hand, high quality instruction may not be as easily identified as high quality business management. First, you don't have control over the raw resource as you do in business. Public schools accept each and every student who comes in the door, whether they are from refugee backgrounds with minimal formal schooling, or from homes where English isn't spoken. Second, disagreement exists as to how to objectively measure high quality instruction. Test score gains aren't the only thing we expect teachers to produce. Finally, in a profession where we expect teachers to have intrinsic motivation for what they do, would financial incentives taint the authenticity of their efforts?
Clearly, the question of merit pay for teachers based on performance is complex. Fortunately, the tradeoffs mentioned above may not be so black and white. Large districts and states have found ways to lure teachers in hard-to-staff subjects and even offer increased compensation to those with proven results without disincentivizing teachers to teach underperforming students, cover non-tested items, and pursue their intrinsic motivation.
As a school board member, I will approach the "experiment" this year with an open mind. Then, so long as the results would support it, I will push for an expansion of the merit pay program with adoption of the best practices learned through Utah's experiment and those learned in other parts of the country.
The keys to such win-win arrangements seem to be:
. Clearly articulated procedures
. Teacher buy-in
. Additional monies fund bonuses, so already-poorly-paid teachers don't take home less every month
3. Where do you stand on graduation requirements for students?
Utah's graduation requirements are among the loosest in the nation. In my experience working with high school students, graduation requirements really only influence the decisions of low-performing students. High performing students seek to match the entrance requirements of their desired colleges, regardless of what the minimum requirements of their high school dictate.
However, it is those lesser-performing students that I worry the most about. Many of them make decisions when they are 13 and 14 years old that end up influencing the rest of their lives. I have worked with too many seniors who floated along through high school, completing only the minimum requirements. They are the so-called "late bloomers" who wake up one fall morning of their senior year only to realize it is too late for them to turn things around and apply and attend a four-year college. They are plenty bright, they just weren't ready to pursue college when they were making registration decisions three years earlier.
These experiences have led me to believe that high school graduation requirements should mirror the state college entrance requirements. Districts and states who have pursued this policy have not seen the drastic drop in graduation rates that critics predicted. Instead, two outcomes have occurred:
. Students are taking algebra and other college preparatory classes in middle or early high school
. School personnel are highly motivated to enroll students in rigorous courses that they might not have previously recommended to all students
Such a drastic increase in the high school graduation requirements might mean some other changes to Utah schools. Perhaps a tiered diploma, supporting the "multiple-pathways for multiple-students" argument would be in order. Whatever the domino effect would yield, sufficient time for educators and parents to prepare for the drastic change would certainly be a requirement of any new policies I support.
Opponent:
Janet Cannon
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