2008 State of the State Addresses Education-Related Proposals by Issue

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. Accountability 2 Accountability--Sanctions/Interventions 2 Accountability--School Improvement 3 Assessment 2 At-Risk (incl. Dropout Prevention) 1 At-Risk (incl. Dropout Prevention)--Drugs/Alcohol 4 Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano's State of the State Address Drugs/Alcohol -- Direct that substance abuse dollars be targeted so that the families of children in the child protective system are first in line for treatment and services. Early Learning -- Implement the voter-approved initiative aimed at early childhood. Beginning with the youngest children, focus on preschool and quality child care, so that children are fully prepared for the all-day kindergarten we now provide. English Language Learners -- 15 percent of students come from families that do not speak English. These students must learn to read, write and speak in English as soon as possible. I put this challenge to legislative leadership: take our tax dollars out of court and put them back in the classroom, where they belong. Health --Implement KidsShare to allow families – who are currently shut out of the health care system – to buy health insurance for their children at the parents' cost, with no subsidy from the state's general fund. -- Direct the Department of Administration to find ways for the State Health Insurance plan to allow all young adults – up to the age of 25 – to continue coverage on their parents' insurance, so long as this can be done in a way that is cost-neutral to taxpayers. High School -- Look at everything – including AIMS – to make sure we're testing for the right things, at the right times, and for the right reasons. Now that we've changed the graduation standards, tests need to be changed to match. -- Make reasonable alternatives available for students who can't succeed in a regular classroom (An Arizona diploma should demonstrate that a student is fully prepared for higher education, whether in a technical or vocational setting, a community college, or a university.) -- Implement strong support for students to meet the higher expectations; reward students when they succeed. -- Create the Centennial Scholars program to guarantee free tuition at Arizona's community colleges or universities for any student who stays out of trouble and maintains at least a "B" average during high school (beginning with the eighth graders of today who are the high school class of 2012 – Arizona's centennial class, and with all the classes that follow). -- Raise the high-school dropout age to 18. Teaching Quality -- Sustain a higher-quality corps of math and science teachers by expanding teacher loan forgiveness, scholarships, and incentives. Tuition -- For students who begin college at an Arizona university, prohibit raising his or her tuition for four years. Postsecondary Completion -- Double the number of bachelor's degrees issued by state universities by 2020. Provide support to universities to increase graduation rates, retain more students, create more options for students in rural areas, enroll more first-generation students, and boost the number of students coming from community colleges. http://www.governor.state.az.us/dms/upload/GS_2008%20SOS%20Address.pdf Idaho Governor Butch Otter's State of the State/State Budget Message Quality Assurance In conjunction with the state superintendent and business and education leaders, develop a plan for making Idaho the nation's leader in quality, cost-effective education, with an initial focus on K through 12. --Improve how Idaho students acquire the skills they need for technology-driven workplace changes and competing in the global economy. -- Assess what we spend for education and how we spend it. We'll then compare that with investment levels and best practices of high-performing systems here and abroad. Community Colleges -- Continue startup financial commitment of $5 million for the foreseeable future, as reflected in my budget. -- Double the amount of funding allocated to community colleges from state liquor sales. The College of Southern Idaho and North Idaho College now get $150,000 a year. My plan calls for CSI, NIC and the College of Western Idaho each to get $200,000 – for a total of $600,000. Financial Aid -- Provide an additional $50 million for the Opportunity Scholarship Trust Fund. Teacher Compensation -- Continue to ensure that state employee pay is competitive with comparable private-sector jobs. And we must advance the important cause of ensuring that Idaho's public school teachers are properly paid. Drugs/Alcohol -- Launch the Idaho Meth Project statewide media campaign. http://gov.idaho.gov/mediacenter/speeches/sp_2008/sp_sos2008.html Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley's State of the State Address Career and Technical Education -- Rededicate ourselves to reducing our drop-out rate with better career and technical programs available to high schools in every district where kids want them.  Drugs, Alcohol -- Increase the availability of drug treatment programs, as well as community based programs like Operation Safe Kids.  Economic/Workforce Development -- Develop the science, technology and public education that it will take to combat climate change and improve energy conservation and energy efficiency and to make Maryland a leader in the development of renewable energy and green building techniques of all kinds. -- Build a new system for educating our adults and harnessing the potential of our entire workforce.  Every single person matters.  -- Provide the little bit of help and training needed by Marylanders with disabilities who are talented and hardworking and want to get into the workforce.   -- Better align the education needs of our adults with the workforce needs of our employers and bring our adult education system into the 21st Century.  Leadership -- Find better ways to recruit great principals to our most challenged schools. Teaching Quality -- Do a better job of listening to our teachers in a regular systematic way, so that we are constantly improving the learning process and improving the working conditions in our classrooms that are so very essential to recruiting and retaining the highest quality teachers we possibly can for our kids.  STEM -- Find better ways to improve outcomes in science, technology and engineering and math.  Tuition/Fees -- Hold the line against the rising cost of college tuition. http://www.gov.state.md.us/speeches/080123.html West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin's State of the State Address Accountability -- Revoke the driver's licenses of students who are found to have committed serious offenses like assaulting a teacher or fellow student or bringing a dangerous weapon to school, and add a requirement that in order to obtain and keep a driver's license between the ages of 16 and 18, you must receive passing grades. Drugs, Alcohol -- Build upon the current success of Prevention Resource Officer Program, a cooperative effort between schools and law enforcement designed to put officers in schools to teach students about drug and safety issues and to recognize potential danger, prevent violence and respond to dangerous situations. Partner with local police and sheriff's departments to put Prevention Resource Officers in more schools in every county. Economic/Workforce Development -- Target higher education and work force development investments toward meeting the needs of the state's growing and emerging industries by creating "Bucks for Jobs." West Virginia must be a player in the 21st century world economy, and to do so we need to develop more intellectual and financial capital. "Bucks for Jobs" will achieve both these goals by leveraging smart, interconnected investments in economic development, higher education and work force training. A "Bucks for Brains" initiative, using one-time surplus monies, will create a $50 million endowment fund for our two research universities, WVU and Marshall, to stimulate world-class research and development and attract venture capital, which will eventually lead to jobs in emerging high-tech, high-wage industries. The state's investment will be matched, dollar for dollar, by private donations, resulting in sizable funds that will strengthen our most-promising research departments – ultimately leading to business spinoffs, new patents and job creation. Make sure that the money we're already spending on work force training is being accessed by the businesses that need it and that all businesses in our state know about "Training Bucks" and how to get them. -- Make a major investment in the development of two state-of-the-art advanced technical centers. These centers will offer training that is specialized to meet the needs of existing businesses as well as those new businesses that we are now attracting to the state, and they will collaborate directly with industry to design and deliver high-quality instruction. -- Invest in existing programs at community and technical colleges to fill the growing need for workers in allied health fields (from nurses to dental assistants, emergency medical technicians, pharmacy workers and surgery technicians). This investment will result in approximately 1,000 new allied health field graduates every year in West Virginia beginning in 2010. -- Ask the Promise Scholarship board to develop a rule requiring recipients to work in West Virginia following graduation as a condition of not having to pay back the Promise Scholarship. -- Add "payback" requirements for those new state employees who receive additional state-paid training, such as our State Police officers, pilots, engineers and others. Too often, we are spending state dollars to provide training for these new employees only to have them then leave us for other job opportunities outside of state government once their training is complete. Health -- Develop in our schools Kids First, a kindergarten health screening program. Through the use of administrative funds from the State Children's Health Insurance Program, West Virginia will establish a health services initiative that is the first in the nation to ensure every uninsured child entering kindergarten has a wellness screening prior to starting school. Teacher Compensation -- Require all of our counties to use 100 percent of the extra School Aid Formula money for classroom teachers' salaries. Safety/Student Discipline -- Improve the environment that our classroom teachers currently work in and our children currently learn in. The 21st Century Jobs Cabinet has been asked to develop the "West Virginia Bill of Rights and Responsibilities for Learning." The Bill of Rights will set standards both for the rights and responsibilities of students while in school and the authority of teachers to protect those rights and enforce those responsibilities. -- Go a step further with the state's requirement that districts have anti-bullying plans in place. Establish a commission to thoroughly review the anti-bullying practices of our schools and recommend the best ways to expand our efforts to identify and stop dangerous and bullying behavior before it becomes a threat, as well as how to best deal with disruptive students during the school day. http://www.wvgov.org/SoS2008/ManchinSOS010908.pdf Attendance 1 Bilingual/ESL 1 Career/Technical Education 3 Career/Technical Education--Career Academies/Apprenticeship 1 Choice of Schools 1 Choice of Schools--Charter Schools 1 Counseling/Guidance 1 Curriculum 2 Curriculum--Arts Education 1 Curriculum--Mathematics 2 Curriculum--Science 3 Economic/Workforce Development 22 Finance 4 Finance--Adequacy/Core Cost 3 Finance--Facilities 10 Finance--Funding Formulas 5 Finance--Lotteries 1 Finance--Resource Efficiency 2 Finance--State Budgets/Expenditures 17 Finance--Taxes/Revenues 8 Governance 2 Governance--Deregulation/Waivers/Home Rule 2 Governance--State Boards/Chiefs/Agencies 1 Health 13 High School 11 High School--Advanced Placement 1 High School--College Readiness 1 High School--Dual/Concurrent Enrollment 1 High School--Early Colleges/Middle Colleges 1 International Benchmarking 1 Leadership 2 Mentoring/Tutoring 1 No Child Left Behind 1 No Child Left Behind--Choice/Transfer 1 No Child Left Behind--School Support 2 Online Learning--Virtual Schools/Courses 2 P-16 or P-20 3 P-3 16 P-3 Child Care 1 P-3 Ensuring Quality 1 P-3 Kindergarten 5 P-3 Kindergarten--Full-Day Kindergarten 1 P-3 Preschool 6 Parent/Family 3 Postsecondary 8 Postsecondary Accountability 1 Postsecondary Affordability--Financial Aid 16 Postsecondary Affordability--Tuition/Fees 6 Postsecondary Affordability--Tuition/Fees--Prepd/College Savings Plans 1 Postsecondary Finance 5 Postsecondary Governance and Structures 3 Postsecondary Institutions--Community/Technical Colleges 5 Postsecondary Participation--Access 3 Postsecondary Students--Adults 4 Postsecondary Success--Completion 2 Reading/Literacy 2 Remediation (K-12) 2 Scheduling/School Calendar 3 Scheduling/School Calendar--Extended Day Programs 2 School Safety 8 School/District Structure/Operations 2 School/District Structure/Operations--Transportation 1 Special Education 2 Standards 2 State Longitudinal Data Systems 1 STEM 8 Student Achievement 1 Student Achievement--Closing the Achievement Gap 1 Teaching Quality 5 Teaching Quality--Certification and Licensure 1 Teaching Quality--Compensation and Diversified Pay 13 Teaching Quality--Induction Programs and Mentoring 2 Teaching Quality--Preparation 2 Teaching Quality--Recruitment and Retention 5 Teaching Quality--Recruitment and Retention--At-Risk Schools 1 Teaching Quality--Tenure or Continuing Contract 1 Technology 4 Technology--Computer Skills 1 Technology--Devices/Software/Hardware 1 Technology--Internet Safety 1 308