State must continue to invest in education

At this point five years into my administration, I am looking back at what we’ve accomplished and setting real goals for the next few years ‘ particularly when it comes to public education.

It is my firm belief that education is not only our number one responsibility; it is our number one priority. This year, I have set forth a plan that will continue to benefit our youngest students through our pre-K program and create more opportunities for higher education through scholarships and student assistance.

I believe the groundwork for a solid education begins with quality pre-K programs, and I would like to ask for all Tennesseans’ help in ensuring the continued expansion of an initiative that ‘dollar for dollar’is the single best investment we can make in our children.

Four years ago I committed to building a pre-K program that would be available on a voluntary basis to any four-year-old whose parents want them to attend. This year, we have 934 classrooms serving 17,000 children in 94 of our 95 counties. There’s a great demand for these classrooms in our communities, and we’ve had requests for 306 more state-funded pre-K classes for the 2008-2009 school year. These requests would finally bring pre-K to every county in the state of Tennessee.

Long term, pre-K is just as important as standards, community college or any of the other things we believe will yield even more immediate dividends. On the national level, long-term studies have been done, and the evidence is there to support the continued benefits of the program. The overwhelming thing these studies tell us is that pre-K not only gives children a head-start in school, but that it helps them develop social skills that lead to success later in life.

One Hickman County mother shared her daughter’s achievements in her pre-K program with me a few weeks ago. She described how her five-year-old, who usually experienced severe separation anxiety when she was left in another’s care, casually waved goodbye to her on just her second day of pre-K.

“It’s not just the academic benefits I’m seeing,” she wrote. “It is the social aspect and confidence she exudes. My daughter tends to be shy and withdraw from others, so this program has been excellent for her.”

This is just one of the many stories that I’m hearing from parents across the state, and their enthusiasm had solidified my belief that a quality pre-K program stands to benefit any child, regardless of income. It is our job to see to it that all parents have the choice of sending their child to pre-K.

To help students at the other end of their educational careers, this year I also proposed two changes to the lottery scholarship program that assists college students: Changing the HOPE scholarship retention grade point average, and making additional dollars available to other students who need financial assistance to attend college.

I believe in the merit concept behind the HOPE scholarships, and want to retain it. But when nearly 80 percent of the scholarship winners lose their scholarship during their time in college, something is wrong. I believe it’s time to fix this, and that’s why I have proposed that the grade point average for scholarship retention be changed from 3.0 to 2.75.

My rationale for this change is simple: college is harder than high school. The student who achieved a 3.1 in high school will, on average, achieve a 2.8 in college. Changing the retention level in this way says to the student, “If you work as hard in college as you did in high school to earn the scholarship in the first place, you can keep it.”

We also have many students who may not earn a HOPE scholarship, but who want to go to college and need financial assistance to do so. Over 80,000 students apply each year to our Tennessee Student Assistance Corporation, but we can only assist 21,000 because the corporation simply runs out of money.

In order to address this problem, let’s keep the merit scholarships intact and keep rewarding excellence, but let’s also start expanding our help by taking about half of the unallocated lottery reserves, and using it to establish an endowment for TSAC.

Education needs to be every Tennessean’s priority. I would like to ask that you help us in government focus on improving education across the entire continuum. I truly believe that these investments in education will help open the doors to success for our children.

Phil Bredesen is governor of Tennessee. He can be reached by e-mail at [email protected].