Monday, January 30, 2017

Monday Morning (You Look so Fine).  Thought I'd kick off the week with a relatively obscure Fleetwood Mac lyric.  Monday is a pretty quiet day in the education world, with only one committee meeting to go along with the House and Senate floor sessions where bills are introduced.  Today's meeting in the Senate E-12 Finance Committee featured presentations from a variety of Career and Technical Education programs from around the state.  The testimony from each of the groups was similar, with a special point made by the business owners who presented that they are having trouble finding workers.  One of the on-going problems that seems to be related to this whole issue (and it was mentioned today) is that some segments of the business community seem to constantly push for more and more testing while others point out that they need workers.  While there is some congruence between the two viewpoints, I have yet to be convinced that forcing high school juniors to take (and re-take and re-take) a mathematics examination that tests skills that they will never use.  It was pointed out by one of the groups testifying that one of the barriers preventing more students from being able to enroll in career and technical programs is that they have to devote more time to clearing up problems on the academic side of their school ledgers.  Hopefully, some of these things can be ironed out because there are a lot of very good jobs waiting for students who could take care of a good portion of their post-secondary career training while still in high school.

BILL INTRODUCTIONS

House









Senate






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