\"Senate Bill 2243 creates a student loan reimbursement program for two teachers to work in a North Dakota school district or nonpublic school with fewer than 1,000 students,\" Forum News Service reported. <\/p>\n
\"The program will reimburse up to $4,500 per teacher in each of the first two years and up to $6,500 in the third year,\" with a maximum of $25,000 if the teacher is filling a critical vacancy. <\/p>\n
So far, so good. SB 2243 now has passed the Senate and is being considered in the House. <\/p>\n
But our point is to call attention to some of the prep work that made this billwhich is, after all, proposing new spending at a time of cutbacks everywhere elsesail through the Senate, 42-4. <\/p>\n
Kirsten Baesler, state superintendent of public instruction, describes the process in her interview on this page. As Baesler recounts, it started with a North Dakota University System study of how well the NDUS is meeting the state's workforce needs. <\/p>\n
Where training teachers is concerned, \"what we learned is that the system graduates plenty of teachers,\" Baesler says. <\/p>\n
\"But if they don't get a job in Bismarck or Fargo or Grand Forks, they're choosing not to use that degree.\" For lots of would-be teachers, it's better to find alternative work in a bustling city than to go to work in a small-town school, especially considering the very modest salaries most rural school districts offer, it turns out. <\/p>\n
That's solid and new information. Best of all, it's useful, too. It helped narrow down the policy-response possibilities, ruling out an attempt to, say, attract teachers from Minnesota or Wisconsin. <\/p>\n
Then the state's leadership took the next step: They interviewed some of those Fargo and Grand Forks teachers-doing-other-things. So, what would it take to entice them to leave the bright lights and big city behind, and go to work in a North Dakota country school? <\/p>\n
\"A lot,\" said the teachers, as Baesler recounts. Specifically, it would take repaying their student loans, and through a much more generous program than the state currently offers. <\/p>\n
Senate Bill 2243 was born. <\/p>\n
To sum up, the supporters of this bill effectively researched the problem they were trying to solve, learned the particulars of that problem in North Dakota and crafted a policy that uses a targeted approach. <\/p>\n
No wonder the bill passed the Senate. It should pass the House, too. And reformers of the future who are looking to pass laws should take a lesson from the history of SB 2243. <\/p>\n
-- Tom Dennis for the Herald <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Read the original post: \"Senate Bill 2243 creates a student loan reimbursement program for two teachers to work in a North Dakota school district or nonpublic school with fewer than 1,000 students,\" Forum News Service reported. Continue reading
\nEditorial: Anatomy of a 'Do Pass' bill in North Dakota - Grand Forks Herald<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"