State Superintendent Sandy Garrett continued...

"I submit to you that our state must move to an extended day plan of one additional hour and adding at least five more days to the instructional year," Garrett said, after first stressing that schools must do a better job of effectively utilizing the time they already have available by "eliminating interruptions of instruction and getting the clutter out of the rest of the school day.  ...The complicated relationship between learning and time indicates that improving the quality of time used for instruction is at least as important as adding to the quantity of time spent in school."

Garrett will appoint a task force to study the issue of time reform in Oklahoma schools.  Dr. Lucy Smith, an award-winning, retired superintendent in McAlester and a recent inductee into the Oklahoma Educators Hall of Fame, has agreed to chair it.

More and better use of time, Garrett said, relates to another key component to Oklahoma schools' global competitiveness: taking care of the unfinished business of fully implementing ACE and NCLB mandates.  Beginning with the Class of 2012 (this year's seventh graders), high school students will have to pass four of seven exit exams to earn a high school diploma.  Exams in Algebra I and English II are required and students choose the additional exams from among Algebra II, Geometry, U.S. History, Biology and English III.  Plus, Oklahoma is raising the bar again this year in math and reading achievement per NCLB's requirement that every student be proficient at grade level by 2014.  Garrett said, "It is my intent to make certain that high standards are maintained and that the letter of the law is met."

Yet school administrators, teachers and students along cannot carry the burden of global competitiveness.  Oklahoma lawmakers must make pre-Kindergarten through 12th grade education a greater priority.

"There should be great urgency to act," Garrett said.  "Economy-developing fields like biotechnology, bioenergy, nanotechnology, robotics and astrophysics do not thrive in places were education is not truly the priority."

Garrett said the issue was not "...the $14,000 per student they spend in New York or New Jersey.  We're just talking about the national average, such as schools in Indiana, Nebraska or even Texas receive," Garrett said, indicating the state's spending on preK-12th grade students trails the national average by $2,100 a student.  "Utilities, textbooks, computers, buses, bricks and mortar cost about the same in Indianapolis, Omaha or Austin as they do in Oklahoma City."  She suggested school administrators also look to local business leaders for support since "every day corporate Oklahoma must think globally.  We implore them now to act locally."

Indicating the victory lane was within reach, Garrett concluded, "We are the right people to make these changes and this is the right time.  It's Oklahoma's time and the race if on."

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