Building for AZ Legislative Session

Ah! Cool morning in the first of October and our doors are open, listening to the birds in the garden. What you cannot hear is the buzz of the quickening legislative season. Although the election is dominating the news, your faithful eSATS has had hundreds of meetings and conversations with allies and supporters to keep eLearning advocacy alive and kicking.

In 2005 we took the eSATS eLearning transformation bill to the legislature. Dozens of legislators supported the concept, but we were unable to get it out of Senate committee.

In 2006 we were asked by Senate President Ken Bennett to create and run an eLearning bill. The result was $2.5 million to support a state wide data system, $3 million for a three year middle school math pilot for 10,000 students. The policy for expanding effective eLearning to all students and courses was established along with ten year task force appointed at the highest levels.

For 2007 we expect to make significant progress in establishing the intellectual infrastructure required to assure student mastery learning, effective digital curriculum and eLearning savvy teachers. We will also begin the process of transforming schools into eLearning Centered Schools by focusing on what is required for individualized and small group, self pace elearning for students. The range of implementation will be from adopting efficient personal learning plans for students to creating major institutes.

A number of current efforts are underway with eSATS leaders engaged or being appointed to serve:

Eleven member eLearning Task Force from SB1512;

A legislative working group;

A council that is developing a strategic plan for cost-efficient broadband into every community and school;

A vision group for Arizona’s 2012 centennial that posits eLearning as the means to

transform K-12 education into national leadership;

We have had discussions with the leaders of half of the major Arizona educational policy groups (with good acceptance) and expect to complete this outreach by mid November.

During October we will be meeting with our dozen plus team of industry sponsored lobbyists to setup our legislative plan for 2007.

The 2007 bill is expected to be in draft form by November.

Many of you helped with advice and efforts in 2006. Your grass roots efforts were highly effective. Your talking to legislators; and attending or messaging the hearings was a major reason that SB1512 had over 100 positive votes cast for it, and approximately five negative.

This year we must triple our efforts. The time for education and interest building is over. Now is the time for long term commitment with real funding. If you can play a role, just send me an email and we will contact you directly.

In the mean time we have a small task for all or you readers.

The legislative working group needs to know of where students are using individual learning plans as a part of their eLearning system. We are not talking about the highly structured and costly IEP used in special education, but of informal learning plans that are with the eLearning system and use automated formative assessments to support student-teacher decision making.

Just drop an email to tkraver@qwest.net or 602-944-8557 with information of a source, a URL, or a digital curriculum.