2010 State of the States
For the version of our State of the State address roundups, click here.
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Gov. Riley announced that Alabama public schools would see a $400 million increase when he makes his fiscal year 2011 budget proposal. He also urged lawmakers to approve charter school legislation to better position Alabama for a slice of $4 billion in Race to the Top Fund grants from the economic stimulus, which are intended to reward states for making progress in certain education redesign areas. Using a football metaphor, Gov. Riley asked, “Would it have been fair if Alabama had to get 12 yards to make a first down and Texas only had to get 10? Of course not. Yet, because we don’t have charter schools, that’s exactly the position we’re in. We don’t get to compete for these education dollars on a level playing field, and that does nothing but hurt our students.”
Gov. Janice Brewer warned in her annual talk to lawmakers that she’d have to make further cuts in state jobs and services because of the state’s economic troubles, but still proposed several education reforms. Among them, the Republican governor plans to work with the legislature to stop promotions of students who can’t read at the end of 3rd grade and to change the labels in the state’s ranking system of schools. She proposed giving schools letter grades for their performance instead of the current labels that range from “failing” to “excelling.” She also would like to strengthen the state’s online data system for schools. The governor praised the state’s support for parents to make various kinds of choices for the schooling of their children, such as charter schools and home schooling, in addition to regular public schools. 
After carving deeply into California’s K-12 budget over the past two years, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vowed Wednesday to spare schools from further cuts in the budget he will propose for fiscal 2011. In his final State of the State address, the term-limited governor said that the state’s still-ailing budget will require more painful spending cuts in the coming months, but that he would draw the line on further cuts to both K-12 and higher education. Spending on the state’s public schools has been slashed by nearly $18 billion since 2008, as the governor and lawmakers struggled to close what was a $62 billion deficit. K-12 spending this year still makes up about 37 percent of California’s $91.4 billion overall budget. The state’s total public school enrollment is about 6 million students. The fiscally battered state now faces a nearly $20 billion deficit over the next 18 months. | Read More
In a speech that referred to Thomas Paine and Alexis de Tocqueville and noted the pain and sacrifice Southern families endured during the Great Depression, Gov. Perdue urged the state legislature to make difficult budget choices now to spare greater economic crises in the generations to come. In his final State of the State address, Gov. Perdue, who was scheduled to unveil his fiscal 2011 budget proposal on Jan. 15, called for restraint in public spending and redefinition of priorities across services, including education. “For too long, the easy answer in education has been to preserve the status quo,” he said. “The prevailing winds have often forced us to accept watered-down compromises that, frankly, nibbled around the edges.”
One potential area of change, he suggested, is in teacher compensation. Referring to a plan he outlined earlier in the week, Mr. Perdue said a pay-for-performance component should be added to the current teacher-pay system. Instead of increasing salaries based on teachers’ time in the classroom, the new system would award bonuses to those deemed effective based on classroom observations and growth in student achievement.
Kansas faces a $400 million deficit in the next fiscal year, Gov. Mark Parkinson told legislators in his first State of the State address, and increases in the state’s sales and cigarette taxes are needed to help fill the gap. Without those increases, he said, cuts would have to be made to the $3.1 billion Kansas plans to spend annually on education on K-12 education in the fiscal 2011 budget, an increase of approximately $32 million over the previous fiscal year. Schools and other areas were hard hit by a budget cut of nearly $1 billion last year in the fiscal 2010 general fund budget, which now stands at $5.4 billion. The fiscal 2011 budget calls for $5.8 million in general fund spending alone. “The alternative to coming up with this $400 million is not acceptable. It would require a round of cuts that would do years of damage to what we have built,” Gov. Parkinson said. “We would hurt every school district in this state. More schools would close, and class sizes would reach intolerable levels.”
Rather than propose cuts in spending, Gov. Jindal endorsed three proposals that would redirect existing funds. He stressed the importance of passing the Red Tape Reduction Act, which would give regular public schools the same flexibility and state funding as charter schools, but in return require the schools to agree to a four-year contract to increase student learning. The governor also emphasized the need to reduce dropout rates and suggested ending an ineffective pre-GED program and giving that money to a successful jobs education program called Jobs for America’s Graduates. The third proposal was to implement a value-added assessment that was passed the previous year to monetarily reward teachers who bring underperforming students up to grade level.
Education received more than a few mentions in the eighth and final State of the State address for Gov. Granholm, who is term-limited and will leave office after this year. She asked the legislature to spare education from any further budget reductions and to restore the state’s Promise Scholarships, which were cut last year. “I will also draw the line against additional education cuts in the year ahead,” she said. “Is there a single family in Michigan that would choose to make ends meet in hard times by first sacrificing the needs of the children?” The governor did not present any numbers last week, but said she would present her budget this week, as Michigan law requires.
Gov. Pawlenty promised not to reduce funding in K-12 programs while making cuts to the state budget. Instead he asked lawmakers to reform teacher tenure and pass the “Teaching Transformation Act,” a bill which was unpopular with teachers' unions. Gov. Pawlenty said the bill would “dramatically improve teacher quality, training, and accountability for results.” He said tenure should be renewed every five years and based on student performance evaluations.
Faced with a substantial fiscal squeeze, Gov. Barbour urged lawmakers to pass legislation giving him new budgeting flexibility, in part so that he can spare K-12 education from a significant cut. Fiscal 2010 revenues face an 8.1 shortfall, Mr. Barbour said in his State of the State address. But under Mississippi law, the governor cannot cut any department or agency by more than 5 percent unless all other agencies, expect for debt service, have received cuts of at least 5 percent. Any cuts above 5 percent must be for the same percentage across all agencies. The governor urged the Mississippi House of Representatives to pass legislation allowing him to cut individual agencies by up to 10 percent before having to make cuts uniform across the board. The state Senate already has approved a bill giving the governor such authority, which would expire after this year. Such legislation would make it possible to spare K-12 from a likely cut of at least 8 percent, Gov. Barbour said. “The 10 percent bill would allow smaller cuts in … K-12 education than current law, as I would use my discretion to that end,” he said.
With a $6 billion budget and a fiscal 2010 deficit projected at $1 billion, Gov. Gibbons asked teachers to do more with less this year and take a 6 percent pay reduction. He unveiled an education reform plan that calls for empowering local school boards and parents to make decisions about their children’s education. He suggested that policies such as mandatory pupil-teacher ratios in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grades and full-day kindergarten be eliminated, but left the decision to school boards. The governor quoted the state department of education’s announcement that 142 of the 613 public schools in Nevada qualify as the worst schools in the nation, and he said that the state should stop “throwing more money” at a system that doesn’t change.
Gov. Bill Richardson told lawmakers that while there’s still room for “targeted cuts” in the proposed state budget of about $5 billion for fiscal 2011, he doesn’t want to cut teachers’ salaries or classroom spending. The governor’s staff could not give an immediate estimate for the K-12 portion of that budget proposal. Mr. Richardson lauded the state’s investment in increasing teachers’ salaries over the past decade. He also held up the state’s spending on prekindergarten and full-day kindergarten as valuable, saying that the first class of children who started as full-day kindergartners, who had risen to 3rd grade by last year, performed much better on standardized tests than 3rd graders who preceded them. The governor also pledged his support for “innovative charter schools.” They provide competition that is healthy for the state, he said in his speech to the legislature.
In his final State of the State address, Gov. Henry expressed pride in the progress made in education during his two terms as governor. Despite a $1.3 billion state budget shortfall, the governor vowed to protect funding for education in the current budget year. In fact, teacher salaries actually increased this school year, and the state began covering the full cost of teachers’ health insurance, he told state lawmakers. In addition, Oklahoma’s Promise scholarship program was preserved in the current budget year, and the state has enacted full-day kindergarten as well as a voluntary pre-K program for its youngest learners. Gov. Henry also recognized the Achieving Classroom Excellence initiative, designed to raise academic standards and accountability. The state has applied for a Race to the Top grant under the federal economic-stimulus program, which, if granted, may go toward implementing performance-based teacher pay or building a comprehensive data system, he said.
In a final State of the State address that included an apology to his wife for an extramarital affair that led to calls for his removal from office, Gov. Mark Sanford praised the educational accomplishments of legislators during his two-term tenure. The governor, who is term-limited and in his last year in office, praised a charter school reform passed in 2006 that created a statewide body to approve charter proposals and a statewide district that runs all South Carolina charter schools. He also pointed to the creation of tech-prep programs by the state’s Education Economic Development Act, as well as improvements in the schools’ virtual-learning capacity, reforms to health and fitness curricula, and an increase in choice of state-funded early-childhood- education programs.
Gov. Bredesen is scheduled to give his address on February 7.
In his first State of the State address, Gov. Herbert vowed to protect K-12 education from spending cuts amid the tough budgetary climate, and highlighted his plans to create a broad-based education commission to develop “new and innovative solutions” for public schools. As part of the $11.3 billion budget plan Gov. Herbert put forward in December for fiscal 2011, state spending on K-12 education would remain at $293 million, according to the governor’s office. He took office in mid-August after his predecessor, Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., stepped down to become the U.S. ambassador to China. The new governor said he’s optimistic that the Governor’s Educational Excellence Commission, which he announced in December and will chair, will “find, develop, and implement” solutions to the state’s education ills. A spokesman for the governor said the commission would have 25 members “from across the state’s public and higher education communities, as well as the business community.” The governor also highlighted the need to emphasize education in the fields of science, technology, engneering, and mathematics.
In his annual address to lawmakers, Gov. Douglas proposed a series of steps aimed at reining in education costs that he sees as excessive and plugging a $150 million state budget deficit. If the Republican governor gets his way, the state will trim the size of its teacher workforce by leaving half of retirement vacancies unfilled; consolidate its 290 school districts into as few as 12; and require teachers to shoulder more of the burden for their health-insurance costs. The governor also called for reforming the state’s 13-year-old education property-tax law by reducing the number of exemptions for property owners and allowing schools to report when their enrollments decrease by as much as 10 percent. The latter proposal takes aim at a provision in the school-funding law that is intended to shield districts from dramatic decreases in per-pupil funding by prohibiting them from reporting enrollment drops of more than 3.5 percent. The state’s K-12 public school enrollment is about 93,000. “My proposals for education reform go to the heart of runaway spending,” Gov. Douglas said, saying they would result in $33 million in property tax relief. Mr. Douglas also called for eliminating a state law that bars students from using distance-learning programs that are located out of state.
In his fifth State of the State address, West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin III called on state lawmakers to pass a law that would enable districts to keep schools open 180 days a year for the Mountain State’s 268,000 K-12 students. “Our current law requires students to attend school for 180 days a year,” he said, “but let’s face the facts: This is not happening.” The Democratic governor also asked lawmakers to expand state borrowing authority to finance school safety improvements and other construction projects, pledged to enlarge a state program that provides free books to preschoolers, and said he would funnel $1 million into efforts by the Westport, Conn.-based Save the Children organization to improve health and economic opportunities for poor children in the state’s most rural counties. Mr. Manchin also said his state would apply for the first round of economic-stimulus grants available under the U.S. Department of Education’s $4.35 billion Race to the Top fund.
Gov. Doyle, now in his eighth and final year as governor, urged lawmakers to embrace his call for mayoral control of the Milwaukee school system, and vowed to protect aid for education from a new round of expected midyear cuts to the biennial budget he signed last June. “We need a superintendent appointed by the mayor who will have a clear mission of reform and the ability to drive real change, day after day, month after month, year after year,” he said. “If you do not act now, you will be picking up the pieces of a broken school system within a few years, and failing children who desperately need your help.” The governor’s plan appears to face an uphill climb in the legislature, however. In fact, he called a special session in December to enact such a governance measure, but lawmakers did not approve it. Overall, Mr. Doyle said education is central to the states future. All of the investments we are making in our economy, from agriculture to manufacturing to clean energy, must be built on a strong education system, he said.
Gov. Freudenthal is scheduled to give his address on February 8.
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