Vilsack Changes Direction for Iowa Education

By Sam Garchik

On Thursday, Governor Vilsack signed 5 education bills into law. They are:

SENATE FILE 2272: Beginning with the graduating class of 2011, students will be required to take four years of English and three years of math, science and social studies.
HOUSE FILE 2792: Spends $210 million over three years to boost teacher pay. It also includes money to help create greater equity in the property tax allocations for school districts across the state.
HOUSE FILE 2769: Spends $15 million extra next budget year to improve access to preschools.
HOUSE FILE 2095: Increases state aid to public schools by 4 percent in the 2007-08 school year.
HOUSE FILE 2527: Provides nearly $900 million for education in Iowa, including the state's universities and community colleges.

Although the $2,700 teacher pay raise is much needed and progressive, the first bill, Senate File 2272, is the most interesting of the bunch.

For years, Iowans only had to take one state-mandated class to graduate from high school: American Government. This meant that every district, including the community college high school programs, could set their own standards. For example, in Iowa City, where I live, students are required to take 2 years of math to graduate, and in Kirkwood's Adult High School Diploma Program, students are required to take 2.5 years of math to graduate.

One problem with this policy was that the University of Iowa required 3 years of math for admissions. So, it was entirely possible that you could graduate from high school, but not have enough classes to get into college. I could see that this is what the governor was worried about, but district flexibility wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

Many special education students have learning disabilities that are math related, so programs could be worked out to get them through classes that covered math concepts and spent less time working the calculator. The bill is also not good news for the non-college bound, who probably will never use anything they learn in that third year of math (Trigonometry, for those who are keeping score).

I'm not denying that math is important, mind you. I just think that this is one of those bills that is going to have serious impacts on districts around the state. Does this bill mean that students will have to take less elective classes in order to get their requirements out of the way? Does that mean that arts and foreign language classes will be cut? This certainly changes Iowa's standing as the only state with no state-driven standards for high school graduation, and is another example of the reach of NCLB.

Stay tuned to your local school board for fights about who gets to keep their job and who has to go back to school to learn how to teach math and science.