The UEA is one of those things. (or I should say, groups of people). They seriously need to be taken down, or at least, changed so that they don’t have so much power over the money earmarked for various aspects of education. Money just seems to dissappear in their swollen, red tape infested belly.

Whoo. That felt good.

I halfway agree with you about vouchers… it wasn’t perfect. I was sad it didn’t pass, for the very reason that Randy Smith gave.

Please, people… don’t take this as a sign that things ought to be left the way they are.

At the same time, who has a better plan? Where do we go from here? I don’t know.

I think I’m probably just going to homeschool my kids.

I agree with your concerns 5 years down the road, but things don’t look good today.

I had no idea you’d wavered on your premise that Utah schools are ‘ok’. I’ve been willing to concede that they may be fine now, but not in five years. I just don’t see how we can maintain what good results we have now into the immediate future?

I saw the Utah Foundation report a month or so ago and it was pretty devestating to my arguments that Utah’s schools are doing fantastic. Its release provided much of my motivation to back off of the voucher debate.

I still think the plan we soundly rejected yesterday was a bad deal for my kids and Utah’s taxpayers but that doesn’t mean I don’t think we need to make changes in the way we educate kids in our state.

There need to be changes and if we’re going to be practical about getting them to happen we need to begin working within the public school system to get those changes.

A new report from the Utah Foundation shows the state’s public education could certainly use a shake-up. The states most similar demographically to Utah, by measures such as student poverty and parental education, are Iowa, Montana, Nebraska, South Dakota and Wisconsin. Utah finishes last in this group, based on eighth-grade scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Utah youngsters trail the pack across the range of core subjects — last in math, last in reading, last in science.

I can’t vouch for the Utah Foundation’s analysis, but just from looking at the numbers from NAEP, Utah schools are at or near the average in all academic areas. http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/states/ And being average means that, at best, 1/3 of students are proficient at their grade level in math, reading, science, and writing.

Utah schools aren’t good enough. They aren’t in the ballpark of good enough. The incentives for teachers and for school administrators have to change. That was the point of the voucher program. So far vouchers were the only realistic plan that would have given teacher’s merit pay (in private schools), and greater flexibility for where parents could send their children to school. Reasonable people can disagree about the financing of vouchers, but the entire point of vouchers is to change the incentives for teachers and school administrators.

I’m eagerly waiting for another plan that will create positive incentives for improvements in schools.

Hopefully, people will start thinking about it because if the status quo is okay now, it won’t be in five years.