|
By Myrna Trauntvein
Times-News Correspondent
There are essential, core "promises" that leaders in the public education system should be clear about with citizens of Utah.
Debra Roberts, representing the Utah State Board of Education, reviewed "Promises to Keep" which is the vision and mission of Utah Public Education with the Juab School District Board of Education.
These promises are made as part of the civic compact at work as the citizens of Utah given into board's hands resources for the public education system and, that as a result, citizens should have high expectations regarding the success of public education.
"The program," she said, "is focusing on ensuring literacy and numeracy for all Utah children by providing high quality instruction, establishing curriculum with high standards and relevance, and requiring effective assessment to inform high quality instruction and accountability," she said.
She said that the state's public education system is created in the state constitution to "secure and perpetuate" freedom. Freedom, as envisioned in that document, is a promise to future generations that requires citizen participation in civic and political affairs, economic prosperity for the community, strong moral and social values and loyalty and commitment to constitutional government.
There is a strategic direction document the state board of education has adopted, she said, to foster the goals of "Promises to Keep."
In order to ensure literacy and numeracy for all Utah children the board wants to maintain the K-3 reading initiative, maintain and expand full-day kindergarten, support early intervention programs for high need Pre-K children, make reading instruction a priority across all content areas and grade levels, and make mathematics instruction a priority across all content areas and grade levels.
In order to provide quality instruction, the board wants to continue the development of the Performance Pay Pilot Program.
"A goal is to improve teacher evaluation systems by creating statewide common standards of instructional quality and by developing tools to facilitate formative and summative measurement of instructional quality," she said.
It is also a goal to seek parental input and use student growth on evaluation systems at the classroom, school and district levels and establish a new statewide continuum of support for developing and practicing teachers and principals to assist in maintaining and enhancing quality instruction.
One important goal is to establish curriculum with high standards and relevance for all Utah children.
The state board would like to provide leadership and Local Education Agency (LEA) support for preventing dropouts and improving graduation rates, create Student Education Occupation Plan (SEOP) career pathway requirements for high school graduation and provide leadership and LEA support to align secondary courses to address student needs for career and college readiness.
"We think it is important to adopt common core standards," said Roberts.
The state board will also advocate for K-12 comprehensive guidance and counseling programs, develop middle school/junior high school completion standards and work to increase communication between parents, community leaders, government leaders, post-secondary institutions and industry leaders regarding career and college readiness.
There should be differentiated high school diplomas.
She said, as LEA infrastructure and hardware capacity increases, the board should work to embed technology as a tool for enhancing delivery of core standards and curriculum and increase participation in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) course work and underrepresented subgroups.
"A goal is to maintain and increase USOE's World Language K-12 initiatives," Roberts said.
"We need to refine the U-PASS testing system for growth and status purposes for adoption of computer adaptive testing," she said.
Roberts said that leadership and LEA support for collecting, maintaining, reviewing monitoring, reporting and using longitudinal data for P-20 that informs classroom teachers and parents needs to be provided.
The goals were actually adopted by the Utah State Board of Education in August of 2009.
Promises to Keep, she said, was a statement of vision and mission for Utah's system of public education and relied on the language of the Utah Constitution for its central premise.
"It is intended to provide focus to the work of the state board of education, the Utah State Office of Education and all school districts, local boards of education and charter schools within the general control and supervision of the board," said Roberts.
|
