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I
think things are moving faster than they've ever moved before because of
several conditions. First of all you
know the economic distress that this nation is feeling. I think people who didn't believe we were
globally interconnected now understand that in a way that they never understood
before. So, there's an urgency now that
if this nation is going to compete we've got to do things better than we've
ever done them before.
I
think also the fact that we adopted the core curriculum. It really has put forward a purpose of what
we want our students to learn and be able to do in Iowa. That was more diverse before because it was
much more locally controlled. Now it's
very clear what we are aiming for, for our students.
We've
also changed how we've done professional development in this state. There's, I hope there's no more just sit and
get. You know I go in for a little while
and I'm done and nothing ever happens.
Things are much more structured, much more thoughtful and much more on going
and job embedded than ever before. So,
we see the research being put into action.
We see the nation wanting to compete like never before and we are actually seeing some results now from implementation of pre-school and core curriculum so people are saying wow, that really does make a difference and we can get behind that.
