Pennsylvania's rich harvest: partnerships for progress

Pennsylvania ... land of steel mills, railroads, and high rises.

Pennsylvania ... home of Philadelphia's Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, "Rocky," and the 76ers.

Pennsylvania ... home of Pittsburgh's Golden Triangle, and Steelers and the Pirates.

Pennsylvania ... a Commonwealth of great cities and even greater metropolitan wonders.

What, some might ask, is such a state doing at a conference on rural education in America?

Well, Pennsylvania also has the largest rural population of any state in the nation. More than 3.6 million of my constitutents, in fact, live and work or farms and in rural communities.

We produce half the mushrooms that reach your table today, and more of the potato chips and processed meat than any state in the nation. We rank fourth nationally in the harvest of apples and peaches, and fifth in the nation in the production of milk.

Pennsylvania agriculture generates $50 billion in annual economic activity, and employs, with its accompanying agribusiness industries, nearly one-fifth of our total work force.

And so, if Pennsylvania is an urban state, it is no less a farm state.

If I come before you as an urban governor, familiar with transit systems, housing projects and downtown redevelopment, I am also a rural governor, an occasional tractor-driver and shearer of sheep who hosts each year one of the biggest state farm shows in America.

Obviously, Pennsylvania shares a great stake in rural America, one that directly affects the economic, cultural, social and even the industrial health of the society we have today, as well as the one we hope to fashion for tomorrow.

In an exciting new era of advanced-technology entreprise, which many of us rightfully have identified as one of the keys to our economic future, it may be easy to lose sight of the fact that much of the strength of this nation continues to reside in its rural communities.

The raw material of our life and industry comes from the fields, farms and mines of rural America, passing, as it must, through the hands of the men and women who live there.

If we fail, therefore, to see that those hands are properly guided by minds that have mastered the art of learning, if we ignore our responsibility to meet the needs of rural America, if we in any way neglect their future, we weaken the heart of our heartland.

We cannot and must not let this happen, and I don't think it will, because of people like Don Evans, people who are making a difference by bringing together resources from the private and public sectors in new and exciting ways, people who have radiscovered the simple word "partnership" and what it can mean to our future.

Don, who is a member of our partnership-in-education team, is the superintendent of the Juniata Valley School District, one of the smallest and most rural of any in my state. There are some who say, in fact, that its zip code ought to be a fraction.

Like many small districts across the country, Juniata has had to stretch its limited resources to afford the "state of the art" training and equipment it needs to give its students the advanced technology skills needed for today's job market.

Like many small, progressive corporations, Elco, a local manufacturer of electrical connectors, has lacked the facilities it needs to train its employees fully in those very same skills.

You guessed it--they got together.

District officials and their counterparts at Elco formed a partnership in which the corporation rented a computerized drafting unit, and the schools provided classroom facilities for its use. The sophisticated equipment was assigned for three months to the district's vocational-technical school and, for one month, at the plant itself for actual on-the-job training.

This program, which concludes in a few days, will graduate 10 Elco employees with upgraded skills, eventually creating 10 new entry-level positions at the corporation.

Juniata, for its part, gave not only its students, but its instructors as well, hands-on experience in an actual industrial setting with the latest drafting and designing system.

While the partnership approach is, indeed, making a difference in Juniata, Ron Perry and the people of Cameron County are making a difference, too.

The superintendent of Cameron County's school district in rural north central Pennsylvania, Ron found himself with an unusual opportunity when he was elected president of the local chamber of commerce.

New partnerships between the school and the chamber helped develop the cultural and social sensitivity of Cameron students and their community in ways previously only dreamed of in such a rural setting:

* Together they worked and raised funds for artistic and stage productions and special speakers.

* Together they erected signs promoting the county's industrial development potential.

* Together they helped obtain more than $1 million in state funding for an economic development office and for local industrial expansion.

Juniata and Cameron are models, indeed, of our state partnership in education strategy--a pioneering effort that is reaching into every education community in our Commonwealth to touch teachers, students, business people, professors, volunteers and scores of others interested in quality education.

Under our plan, local chambers of commerce, regional education agencies and school districts are working together to form the kinds of partnerships, which, like Juniata's and Cameron's, can enable their communities to obtain the heretofore unreachable in education.

Of more than 1,200 partnerships working and growing in Pennsylvania school districts, about 600 are in rural areas, and at least half of the rural districts in our state have some type of active partnership program under way.

The state's role in this endeavor is that of a catalyst, as exhibited by the promotion of the adopt-a-school program which our Pennsylvania team is sharing with you today. To encourage business and other institutions to form such partnerships, 17 of our state agencies have adopted schools. One such arrangement, between the state Department of Environmental Resources and a Harrisburg school, will have stream as part of a science project.

This partnership program, and others like it, permit all sectors of our society--private as well as public--to supplement our traditional investment of tax dollars in education, with a new investment of time, equipment and, above all, expertise and know-how.

Another way we fill that role, a way in which state governments across the country are making a difference, is through such programs as the Private Sector Initiatives Task Force which I appointed in response to the economic and fiscal realities of the 1980s--realities which recognize that we must do more with less in the coming years, not only in education, but in a wide variety of other governmental activities as well.

This 50-member task force--representing business, labor, civic, volunteer and governmental leaders--functions as part trouble-shooter, part problem-solver and, indeed, as something of a high-powered cheerleader for those who have formed--or even thought about forming--partnerships for progress in Pennsylvania.

We are also making a difference with our Rural Affairs Task Force, which works in conjunction with the private sector group, and which focuses specifically on the unmet human services needs, including the educational needs, of rural regions.

We are making a difference, as well, with our "Ag in the Classroom" program, a logical extension of the partnership concept, one which helps children understand the importance of agriculture to our economy, our food supply and our way of life.

Under this effort, for example, local food processing plants are being used as living laboratories to relate agriculture to biology, botany, mathematics and other sciences.

We are also making a difference with our Customized Job Training (CJT) program, recognizing, as we must, that partnership in education can benefit those unemployed adults who would work were it not for a lack of skills. In rural areas, where educational facilities may be few and far between, the need becomes even more pressing.

The CJT program, which helps train people for specific jobs with specific firms expanding or locating in Pennsylvania, helped more than 3,000 individuals win jobs or promotions in its first 18 months of operation. CJT clearly works, and the people who use it are working.

One of the ways it works can be seen in south central Pennsylvania, where the SAFECO Farmers Co-op needed trained operators for its ethanol plant in Fulton County, a county with high unemployment and very little industry.

The company's needs were matched, under CJT, with the needs of 10 unemployed adults who were enrolled in a sophisticated course in microbiology, biochemistry, welding, and boiler operations.

I am happy to report that all of the 10 today are on the job, working and earning a living for their families.

All of us can make a difference, as well, with groups like the Small Schools Task Force, formed within the Department of Education in Pennsylvania and designed to help small school districts overcome their limitations in resources, skilled personnel or even student enrollment when seeking to provide new educational opportunities.

But while we indeed can make a difference in rural schools with innovative partnerships, dedicated educators and enlightened problem-solving, these efforts will be of little avail if we ignore the challenges, as well as the rewards, of achieving quality education for all students--urban and rural together.

Interest in education reform has lately become a national priority--one we should do all within our means to meet in the months and years ahead.

It was, in fact, a little more than a year ago that the National Commission on Excellence in Education found what it regarded as "a rising tide of mediocrity" engulfing the classrooms of America, the urban classrooms as well as the rural.

Never has the relationship between the quality of education and the quality of national life seemed more direct, more compelling and more critical than it does today.

We can see that relationship in the decline of America's competitive edge in the world economy and in the decline of its scores on scholastic aptitude tests.

We can see it in the national high school dropout rate, which increased in the last decade to a high of nearly 30 percent of all graduates.

We could see it in Pennsylvania, as well, where more than 2.6 million adults were so lacking in basic mathematics and reading skills that their ability to obtain and hold employment was severely impaired, if it even existed at all.

In our state, we proposed last fall an "Agenda for Excellence" in our schools, one that reflects the view of a growing number of Americans that the best means of providing quality education in all of our schools, rural as well as urban, is to adopt and enforce tough new standards relating to what is being taught in all of our schools, how well it is being taught by all of our teachers and how much of it is being learned by all of our students.

We advanced a comprehensive effort aimed at "Turning the Tide" toward quality in each of these areas.

In the first of these areas, we are increasing the number of credits required for high school graduation from 13 to 21, tripling the current number of course credits required in mathematics and the sciences, raising the credit requirements in English and social studies, and requiring credits, for the first time, in the arts and humanities.

We are also moving to require all schools to offer at least one course in the computer sciences, effective in 1985.

In the second area, the quality of instruction, we are placing a new emphasis on continuing professional development for teachers and administrators, and on competence and professional growth in the subject areas in which a teacher specializes.

We are raising our teacher certification and training criteria to:

* Require teacher graduates to pass tests for basic skills and subject area competence.

* Require new teachers to serve a one-year period under professional supervision before receiving permanent certification.

* Require new teachers and administrators to earn six continuing education credits every five years to keep their certificates active.

And we are moving to establish and fund a new "Excellence in Teaching" awards program, including annual state awards of up to $2,000 each, for teachers of superior performance and dedication in any given school year.

The third major priority of our Pennsylvania agenda concerns, of course, those for whom education was invented in the first place--our students.

To focus on student problems and our shortcomings in addressing them, we're inaugurating this year a mandatory, statewide student testing program to be called "Testing for Essential Learning and Literacy Skills," or "TELLS," to measure competence in reading and mathematics among our third, fifth and eighth graders, beginning this fall.

These tests will be designed to serve as an early warning system, one that TELLS us of any need for special help during that period in a student's career when this information would be most productive.

Concurrently, we are developing a mandatory, statewide and state-funded remedial instruction program for those elementary and middle school students found to be deficient through TELLS testing, and also for high school students found to be deficient, either through earlier TELLS testing, or through the normal process of classroom evaluation.

To inspire and recognize truly outstanding achievement among high school students, meanwhile, we are moving to establish a "Pennsylvania Hnors Program."

Under this program, interested students would be encouraged to take a four-year curriculum of especially rigorous study, culminating in an "honors test" related to that curriculum. Those who pass the test would receive special honors diplomas at graduation, and the top one percent would be awarded state scholarships of $1,000 each to continue their studies beyond high school. We anticipate that the members of the 1988 graduating class will be the first to benefit from this program.

When fully implemented, our "Turning the Tide" reforms would represent a new state investment of more than $100 million annually in Pennsylvania.

We believe this is a small price to pay for the social, cultural and economic dividends that will eventually flow from this effort.

This combination of timely and periodic testing, remedial instruction, stronger curriculum and tougher graduation requirements, quality teaching and the honors incentive--all of this represents a balanced and constructive approach to the excellence we seek among all of our students in America today.

In fact, there are indications both in Pennsylvania and across the nation of a new and different kind of tide: a tide of quality, a tide of excellence, and a tide of hope.

Barely two months ago, Secretary Bell spoke of "a revolutionary movement" in American education. As many of you know, 29 states have acted to increase requirements for high school graduation; and teachers, administrators, education professionals and government leaders alike are responding in many ways to the challenge presented by the findings in A Nation at Risk.

Perhaps most encouraging is that ordinary parents and taxpayers are taking a growing interest in education reform. A statewide Gallup poll showed that Pennsylvanians strongly support the kinds of changes we're making there. A total of 81 percent of those polled, for example, supported the idea of statewide competency testing, 70 percent supported the concept of financial incentives for teachers and 63 percent supported changes in teacher certification requirements.

Let me close with another image. It's the nostalgic vision of the little red school house--you know, the one where the Waltons went to school and your grandfather walked miles to attend, the one with the cast-iron bell and the potbellied stove. That school was, and in some rural communities still is, more than a place to get an education. It often served as the heart and soul of the community, providing its citizens with a sense of identity, purpose and progress. As the emphasis on education increased, so, too, did the importance of the school house.

Before the days of school consolidation, before the days of bond issues, before the days of multimillion-dollar budgets, schools literally were built by the entire community in the true spirit of partnership that we are trying to recapture today. The town cabinetmaker, the lumberyard owner, the mason, and a variety of skilled and unskilled citizens donated time and materials to build the school, and see that it was maintained over the years.

In those days, few would have argued with former U.S. Education Commissioner Francis Keppel, who noted nearly 20 years ago that "education is much too important to be left solely to educators." For without the help of dedicated and selfless volunteers throughout the community, there would have been no schools, there would have been no education; indeed, there would have been no progress.

Our new emphasis on partnerships in many respects hearkens back to those earlier days, proving once again that there are few new ideas, only new ways of applying them.

We are returning to the community in an effort to seek ties which can bring the real and the academic worlds together, ties which can develop the skills needed for jobs and progress, ties which can broaden the base of support for our public schools and maintain America's role as the pioneer of free and accessible education for all people regardless of wealth, status, or ideological stance.

Can we make a difference in education?

Of course we can . . . in rural America and all across the nation.

We need only to work together as partners to make it happen.

COPYRIGHT 1984 U.S. Government Printing Office
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group