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Evers delivers first State of Education address
Posted: 9/24/2009 3:14:53 PM
State Superintendent Tony Evers, who was elected this past April to succeed Elizabeth Burmaster, delivered his first State of Education address from Madison.
From the Department of Public Instruction:
Evers offered a broad outline of the direction he is moving public education as part of his first State of Education address Thursday.
“I pledged to the citizens of Wisconsin that I would work to ensure every child is a graduate. To do this we must: recruit and retain quality educators, invest in innovation, ensure safe and respectful schools, advance common sense and transparent accountability, and work toward fair and sustainable school funding. We must educate children now for jobs that will be the foundation of Wisconsin’s prosperity,” he said.
Evers highlighted Wisconsin’s educational accomplishments, which include nation-leading graduation rates and college entrance exam scores as well as strong increases in the number of students taking rigorous college level courses. “Our schools in every part of Wisconsin help our children to become active citizens, productive and skilled workers, and leaders who have risen to the challenges they face, generation after generation,” he said.
In his first three months in office, Evers centered his work on an unwavering commitment to children through strong public schools and libraries. Plans are advancing for the first-ever Graduation Summit in December, which will focus attention and efforts on increasing graduation rates. Work continues on revising state academic standards for English language arts and mathematics, along with efforts to develop a new assessment system. Additionally, Wisconsin:
• published the nation’s first curriculum planning guide for financial literacy,
• launched job placement centers in public libraries across the state,
• attained universal free wireless Internet access in almost all of the state’s public libraries, and
• secured a $30 million grant to expand charter schools and educational opportunities across the state.
Evers also noted the work in Milwaukee to increase parental involvement, the consistency of curriculum, and the time and quality of instruction. “I am aggressively working with community and state partners to improve education for Milwaukee’s children,” he said. “Let me be clear. All school districts in the state need Milwaukee to succeed. All of us must get behind our efforts to lift the achievement of Milwaukee’s children. We need to leave behind blame and excuses, and build on the good being done there by hard-working educators, parents, and students.”
While Evers commended current efforts to improve education, he insisted that more must be done. “Throughout Wisconsin, I am working with community, state, and national partners to further transform our public schools and ensure that a quality education is available no matter where a student lives,” Evers said. “We are living in exciting times, and I believe it is possible for plans that seemed unattainable in the past to actually happen.”
The national common core standards initiative, which dovetails with Wisconsin’s revised academic standards, recognizes the mobility of students and families and the global scope of our economy. The standards define the skills and knowledge students need to succeed in college and careers and will be internationally benchmarked. In addition to raising the rigor and relevance of classroom instruction, the collaborative effort “frees us to completely redesign our assessment and accountability system,” he said. That system potentially would combine state, district, and classroom assessments and provide timely results to inform instruction and improve student achievement.
Evers also called for expansion of Internet bandwidth in all schools and libraries to allow access to “virtual” global learning opportunities. “What an opportunity, especially for our rural schools and libraries,” Evers said.
He envisioned piloting an innovative teacher compensation system that sustains professional growth, supports new teachers, provides incentives for the best educators to work in chronically low-achieving schools, and provides additional salary for teachers who demonstrate accomplished teaching based on increased student learning. “In the end, it’s about the people who serve our children,” Evers said praising educators and public librarians. “These hard working public servants modestly reach for those small successes that add up over years of schooling to an educated, productive member of our society.
Educators are building Wisconsin’s economic future every day. They don’t expect shout outs, high fives, or tweets. They do expect and deserve our support and commitment to educating all our students.”
He told his audience that more will come. “This is no time to have an aversion to risk. Life is too short. We all need to join together to work for our kids and their parents, for our educators, and for Wisconsin’s future.”