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California State Government June 6, 2006 Election
Smart Voter

Simple Changes to Revitalize California Schools

By Grant McMicken

Candidate for State Superintendent of Public Instruction

This information is provided by the candidate
I believe, there are some simple changes and processes, that can immediately start the revilatization process in our schools.
For years, many of my colleagues and I, throughout the United States, have discussed problems in education. I can say that we all discussed the need for student accountability, and for support of teachers and schools. From these many conversations, I have developed eight simple changes that will have an overwhelmingly positive effect for our children's education and support of teachers and schools.

These changes are:

1. Reorganize the California Department of Education and other educational structures to become service providers to our schools, not just regulatory agencies.

2. Provide an electronically accessible database of standard-based lesson plans solicited from California teachers.

3. Give UC-CSU student's reduced or free tuition, in exchange for working as role models in underperforming schools, to help every child learn the fundamentals of reading, writing, and number sense.

4. Place more accountability on students by giving the California Standards Test as the end-of-year test to determine grade level promotion or course passage, eliminating social promotion.

5. Change curricular offerings to include career understanding and skills training to drastically decrease the school drop-out rate.

6. Modify the high school graduation requirement in mathematics to be either a rigorous Algebra course or an applied mathematics course including Algebraic processes.

7. Give individual schools autonomy in structuring their school day and curricular offering.

8. Bring together the fragmented human and fiscal resources of the educational community to identify models that are working and can be duplicated throughout California schools.

These simple changes will build a better report with teachers and CDE; eliminate the need to pass legislation to finance after school remediation for passing the CAHSEE; eliminate social promotion; allow high school students to develop skills for employment; allow college students to give back to the schools that successfully prepared them for advanced studies; and use human and fiscal resources in a more efficient manner.

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