Education News

The goal, he said in an interview last week, is to better prepare children for school and get more of them into college to make the United States more globally competitive, particularly with countries like China and India.

The NGA Center’s Honor States Grant Program is a $23.6 million, governor-led initiative to improve high school and college-ready graduation rates in 26 states.

In almost every other state that has been effective in improving its education system, the business community has been engaged to push for reforms.

The 2002 No Child Left Behind law has placed a greater emphasis on using objective data in schools.

The Department of Education reported that Idaho had a graduation rate of 81 percent in 2005, 6 1/2 percentage points behind the top state, Nebraska.

There seems to be an underlying deviousness to what MSU is trying to do. Its officials admit they want people to think of the Montana university first whenever Yellowstone is mentioned, so it can boost student and faculty recruitment, as well as fundraising. It plans to spend millions of dollars on a Yellowstone-focused research and teaching center at Big Sky.

Some parents have welcomed the requirement, noting that a magnet school in the district already allowed some students to specialize. But other parents and some educators have criticized it as preprofessionalism run amok or a marketing gimmick.

“What have all the great school systems of the world got in common?” he said, ticking off four systems that he said deserved to be called great, in Finland, Singapore, South Korea and Alberta, Canada. “Four systems, three continents — what do they have in common?

"Frankly, the most depressing thing, in a year when we have an incredible surplus, is we’re not talking … about innovation," Taylor said. "The parsimony about education budgets in this state is going to come back to haunt us."

"Astronauts and teachers actually do the same thing," she answered. "We explore, we discover and we share. And the great thing about being a teacher is you get to do that with students, and the great thing about being an astronaut is you get to do it in space, and those are absolutely wonderful jobs."