Idaho’s new Education Improvement Task Force started work Friday. Governor Butch Otter called for a group of stakeholders to come together to research and make recommendations for the state’s school system.
Task force member Anne Ritter calls the first meeting a good start to the conversation. Ritter is a member of the Meridian school board and president of the Idaho School Boards Association. She says the 31 member group’s big accomplishment so far is defining its goal and its job.
Its goal is the one set by Idaho’s State Board of Education: to make sure that 60 percent of Idaho’s 25-34 year olds have a post-secondary degree or certificate by 2020.
“And our job is to look at the structure of the K-12 system to do what we can to make that a realistic achievable goal,” Ritter says.
The task force also decided it should not make any recommendations early in the process, for example to the current session of the legislature. Ritter says they may make recommendations to lawmakers down the road but they could focus on other ways to improve the state’s schools.