SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber is taking his education agenda to the Legislature.
The governor will testify on Tuesday before a legislative committee for the first time since taking office in January. He’ll ask lawmakers to create a task force that would study the possibility of merging birth-to-grad-school education programs under a single board.
The bill is a modest step toward Kitzhaber’s ambitious education goals. The governor has complained that education bureaucracies are fragmented in independent “silos” that don’t work well together. He hopes that merging them would lower costs and encourage them to communicate better.
Kitzhaber has also advocated ditching the current education funding system that pays schools based on the number of students they have. Kitzhaber says he’d prefer a system that rewards successful schools.
