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Education in Montana ~ At the brink of an historic moment

The very face of Montana’s system of public education is about to change. Since the Montana Supreme Court upheld, by unanimous vote, District Court Judge Jeffery Sherlock’s decision that the state was not meeting its constitutional obligation to our schools, many of Montana’s finest minds have been working to craft a solution.

Since the very beginning, the Montana Quality Education Coalition has been committed to helping lawmakers devise a new system that meets our constitutional obligation and that will improve the quality education delivered to every student in every classroom, every day.

To be blunt, the state has not been well served by some of the information that has been presented to the Quality Schools Interim Committee. Certain consultant reports have simply failed any reasonable test in terms of either analytical analysis or providing solutions that would actually work in schools.

Conversely, the proposal put forth by the Montana Quality Education Coalition, called “Montana’s Promise” is steeped in the common sense of working Montana educators who daily confront the challenges of providing a quality public education to Montana students.

The time for patience is over. The time for action is now.

Fix What’s Broken For nearly a decade, educators have been arguing that the chief problems with Montana’s existing formula are as follows: It is overly sensitive to declining enrollments; it fails to provide dependable and needed inflationary increases; and it doesn’t adequately address the fixed costs of running schools.

Guest opinion
By Jack Copps, executive director Montana Quality Education Coalition

Full Text: http://www.mtstandard.com/articles/2005/10/09/newsopinion/hjjeijjajcgbfe.txt

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