Terry Goddard Reveals K-12 Plan

From Goddard's campaign website -

Attorney General Terry Goddard today presented the K-12 education plan he will implement as Arizona's next Governor. The comprehensive plan, "Making Arizona Schools Work," is a road map for moving Arizona schools from the bottom ten to the top ten nationally in the next ten years.


Making Arizona Schools Work calls for:

* Revamping the state's out-of-date school financing system and ending tax giveaways that rob education funding.

* An end to the rigid, scripted, micromanaged approach to education that is currently in use in too many state schools.

* Early education including full-day kindergarten at every neighborhood school statewide.

* Accountability for educators and administrators.

* Rational academic standards that don't dumb-down test scores but instead prepare students for post-secondary education (including trade school, community college or university study) and high-paying jobs that will drive Arizona's economic engine.


{snip}

[Goddard said] "There is no question we have poked way too many holes in the bucket of money we should be spending on education, and we will plug those holes. That's step one, but it is not a magic pill. We need to quit messing around in the margins, stop the decades-long argument about classroom procedures and take action to apply the techniques and programs we already know work, and work well."


Goddard added, "For example, we know all-day kindergarten and early education works. We know post-secondary training not only works, it's essential to helping our kids find well-paying jobs. An agreed-upon set of academic standards works. Empowering school districts, school boards, teachers and especially parents to use the best local approaches for their own schools works."

Stabilize funding for schools?  No legislative micromanaging of public education into ineffectiveness?

My God!  Terry Goddard wants to move Arizona's education system into the latter half of the 20th Century!

Seriously, expect Jan Brewer, Russell Pearce, and the rest of the Arizona Chapter of the Flat Earth Society to complain that Goddard's plan is too "radical." 

Also known as too "responsible" or "professional."