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Leavitt and education

He stuck to goals, but how much did they help?

By Jennifer Toomer-Cook

Deseret News

Published: Saturday, Dec. 6, 2003 7:49 p.m. MST

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Still, Utah remains at the nation's cellar in per-student funding. Public education's share of the state budget has dipped from 35.2 percent to 32.2 percent. And teacher salary hikes still haven't reached the national average, where they hovered about a decade beginning in the late 1970s.

Also, test scores haven't moved much, despite the funding infusion and the education reform initiatives.

Scores of the Stanford Achievement Test, which is designed to show how well students in Utah stack up to national peers, show plateaus and some backsliding.

In 1992, total battery scores were in the 54th, 53rd and 56th percentiles for fifth, eighth- and 11th-graders, respectively, compared to the national median of 50.

In 1996, however, Utah's fifth- and eighth-graders scored slightly lower, in the 53rd and 50th percentiles, while 11th-graders held steady.

A new edition of the test was taken in 1997, and Utah's scores were in the 50th, 54th and 60th percentiles for fifth-, eighth- and 11th graders, respectively. By last fall, fifth-grade scores had inched up one percentile, but scores dipped by one percentile point for eighth-graders and by four percentile points for 11th graders.

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Not enough comparable data are available from the state's core curriculum tests, or CRTs. Those scores could be examined in the coming years to better see if things are progressing — particularly, to gauge the success of what Leavitt sees as his crowning achievement: a competency-based education system.

Competency-based

Leavitt says it's time to hold kids accountable for learning state education standards instead of just advancing them grade to grade with marks as low as D-minuses.

Perhaps Bruce, now working on setting up one of Leavitt's high-tech charter schools in the northern Utah county, best sums up reasons for the switch:

"How would you like to be worked on by a heart surgeon who earned D grades?"

The State Board of Education had set up a grand plan for a competency-based education system.

Deseret Morning News graphic