Rep. Draxler pushing for better teachers and better technology in the Utah classrooms

A local lawmaker’s educational proposal has already received a great deal of attention even though the 2015 session of the Utah Legislature is more than a month away. Representative Jack Draxler, R-District 3, who is a member of the legislature’s education task force, wants to raise the income tax by one percent to help fund education.

Draxler has proposed that 75 percent of the money from the tax hike go to teachers for performance pay and 25 percent for technology.

He says teachers would love reduced class size but it would cost $71 million dollars to reduce the classroom size by just one student.

<span>”What all the studies have shown, though, is that class size does not directly affect performance as much as the quality of the teacher and the employment of technology in the right way,” Draxler says. “There’s a wrong way to do both of those. The wrong way to do performance pay is to base it solely on test scores.”</span>

He says that’s because the crop of kids you get each year in the classroom varies dramatically. As for technology, he says you have to have the right infrastructure in the school that can handle it and make sure you have professional development for the teachers

Free News Delivery by Email

Would you like to have the day's news stories delivered right to your inbox every evening? Enter your email below to start!