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By Lyle Hillyard
Utah State Senator, District 25

I was attending a public meeting the other day when a good friend asked me when the legislature was going to get serious about funding education and raise taxes. It reminded me, once again, of the misconception about how “we are always cutting education” and that is why there are still the concerns about what we are doing to improve the lagging success of public education.

Of course, I mentioned all the money we have put into education the last few years. I heard Gov. Huntsman point out that the initial salary for beginning teachers has risen about 20% in the last two years. In this last year’s budget, public education received, by far, the most new state dollars.

My final point in talking to my friend was this: if pouring nothing but money was the solution for what he thought ailed public education, the huge amounts of money that we had invested the past few years would have reduced or at least started to reduce his concerns (and it obviously had not). More money would probably help every program but he finally suggested that maybe the biggest help to public education would be for more parents to become involved with the process in helping their children and holding them to a higher expectation of performance. After all, helping public education succeed is not just a problem for teachers. All of us need to be involved at a level beyond merely complaining.

2 Comments:

 Micah Bruner said...

I like what John Adams said on the subject:

"The foundation of national morality must be laid in private
families. . . . How is it possible that Children can have any
just Sense of the sacred Obligations of Morality or Religion if,
from their earliest Infancy, they learn their Mothers live in
habitual Infidelity to their fathers, and their fathers in as
constant Infidelity to their Mothers?"

-- John Adams (Diary, 2 June 1778) (Thanks to the Patriot Post)

While Pres. Adams refers to morality, this same principle applies to all learning. Unfortunately there are homes where the parents cannot or will not assist their children in learning. While it is debatable what role the government should play in assisting those children, there is little doubt that the level of assistance from family and friends of family is the biggest indicator in the successful education of any child.

5/09/2008 11:03 AM  

 Anonymous said...

I appreciate Senator Hillyard as being one who will truly listen. It's true that pouring money into education won't necessarily make it better, but it's also true that starving it certainly won't either. Education is personnel intensive. Salaries are the greatest portion of every district's expenditures. With the increasing costs of insurance and benefits it's hard to make a dent in actual teacher pay. Also, with the continued increase in the number of students, even the class-size reduction money that has been given over the years has done little more that keep up with growth. (See the legislative audit)
Teachers today are working harder and are more professional than ever before. Some educational leaders have a great vision for the future and have tapped into ways to improve teaching AND student learning. With that, there is much more expected of teachers. But also with that, districts are scraping and scrambling to find the funding for teacher mentoring and training that is so good for students. In spite of the success of some of these programs, we have yet to see the needed money from the legislature to help with them. Professional learning communities is something that many school districts have implemented that is having a great impact on student learning. It would be wonderful if districts could offer increased salaries for "after school" collaboration. There certainly needs to be more dialog and a better working relationship with the legislature and education leaders.

5/10/2008 5:43 PM  

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