The following summary includes education-related proposals from the 2012 state of the state address. To assure that this information reaches you in a timely manner, minimal attention has been paid to style (capitalization, punctuation) or format.
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Governor Bill Haslam's State of the State Address
PROPOSALS
Economic Development
-- Focus on education to make sure that Tennessee is a state that attracts companies and keeps its best and brightest graduates in state with good-paying, high-quality jobs. Make sure graduates have strong enough skills to meet companies' needs.
Educator Quality
-- Make the evaluation process better. The State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE) will be spending the year talking to teachers and principals statewide to evaluate the evaluation system, and after gathering and analyzing that information, there may be changes that need to be made.
-- Recruit, retain and reward the best and brightest employees through the TEAM Act (Tennessee Excellence, Accountability and Management Act).
Federal
-- Be one of the first states to receive a waiver from the federal government's No Child Left Behind law. Build an accountability system that measures growth and improvement and gives every school a chance to success by doing better each year.
Finance
-- Rather than cutting the education budget, continue to fund the Basic Education Program (BEP) cost increases.
-- Restore over $100 million out of $160 million of slated cuts that had included programs like the Coordinated School Health Program, extended teacher contracts, etc., to protect vital services
Postsecondary Finance, Financial Aid and Costs
-- Increase higher education's operating budgets.
-- Increase the amount of money available in need-based scholarships.
-- Keep tuition increases to a minimum to encourage more access to more students.
-- Provide state funding for a number of new buildings and lab facilities on state campuses.
Postsecondary Governance
-- Strengthen the Tennessee Higher Education Commission's tie to the Governor's Office. THEC functions as a policy arm for higher education issues, and like the policy chief for K-12 education reports to the governor, it makes sense that higher education should have a similar structure.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Charter Schools
-- Expanded charter school opportunities.
Financial Aid
-- Made lottery scholarships available to students for summer school to encourage them to finish faster and to help universities use their campuses year round.
Teaching Quality
-- Reformed tenure laws.
http://forward.tn.gov/stateofthestate/files/2012StateoftheStateAddress.pdf |
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