Lowe In The News

Reform that matters for all Tennesseans' futures
The Jackson Sun
January 24, 2010

The Tennessee General Assembly adjourned from special session Thursday after passing long-overdue and significant education reform for the students in our state.

We focused on two themes: accountability and achievement. Tennessee ranks near the bottom on nearly every educational measure, and we are doing something about it.

The Tennessee First to the Top bill significantly changes K-12 education in Tennessee. Among other provisions, the new law will allow us to evaluate teachers using a combination of student progress data.

We have gathered student achievement data for nearly 20 years, but we haven't used it to help evaluate our teachers. Now we will, and that data, along with various other indicators, will provide a path toward identifying our best teachers and as well as identifying and supporting struggling schools.

We're holding our teachers accountable through evaluations, but we're also holding ourselves accountable. I co-sponsored an amendment to create a teacher professional development fund that, if funded with federal dollars, could provide as much as $65 million for teacher training.

Teachers now face the most challenging academic environments they have ever faced and have never had dedicated money for training. Tennessee's "Race to the Top" requires us to push both our students and teachers to their highest potential.

These reforms are part of an effort to earn federal funds through the Race to the Top program by showing that we're willing to do something better in Tennessee. But these reforms also provide critical tools as we seek to correct troubled classrooms. We can't settle for staying at the bottom.

We also must do better in higher education. Tennessee ranks 40th in the country in individuals with a bachelor's degree and 45th in associate degrees. For every 100 ninth-graders, only 19 end up with a college degree. In a state with nine public universities and 13 community colleges, this is simply not acceptable. Frankly, it's embarrassing.

These failures hurt all of us. If Tennessee hit just the national average - 38 percent - of citizens with an associate degree or higher, our citizens collectively would earn $6 billion more per year, and the state would gain up to $400 million in annual revenue. We must make college more accessible, and we must make graduation more attainable.

This is why I co-sponsored the Tennessee Complete College Act of 2010. We are removing barriers that have long faced Tennessee students.

Our community colleges are a fantastic resource, but we must take advantage of them. In establishing the Tennessee Community College System, we made transferring between two- and four-year schools easier by creating common courses across the state, so that a student with an associate degree can enter a university as a junior and graduate with a bachelor's degree in two years.

We are strengthening our technology centers by aligning them with our community colleges in order to expand access to workforce development skills. We will develop intensive certificate programs for part-time students and allow students who earn certificates to work toward finishing an associate degree.

We are demanding more from our universities. Each of our schools should serve as a center for excellence in dedicated fields of study so that every school isn't trying to be the best in the same subject. That's confusing for students and wasteful for taxpayers.

Universities should be the pinnacle of Tennessee higher education, where our most dedicated students attend and graduate. That's why we are tying more state funding to graduation rates. Colleges shouldn't be rewarded with your tax dollars year after year simply because a warm body fills a seat.

We want more for Tennessee. We want the best for our students. We want the best trained and equipped teachers and classrooms, but simply spending more money on a broken system will not do the trick. Real reform is required. Reform that matters.