Arizona’s top public schools official laid out his goals for 2006 in his annual State of Education address Jan. 4 at high schools in Phoenix and Tucson.
Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne said making sure all high school students pass AIMS and graduate is his highest priority.
“Our first initiative this year will be to do everything possible to get help to the students who need it,” he said, “so they can acquire the skills needed to pass the AIMS test and, more importantly, acquire the basic skills they will need in today’s economy.”
To do so, Mr. Horne said, more students need to take advantage of the free AIMS tutoring the Department of Education offers. Last year, the first year the tutoring was offered for free, only 6,000 of the 20,000 students who had not passed the assessment test took advantage of the extra instruction.
Focus groups of the students revealed that some of those who needed the tutoring didn’t ask for it because they were embarrassed to do so in front of their peers, while others were not able to come to school before or after normal school hours.
To combat those concerns, Mr. Horne said the department is now urging schools to allow students to sign up for tutoring privately and to schedule tutoring sessions during lunch and other times during normal school hours.
AIMS hotline
The Department of Education has established an AIMS Hotline, which will answer questions from students and parents wishing to know more about the AIMS test and the tutoring services available. The toll-free number is 1-866-688-AIMS (2467). Answers can also be found at www.AZAIMS.com.
Mr. Horne also emphasized increasing the base pay for teachers. Last year, he proposed a $2,500 tax credit for all teachers, saying it would be a cost-effective way of giving educators a bump in pay, while saving the state money. In order to achieve the same amount in take home pay via a traditional pay raise, salaries would have to be increased $3,500 to compensate for taxes.
At the time, the Arizona Education Association opposed the tax credits, saying a traditional hike in pay would be more equitable. Mr. Horne said in his speech that how the salaries are increased is less important than actually giving teachers higher pay.
“If the Legislature prefers to increase compensation by budgeting more money to the districts so they can give a raise in the pre-tax salary, that is all right with me,” he said. “What ultimately matters is that we increase teacher compensation, so that we can do a better job of retaining our highly qualified teachers and attracting more new highly qualified teachers.”
The final initiative for 2006, Mr. Horne said, was increasing the number of students taking a “rigorous curriculum” in high school. Recent research, he said, has shown that the best predictor of a student’s success in college is how rigorous a curriculum the student takes, not traditional standards like the SAT or ACT exams.
Students who take no Advanced Placement, or AP, classes — the classes allow students to receive college credit if they pass a test at the end of the year — have only a 29 percent chance of graduating college within four years of finishing high school, he said. By taking one AP class, the percentage jumps to 45 percent, while two or more classes increased the chances to 61 percent, Mr. Horne said.
He said his department will work to remove the barriers keeping many students out of such classes. First, Mr. Horne said, he wants to eliminate all requirements — other than content requirements — for entry into AP classes, and then he wants to encourage as many students as possible to take the classes, thereby increasing the chance of collegiate success for Arizona students.
“By working hard, using our most successful teachers and principals as models to improve Arizona’s schools, teachers and curriculum, I believe we can ultimately bring success to every Arizona student,” he said.