Bob Taft's Education Platform
Sunday, October 11, 1998
"My top educational priority will be helping every Ohio child learn how to read. The tie between reading achievement, learning and earning is direct. Ohio must set its sights high. And a Taft administration will do just that." - Bob Taft, March 28, 1998
Designate $1.8 billion over the next six years for school renovation, repair and construction.
Create a "Governor's Teacher-in-Residence" program, selecting an Ohio teacher to serve on the governor's senior staff for a two-year term. The teacher would be a policy adviser and a liaison between teachers and the governor's office.
Require all kindergarten- through third-grade teachers to be reading specialists.
Increase teacher competency testing requirements to above the national scoring average.
Set up an "Educational Best Practices Center" to identify effective teaching techniques and share them with others.
Encourage more "Nationally Board Certified Teachers," who serve as teaching models, aiming for at least one in every Ohio school district.
Fund the OhioReads program with a $25 million appropriation in fiscal year 2000-01 to fund community reading programs and in-service teacher training in reading techniques.
Apply $1 million to the OhioReads Volunteer Program to train reading tutors.
Push for a law to create school safety zones with tougher penalties for anyone committing crimes within the zones.
Require all schools to set up school safety plans, designed to emphasize prevention of dangerous situations and to require safety considerations be part of all future school construction.
Create an "Ohio Safe School Center" to provide districts with information, technical assistance and examples of what works to improve school safety.
Provide $10 million per year in the next budget to help Ohio's eight largest urban school districts set up alternative schools for disruptive students.
Hold a "Governor's Character Education Conference" that would focus on ways to teach students about respect, responsibility, honesty and good citizenship; and provide $1 million for school districts to create character-education pilot programs.
Require school districts to develop intervention plans for habitually truant students and provide money for schools to improve student attendance.
Include algebra and geometry when the 10th-grade proficiency test is introduced in 2003.
Expand use of National Science Foundation programs into middle and elementary schools and create a science and math professional-development center.
- Source: Taft campaign
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TRISTATE DIGEST
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