Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Huckabee touts education as plan for session

Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee is calling his legislative agenda for the 85th General Assembly, "A Lasting Legacy".

In it he discusses his plans for the session currently underway with his priorities being: Education, Health Care, Higher Education and Highways.

The first leg is education, where, he said, the top priority is the issue of school facilities and bringing the state's schools up to code. Huckabee offered no plans on how to do this, other than to say the task is already under way and he expects the legislators to give it their full attention.

The Smart Start and Smart Step programs, he said, have proven to be successful and provide the framework for continued success. More than six years ago Arkansas implemented the Smart Start program for students in Kindergarten through the fourth grade. The concept for this was to make sure students were properly instructed in math and literacy early on.

Huckabee said Smart Step is for students in grade five through eight, while the Smart Core program is for those in grades nine through 12.

The "next step" in the journey, he said is exactly that, a Next Step. Under this program the education bar is to be raised with higher expectations from everyone involved in the education process.

There are tangible results from the state's educational programs, he said. In a report entitled, "The Expectation Gap  A 50 State Review of High School Graduation Requirements" Arkansas was listed as one of the few schools in the nation raising the bar of expectations for students.

The study shows Arkansas as being:

* One of three states to have made college/work-prep curriculum the norm or default curriculum and is a model for other states to follow in raising graduation requirements.

* One of five states to require students complete a fourth math for graduation.

* One of three states that requires algebra I and algebra 2, and one of six requiring four years of grade-level English.

Arkansas, Huckabee said, is becoming one of the nation's leaders in the area of education reform.

But, he added, during the next two years the legislature needs foster a system that ensures every student has the opportunity to be prepared for college and focus on programs and partnerships that have proven effective.

Plank two is higher education, where Huckabee ties education and economic development together, saying the two are intertwined as never before in the 21st century.

During 2004, he said, the state received $4 for every $1 invested in higher education. The direct impact of the accomplishments of higher education on the state's economy was $6.25 billion.

Higher education, he said, is big business in Arkansas. There are almost 125,000 students enrolled in the state's colleges and universities.

However, the state still ranks 49th in the percentage of residents with college degrees and 50th in the percentage of residents with advanced degrees.

Only about 16 percent of the 2.7 million people in Arkansas have a college degrees. College degrees, he said, translates into more earning power. A college degree means a person will make an average of $1 million more in a lifetime than someone with only a high school diploma. Those with a master's degree make $1.2 million more than someone with just a high school degree on average.

If the 16 percent figure of college graduates were increased by 50 percent, it would increase the earning potential of the citizenry by almost $500 billion a year. This would mean more money for other state projects, including public education, highways and health care.

Between 1980 and 1995, he said, those with less than a high school diploma saw their mean family income drop by 14 percent, while a college graduate's income rose by the same amount during the period.

"If higher education and the state's economic development efforts aren't coordinated, we're inviting a downward spiral," he said. "It's the job of higher education to ensure a trained workforce is in place to fill those jobs."

He suggested amending Act 683 of 1989 to allow bonding authority for public colleges and university. This way, he said, voters could approve $150 million in bonding authority starting in Jan. 2007 at no additional cost to taxpayers.

He proposes creating centers of economic and educational excellence at various colleges and universities to help the state reach its economic potential. These centers would take date from the Department of Economic Development and others, then develop programs to meet specific business needs.

Huckabee also wants to expand and strengthen the course transfers between two and four year schools. "There should be logical statewide guidelines to ensure students receive proper credit for similar courses regardless of which institutions are involved."

He also wants to limit the scholarship funding for colleges and universities to 15 percent of income for "education and general" tuition fees. This, he said, would give schools the incentive to attract need-based students from all over the state by offering extra scholarship incentives.

Huckabee's plan also calls for making it easier for Hispanic students to attend college. Hispanics, he said, represent about 15 percent of the state's college-age population, but few are enrolled in college.

President Bush, he said, is working on legislation to enable immigrant students to be eligible for financial aid. Huckabee said by giving them educational opportunities it reduces poverty and discrimination and adds workers to the tax rolls.

Currently, most private scholarships require the recipient to be citizens or permanent residents of the U.S.