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ECS
2008 State of the State Addresses
Education-Related Proposals

Education Commission of the States • 700 Broadway, Suite 810 • Denver, CO 80203-3442 • 303.299.3600 • fax 303.296.8332 • www.ecs.org

The following summary includes education-related proposals from the 2008 state of the state addresses. To assure that this information reaches you in a timely manner, minimal attention has been paid to style (capitalization, punctuation) or format. To view the documents, click on the blue triangle next to the state.

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- New York
Governor Eliot Spitzer's State of the State Address

Accountability
-- This year, with the support of the Regents, our partners in this effort, we will take education accountability to the next level. We will set improvement targets for specific school districts, and for specific schools. We will track the progress of individual schools every single year, and we will intervene in districts and in schools that are still failing. Also see the Education Accountability Fact Sheet: http://www.ny.gov/governor/sos/fact_sheet6.html

Health
-- Fully fund the expansion of the Children's Health Insurance Program -- providing affordable coverage for every single child in this State.

-- Pass the Healthy Schools Act to take junk food out of schools. Ask Comptroller DiNapoli to help enforce the State's strong, but widely ignored, physical education requirements by including them in his regular school district audits.


Postsecondary, Community Colleges and Economic Development
-- Last year we focused on pre-school to grade twelve. This year, we must also look beyond high school to our colleges and universities.

-- Over the next five years, hire 2,000 new full-time faculty members for SUNY and CUNY, including 250 eminent scholars – the type of professors whose research draws grants and collaboration from around the globe, and whose stature lifts entire campuses.

-- Create an Innovation Fund for cutting-edge research at New York's public and private colleges, similar to the National Science Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health. Supercharging cutting-edge academic research will also supercharge our innovation economy.

-- Invest in our community colleges, which train New Yorkers for high-skilled jobs and serve as the gateway to four-year colleges. For the community college students who want to continue their education by transferring to four-year SUNY and CUNY schools, make the process simple and seamless, and give them full credit for the academic courses they have successfully completed.

-- Move forward on the University of Buffalo's "2020" expansion as a centerpiece of our strategy to reinvigorate the economy of Western New York. When completed, the University's total student population will grow from 29,000 to almost 41,000. Over 7,000 students, faculty and staff will work and study on a new downtown campus for medicine and health sciences. UB will become an economic engine for Buffalo, and a flagship institution for a world class public university system.

-- Create a flagship at the other end our state, as well. Bring together the University at Stony Brook, and the world renowned Brookhaven and Cold Spring Harbor laboratories. The result will be a peerless cross-disciplinary research engine in the areas of cancer, neurobiology, plant genetics and bioinformatics. The economic benefit for Long Island will be tremendous. The chance for New York to lead the world will be unparalleled.

-- The finest private and public colleges and universities in America use the funds from permanent endowments to achieve excellence. If we are to join their ranks, we must do so as well. Higher education funding should no longer be a budgetary pawn or a yearly battle. It must be a permanent priority. Given the investments we must make and the sheer size of our higher education system, this endowment initially should be at least $4 billion, which would generate $200 million in operating funds each year.

-- Unlock some of the value of the New York State Lottery, either by taking in private investment or looking at other financing alternatives. As we do this, we will assure that the State continues to regulate all lottery games, and that we continue to receive the more than $2 billion annually for K to 12 education that the lottery now provides. Today's endowment dollars will be a down payment on tomorrow's dreams.

http://www.ny.gov/governor/keydocs/2008sos_speech.html
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