Former Gov. Mike Leavitt publicly positioned himself as the Beehive State's education governor.
With news media in tow, he would walk schoolkids across a busy street; sport a Cat-in-the-Hat cap and read to little ones; gather elementary students around him to announce how much money he wanted to give schools.
More than half of the initiatives he rolled out in 11 state-of-the-state speeches addressed education — primarily, elementary, middle and high schools.
Some of the initiatives caught on. Others faded into obscurity, though they continue in a few school districts — alternative middle schools in Box Elder County, for instance.
Leavitt believes he has left schools in better shape than they were in 1992, when voters elected the Cedar City native to lead the state for the first of three terms.
"My goal as governor has been to leave it better than I found it, plant seeds for a future generation, and give it all I have," said Leavitt, fresh from one in a series of U.S. Senate hearings before he was confirmed last month as head of the Environmental Protection Agency.
"The question that has to be looked at this point is, is the system getting better, are we moving in the right direction, has education improved? And I would think the answer is, yes. It has improved. It has not improved as much as I would hope it will in the future.
And I hope the things we have done have sown seeds of improvement."
Politically, Leavitt has done well for schools, many public education officials say. He has kept schools at the center of attention in the legislative budgeting process, and their needs and concerns at the forefront of public discussion.
And his successor, Gov. Olene Walker, made it clear during her inauguration speech Wednesday that she would continue that legacy.
"Truly effective political leaders mobilize the thinking of citizens. They communicate a vision and inspire us to do better," said Richard West, professor and executive director of Utah State University's Center for the School of the Future. "We've got a long ways to go (in education), but it's exciting. It's not that we don't know how to be better; we just have got to figure out ways of providing a complete implementation of what works."
Leavitt, in his 1992 run for governor, outlined ways to do just that. He touted long-term improvements over more quick or radical fixes, including vouchers for private school tuition. And that won Leavitt, a moderate Republican, a loyal following that included the 18,000-member Utah Education Association.
Over time, Leavitt has not wavered from his education goals, from literacy to class-size reduction.
A smattering of these worked as stepping stones to where the state is now: on the brink of overhauling high school graduation requirements and creating a system based on competency instead of grades or seat-time.
Perhaps they best represent Leavitt's seeds for improvement.
But there are several questions as to what, if anything, Utah schools have reaped.
Centennial schools
Whether you had children or not, chances are you've seen the governor's early 1990's "Centennial Schools" initiative, emblazoned on banners strewn across the faades of 394 Utah schools.
The idea of doling out $15.3 million in grants over a four-year period was to encourage communities to get involved in their schools and do something unique in education.
It was popular with the public. But large-scale accomplishments are questionable.
USU's West, for instance, says he was hard-pressed at the time to tell the difference between Centennial and non-Centennial schools.
"I can only speak for myself," said principal Rob Stillwell, whose Snowcrest Junior High in Weber County was a Centennial school that received extra funds as one of 10 Utah "Modified Centennial Schools." "But I think the schools that were able to put ideas in place sustained (the efforts). But the schools that bought things? They went away when the money did."
A 1996 state audit found some of the money going toward questionable programs, including forming a bowling league. Leavitt conceded Centennial schools didn't turn out as imagined.
Hindsight, however, is different.
"In those billions spent (in education under his tenure), you'll find other good ideas (that) exceeded expectations in some ways," Leavitt said.
Indeed, Snowcrest created educational reform with its Centennial money.
It created goals for what kids needed to know and do to be successful at the next level. Students earning below a C grade received tutoring after school and in the summertime until they could meet the standards. On-track students were rewarded with enrichment activities and field trips.
Initially, 34 percent of students received grades below a C, former principal Carl Bruce said. At the height of the program, that number fell to less than 10 percent.
Such innovation helped lead to Leavitt's next big thing.
Charter schools
In 1998, under Leavitt's prompting, the Utah Legislature created charter schools: public schools run by their own boards, often consisting of parents and teachers, as Snowcrest had in place.
Charter schools abide by the state core curriculum, state testing mandates and teacher licensing rules. But they do have some freedom in determining how to address state education standards.
Parents, educators and even school districts so far have chartered 19 of the schools statewide.
"It's always made more sense to me, simply on the basis of our unique Utah situation, that the way to create the market forces that will improve the system is through charter schools," Leavitt said.
But it's questionable whether they have truly opened up choices to all.
A survey by Education Excellence Utah, a group that lobbies for school choice and tuition tax credits, found 1,796 students' names are on waiting lists to get into charter schools. That's about half the number of kids already enrolled.
On one hand, the waiting lists show the reform measure's popularity among Utah parents.
On the other, it shows choice is stifled by Utah's charter school law, Education Excellence Utah director Royce Van Tassell said.
The law makes charter innovators beholden to what he calls "the education establishment." Basically, school districts are the only ones who can OK a charter school. That, he says, is not fair because charter schools do compete with traditional public schools. And district administrators commonly view charter schools as a drain on resources.
Leavitt appears to agree. Maybe, he says, it's time to fix the law.
"I'm going to get way out on a limb here, but . . . I think there will need to be, as the number of charter schools continues to grow, some way of providing the most basic coordination and accountability for charter schools that isn't at a district level, unless districts catch the vision on this," Leavitt said.
Funding is another issue.
The state is the sole source of charter schools' operating money. Still, charter schools, barring one-time federal startup grants, receive $4,822 per student, whereas regular school districts spend an average $5,600 per student, a recent Utah Foundation report found. Basically, the complex formula for how they're funded needs tweaking, Sen. Howard Stephenson, R-Draper, has said.
Charter schools can't bond for buildings. They seek donations for desks, chairs and lockers. They also don't receive tax funds for school lunch or busing.
"Right now, I'm doing all the same things you do at a normal district school, with less support," said Carolyn Sharette, director of the American Preparatory Academy, a charter school that opened this fall in Draper.
Tuition tax credits
While education officials may complain about the cost of charter schools, they concede charters are better than the state giving parents tax credits for private school tuition. And they give Leavitt glowing reports for holding the line against tuition tax credits, often putting him at odds with the Republican Party, over the past three legislative sessions.
"He wouldn't support tuition tax credits, and I think that's very helpful in keeping tax dollars in the Uniform School Fund and supporting public education," said Ralph Haws, a Jordan Board of Education member who lobbies the Legislature for the Utah School Boards Association.
Deseret Morning News graphic
Teacher pay 1994-2002
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Leavitt opposes tuition tax credits because of what he calls Utah's unique situation: Here, some 97 percent of all school-aged kids choose to attend public schools. Even if you tripled private school enrollment, there would still be well over 90 percent of Utah's nearly half-million kids in public schools.
"If I were in a state where there were enough private schools to begin affecting the system, I think I might feel quite differently," Leavitt said.
But that stance doesn't endear him to parents looking for more radical changes.
"Every year he comes out with 'this year's new thing,' " Van Tassell said. "If we still have constant calls for education reform . . . (and) if after 11 years in office he can't calm some of those waters, his record is less than stellar."
By the numbers
There are other waters Leavitt has been unable to calm, despite seemingly stellar performance.
Public school funding is up 60 percent to just under $2 billion under Leavitt's watch. Enrollment increased about 3.5 percent at the same time. Class sizes dropped an average four students. Teacher's salaries have increased 43.5 percent.
Still, Utah remains at the nation's cellar in per-student funding. Public education's share of the state budget has dipped from 35.2 percent to 32.2 percent. And teacher salary hikes still haven't reached the national average, where they hovered about a decade beginning in the late 1970s.
Also, test scores haven't moved much, despite the funding infusion and the education reform initiatives.
Scores of the Stanford Achievement Test, which is designed to show how well students in Utah stack up to national peers, show plateaus and some backsliding.
In 1992, total battery scores were in the 54th, 53rd and 56th percentiles for fifth, eighth- and 11th-graders, respectively, compared to the national median of 50.
In 1996, however, Utah's fifth- and eighth-graders scored slightly lower, in the 53rd and 50th percentiles, while 11th-graders held steady.
A new edition of the test was taken in 1997, and Utah's scores were in the 50th, 54th and 60th percentiles for fifth-, eighth- and 11th graders, respectively. By last fall, fifth-grade scores had inched up one percentile, but scores dipped by one percentile point for eighth-graders and by four percentile points for 11th graders.
Not enough comparable data are available from the state's core curriculum tests, or CRTs. Those scores could be examined in the coming years to better see if things are progressing — particularly, to gauge the success of what Leavitt sees as his crowning achievement: a competency-based education system.
Competency-based
Leavitt says it's time to hold kids accountable for learning state education standards instead of just advancing them grade to grade with marks as low as D-minuses.
Perhaps Bruce, now working on setting up one of Leavitt's high-tech charter schools in the northern Utah county, best sums up reasons for the switch:
"How would you like to be worked on by a heart surgeon who earned D grades?"
The State Board of Education had set up a grand plan for a competency-based education system.
Deseret Morning News graphic
Education goals
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The board suggested making high school kids earn C's or better in 15 state-mandated course requirements, plus pass the CRT at the end of the year, in order to receive credit toward graduation. It also wanted to extend those requirements to a few classes in middle school grades. And it sought an extra $203 million to bring needed tutoring to kids as young as kindergarten, to ensure they're able to meet the higher standards.
Some schools, including Snowcrest in Eden and Center City charter school in Salt Lake City, already have similar programs in place.
But for a statewide program, the measures were controversial and expensive. So the board recently voted to shelf most of the plan and take more time to study how best to implement it.
The board's move appears anti-climactic for Leavitt, who canceled plans to publicly sign an executive order regarding competency-based education as one of the last things he'd do as governor.
Still, Leavitt is pleased with educational progress to date.
"I feel very good about the fact we have accomplished the primary, strategic goal I had when I became governor, which was to improve the system and change what we value, and I think that will pay dividends for the next quarter-century," Leavitt said in a private interview. "I would leave here with full satisfaction my mission has been accomplished."
E-mail: jtcook@desnews.com