Governor Michael O. Leavitt

Cedar City, Utah

I view our time today as an important opportunity. It is the one time during the year when our entire education leadership community is together. So I would like to make some observations today that fall into three categories -- legislative action, public education and higher education.

I would first like to talk about some observations and challenges to the Legislature. The first is an acknowledgment that the Legislature -- despite times when there have been heavy demands for investment in other areas -- has been willing and continues to be willing to invest in education. I would like to simply to say how greatly I admire it and appreciate it because this is a point in time, I believe in human history, when we simply cannot back down from our investment in education.

The second observation regards the role of the state and the national government. It is very clear to me that education is a growing national priority. There will be those and are those who confuse education as a national priority with education as a federal priority. There is a substantial difference. And the challenge I would like to leave to those of you involved in local education governments and those of us involved in state government, would be we absolutely have to continue to make that distinction.

If we do not, there is a high and heavy appetite for the national government to exercise control over education, and they will do it through a number of means. We, at the local level, have to continue the pressure for that to not occur because public education will not be improved. Educational outcomes will not be improved if that results.

The third observation to legislators: we have started, this year, down a road on middle school education and improvement. We reduced class sizes in middle schools by two. We are now embarking on the development of a middle school task force that will look at things such as school safety. I would like to encourage that it continue next session. It is time for us to continue to focus on middle schools, so the third observation is -- let's continue down that road.

The fourth observation deals with the general area of how we can develop innovation in public education. I would just like to say, as a principle, that when we use top-down mandates from the Legislature in any way, I think that we constrict innovation. I would like to, as a principle, encourage the Legislature during our discussions here, during interim committees and in the session to maintain the principle of continuing to return control of local school communities to local schools.

The last observation is what is now becoming an echo, but needs to be stated over and over again, and that is the need for our schools to be gun-free, and for the need for our Legislature to act on that.

Now moving to the areas of public education generally. To those of you who are involved in public education governance, five observations: The first is to ask you to continue the miracle of doing better with less. Frankly, it is a miracle that we depend on now. It is not something we can look at as a lucky phenomenon; we absolutely have to have it. Given the pressures, we have to do more than most states do with less.

The second is to comment on charter schools. As I understand it, the charter school regulations are being promulgated and will begin to receive proposals in the very near future. I would like to ask the entire school community to devote themselves to the proposition of making these work. I believe that they will provide an enormous engine for innovation in the public schools and will provide opportunities for things to occur that otherwise would not.

The third area I would like to comment on is the discussion you had this morning regarding extending the number of school days or the length of the school year. I would like to make it clear that it is not my purpose today to either endorse or to oppose the proposal that Superintendent Scott Bean has made. I would, however, like to make it clear that I believe the discussion needs to revolve around achievement, not time. Extending the school year may be a good idea, but using the time we have now already in the system should be a top priority. I know that the superintendent believes that as well.

One place we could start, I might add, is on the last week of school or the days just prior to vacations. I would like to make a very serious comment about this. There is a cultural phenomenon that is occurring in our schools. It used to be that the last day of school, people would clean up the school and put away books and do other things that were administrative. I hear more and more parents commenting now that it's not one day, it's not two days, it's not three days. It is literally the last week of school that is devoted to administrative detail. The 180 days that we have already allocated is not being used, and that is true not just of the last day of school, but it is true of major vacations. Again, I think that we need to be focusing on achievement, not time.

I would like to comment on another, what I believe to be, a cultural phenomenon that is occurring in our public schools. We have a desperate need to continue to recruit and reward the best and the brightest of our citizens in education. Gratefully, we are making progress in our capacity to reward them financially. We are not where we would like to be, but we are getting to the point that we are competitive, and we need to remain there. The cultural phenomenon I would like to refer to is our inability to remove incompetent teachers.

Now, I don't believe that it is necessarily a lack of law, or for that matter, a lack of process. It is a cultural lack of will in many cases. It is an expectation of how hard it is. Now, I don't know the exact number. I have known it in years past, but it is painfully small in a group of 18,000 to 20,000 public school teachers around the state. It is a handful of people who are ultimately replaced because of incompetence. I want to make it clear. I think we have wonderful teachers in this state, and I am not calling for any kind of wholesale purge. What I am suggesting is that there are many times when teachers demonstrate a lack of competence over time as reflected by a repeated set of symptoms that are very clear, and we simply end up moving them places. It is a function of training administrators. It is a function of the will.

I have spoken to the Teachers' Association about this, and I have found teachers to be generally very supportive of this as a concept until you get down to individual situations. It is not a lack of process or a lack of law; it is a cultural phenomenon, and I today would like to call upon those of you who are in public governments to pay some particular attention to this.

The last comment I would like to make is on the area of transitioning into technology. We are spending, and will continue to spend, millions of dollars on training teachers and our education community to move into the knowledge era, but I would like to ask the entire education community to recognize that learning technology is a professional responsibility. It is not something that our system can afford to teach everyone everything, meaning our teachers. I spend a fair amount of time, probably more than the average, because it takes me longer, trying to figure out how to run basic applications. It is a trial and error process, but it is something that every person in every part of society is having to do in order to learn to do their job whatever it is. So, I would call upon all of us to accept the challenge of learning technology as a professional responsibility. We will continue to invest to help in that professional responsibility.

Moving to the challenges of higher education. I today would like to repeat my admonition to those of you who are working in the governance of higher education to work toward an arrangement where the trustees of our institutions deal with the routine institutional governance, and that the board of regents concentrate on the larger issues, such as positioning the system for what I believe will be the most challenging transition in higher education history.

I note that you have divided into four subcommittees as you move forward in the strategic plan. I think that they are appropriate, and I think that they are taking on very difficult issues. We need to ask ourselves, "Are we using the full power of strategic alliances among and between the institutions? Are our institutions aligned properly in terms of their mission and role? What should the role of technology delivery be?"

The second point of the five I would like to make is that in your strategic planning effort, that you envision a higher education system that will clearly be a global marketplace, that will include new competitors, competitors from publishing companies, from corporations, international competition, where there will, in fact, be institutions that will be imperiled because there will be competition and winners and losers. That is a new environment in which we have never operated before. A system in which it has an expanded role beyond the role of simply educating a steady stream of new students. The societies of the future that will succeed and prosper will not be those that succeed in educating what we have known to be traditional students. It will be those societies that are able to literally lift the level of learning as it occurs among all of their citizens. That will be the expanded mission of higher education in the future.

Third point: it is my belief that Utah has the capacity to become the center on this planet for technology-delivered education. With Western Governor's University being headquartered in the state, with the very solid head start that our institutions have in terms of being able to deliver and having experience in delivering education through technology, there is no reason that we should not set that objective and achieve it. I would like to challenge you today as we have in the past to move forward with the Electronic Community College and have it fully operational this year, to have a system strategy to deal with technology and to determine how you can best exploit the opportunities that will be presented by Western Governor's University. I would like to issue a special challenge to all of you in this room today. I would like to challenge every one of you, and a challenge that I will accept myself, to take a technology-delivered course, to sign up and to take it. Take your pick. I would just admonish you to take a good one. There are good ones and not so good ones. But I believe you will see that those who are critics of this as a delivery system have not experienced it.

As I speak with those who are experiencing first rate technology -delivered education, those who worry about the level of interaction are finding out that there is more interaction, that you can sit in the back of a class of three or four hundred students and not even need to show up, but if you are expected to deliver e-mail to a college professor and interact, that the level of interaction is greater, that the level of capacity to bring together groups for collaboration is greater, that the capacity to use resources that otherwise would not be available is greater.

Now, I am not here to say that this will replace in any way the classroom and the chalkboard, but I believe for those of you who are going to be responsible to bring us into the 21st century to fully understand this, you need to take a course. I would ask our university and college presidents to put forward a list of your finest technology-delivered courses and make it available to this group, and I would ask you to take a course and see what the future will be.

Fourth observation: I would challenge the regents, to create a series of institutionally-offered competency degrees based on the degrees that are currently being proposed by Western Governor's University. I don't see these as a substitute for what is happening on the campuses, but as an alternative that would be available to our students.

Fifth, I would like to challenge the public education system and the higher education system to devise a system where a student can graduate from high school in our state and get an associate degree at the same time. That exists today. But I believe the difference is that we need to create a culture where it is not just possible, but that it is a viable alternative and that we offer incentives.

For example, the incentive could be that any student who earns an associate degree before September of the year they graduate from high school should be given a scholarship at a state university or college for their final two years, making it possible for them, literally, to go through college with four years tuition paid. If that were to occur, the state would come out dollars ahead because by not having to pay and subsidize the first two years of education, since it occurred at the same time as the high school education, we are able to go through the last two years and come out financially ahead. The student comes out ahead. This is a win, win, win proposition. The public schools win, the student wins and the system of higher education wins.

So, again, in summary, the Legislature, I challenge you to continue to fund education; to keep it local; to make certain that we continue to assist in middle school development; that we unleash incentives by not micro-managing; and that we keep our schools safe.

To public education leaders -- that we continue the miracle of doing more than they do nationally with less; that we make charter schools work; that we focus on achievement and not time; that we recruit and reward the best of our teachers, but that we acknowledge the need to remove incompetent teachers; and that we accept the challenge of learning technology as a professional responsibility.

To higher education -- that we recognize we are moving into a different world; that the regents need to focus on system issues, the trustees on institutional issues; that our strategic planning effort should envision that the higher education world is vastly different than what it will be in the future; that we become the center of the planet for technology-delivered education; that each of you take on the challenge of taking a technology-delivered course so that you can see how it works; to create competency-based degrees; and that we offer our students an opportunity to accelerate their process and enhance their position.

This is an amazing time we are involved in. The state is experiencing great prosperity. We will decide today whether that prosperity will continue, depending on our investment in education. Thank you for all that you do in making this a great system of education.