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School vouchers.
Limits to collective bargaining for teachers.
Educator evaluations that take student achievement into account.
They're all reforms Indiana passed into law this year, and changes Utah could make as well, Indiana superintendent Tony Bennett told state lawmakers and educators Wednesday at the Parents for Choice (PCE) Education Symposium in Salt Lake City.
"Fierce urgency is what this about, and it's really not about thinking small. It's about thinking big," Bennett said.
Bennett's visit followed a PCE-sponsored event last year with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who championed similar reforms. After Bush's visit, Utah lawmakers worked to pass bills modeled on Florida's reforms, such as one that will give schools grades of A-F next year. Lawmakers plan to try to pass more reforms similar to those of Florida and Indiana next year as well.
"I think all of them could be made here in the state of Utah," Sen. Howard Stephenson, R-Draper, said of the Indiana reforms after Bennett's speech, though he noted that he doesn't expect a push for school vouchers again in Utah any time soon.
Stephenson, who co-chairs the Legislature's public education budget committee, does, however, plan to sponsor a tuition tax credit bill meant to help struggling students attend private schools this year that opponents are calling another voucher bill. Lawmakers are also working on bills that could privatize schools that earn F grades; limit the collective bargaining rights of teachers and other state-funded public employees; and limit the length of teacher contracts to five years at a time, among other things.
"I think that we as lawmakers, we're always looking for best practices, and where you can find someone on the ground doing what we are doing and seeing success that's always exciting," Rep. Greg Hughes, R-Draper, said Wednesday, saying Bennett presented "some great approaches."
The Indiana reforms included expanding charter schools, a school voucher program, union bargaining limits, changes to teacher evaluations, and school grading.
Bennett — who unlike Utah's state superintendent was elected to his position — said Indiana's education system had many problems and was the "educational parallel" of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico last year.
But he said the state recently set ambitious goals, and three basic principles have guided the reforms there: competition, freedom and accountability.
Because most of the Indiana reforms took place just this year, it's too early to tell whether they've improved education as measured by state and national tests, though they met with teacher protests before lawmakers in that state passed them.
Florida's reforms, however, have been in place for years and the state boasts above average scores on national reading tests for fourth graders. Florida's fourth-grade Latino students alone score as well as all fourth graders on average in Utah, though Florida's scores did not improve from 2009, according to National Assessment of Educational Progress results released this week.
But Utah Education Association president Sharon Gallagher-Fishbaugh, who did not attend the symposium, said she questions Florida's results, noting, for example, that Florida's fourth-grade reading scores may be higher than the national average because Florida holds back struggling third-graders.
Also, she said, Florida does a number of other things, beyond the reforms championed by Bush, that Utah is not doing, such as rewarding high performing schools and limiting class sizes. She also noted that Utah lawmakers this year cut money for at-risk students but now want to direct money toward private schools because they believe public ones are failing children. She said public school teachers need adequate resources to succeed.
"You can't accuse us of failing when you've starved us," she said. Utah has the lowest base per pupil spending in the nation largely because of the state's high proportion of children to adults and large amounts of public land.
Bennett, however, said after his speech that though he can't speak to the specifics of Utah's school funding situation, reforms can happen now.
"How unfair is it to children to say, 'We're not going to do this. We're going to put your education on hold until we can afford different.' That's not fair to kids," Bennett said. "I don't think there's any time like the present."
Twitter: @lschencker