The following summary includes education-related proposals from the 2012 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.
To view these BY ISSUE, click here.
 | Alabama |
| |
| Alaska |
| |
| Arizona |
| |
| Arkansas |
| |
| California |
| |
| Colorado |
| |
| Connecticut |
| |
| Delaware |
| |
| District of Columbia |
| |
| Florida |
| |
 | Georgia |
| |
| Governor Nathan Deal's State of the State Address
PROPOSALS
Finance
-- Appropriate an additional $146.6 million to fully fund enrollment growth in K-12 schools.
-- Put an additional $3.7 million toward funding for school nurses, and move school nurses and the school nutrition program and transportation funding into the Quality Basic Education funding formula. These funds will be allocated using the same formula local districts are accustomed to, but they will have complete flexibility in how to spend them.
-- Appropriate an additional $55.8 million to fund salary increases for teachers based on training and experience.
P-3 and Reading
-- Provide funding for increasing the Pre-K school year for 84,000 students by 10 days, bringing it to 170 days.
-- Make a concerted effort to increase the percentage of children reading at grade level by the completion of 3rd Grade. The best evidence tells us that children not meeting this standard often fail to catch up and are more likely to drop out of school, go to prison and have higher unemployment rates later in life than their reading-proficient peers.
Students must "learn to read" in order to be able to "read to learn" and when we fail to invest in our youngest students, we are forced to spend money on remediation for the remainder of their academic careers.
-- Budget $1.6 million for a reading mentors program. This program will assist schools and teachers as they work to help more young Georgians achieve this strategic benchmark – reading at grade level by the completion of 3rd grade.
Charter Schools and Innovation
-- Put in place strategies that provide students with opportunities to practice and apply what they are learning in a high-quality, real-world environment. This is one reason we allotted nearly $20 million of our Race to the Top money for the creation of an Innovation Fund. This initiative asks schools to partner with businesses, non-profits and postsecondary institutions and places a primary focus on developing applied learning opportunities.
-- To spur innovation, recommend $8.7 million in supplemental grants in both the Amended budget and next year's budget for state chartered special schools affected by the Georgia Supreme Court ruling on charter schools.
-- Develop a plan to ensure that charter schools can thrive in Georgia.
Postsecondary and Job Readiness
-- Clarify the mission of our schools. Students graduating from our high schools … those young men and women who have done everything asked of them by our K-12 system … should be fully ready for postsecondary study or a job! Ensure that there is a more seamless transition from High School to further study … and from postsecondary study to the workforce.
Financial Aid
-- For every student who earned HOPE this year, maintain the same HOPE Scholarship award amount next year.
-- Appropriate $20 million for the needs-based one percent student loan program which eases the burden of affording a college education
Postsecondary and Economic/Workforce Development
-- Ensure that postsecondary institutions maintain an intense focus on employability and creating job opportunities. In today's competitive global environment where technology is constantly reshaping the economy, that means abandoning the "ivory tower" model and adapting to meet the needs of business.
-- Add $111.3 million in funding to address anticipated enrollment growth in both the technical college and university systems.
-- Work together to ensure that Georgia has the craft professionals to meet present and forecast demand. Boost the state's pipeline by launching Go Build, a public-private initiative that will round out the state's workforce development program by educating young people and the public at large about the skilled trades. Already, the business community is unable to fill many positions calling for highly-skilled industrial and commercial construction professionals, jobs that on average pay 27% more than the average Georgian currently brings home.
-- Be a destination for cancer research and a resource for every family battling this disease. Georgians deserve a world-class, public medical university, and it will be a priority of this administration to have a medical college among the top 50 nationally. Within this push, the Georgia Health Sciences University will seek to become the state's second National Cancer Institute designated Cancer Center, alongside the Winship Cancer Center at Emory. Invest $5 million to support this goal of a second Georgia-based Cancer Center. In order to address the need for additional health professionals in Georgia, we have been investing in the expansion of undergraduate medical education for several years. We must now take the next step in this process by funding 400 new residency slots in hospitals across the state.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Finance
-- Restored the Rainy Day Fund. The balance today is $328 million, an increase of 183%.
-- Passed structurally balanced budgets that fund the essential services without raising taxes.
Financial Aid
-- Appropriated $20 million for the needs-based one percent student loan program which eases the burden of affording a college education. Half of the newly-appropriated $20 million funds went to students who had no assistance from their families.
http://gov.georgia.gov/00/press/detail/0,2668,165937316_165937374_180385525,00.html |  |
| Hawaii |
| |
| Idaho |
| |
| Illinois |
| |
| Indiana |
| |
| Iowa |
| |
| Kansas |
| |
| Kentucky |
| |
| Louisiana |
| |
| Maine |
| |
| Maryland |
| |
| Massachusetts |
| |
| Michigan |
| |
| Minnesota |
| |
| Mississippi |
| |
| Missouri |
| |
| Montana |
| |
| Nebraska |
| |
| New Hampshire |
| |
| New Jersey |
| |
| New Mexico |
| |
| New York |
| |
| North Dakota |
| |
| Ohio |
| |
| Oklahoma |
| |
| Oregon |
| |
| Pennsylvania |
| |
| Rhode Island |
| |
| South Carolina |
| |
| South Dakota |
| |
| Tennessee |
| |
| Texas |
| |
| Utah |
| |
| Vermont |
| |
| Virginia |
| |
| Washington |
| |
| West Virginia |
| |
| Wisconsin |
| |
| Wyoming |
| |
|