| Remarks by Governor Kulongoski |
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| January 9, 2006 |
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Oregon Business Council Leadership Summit - Opening Remarks
As Prepared for Delivery
Portland, Oregon
Thank you Allen for your introduction, for taking over as chair of the Oregon Business Council this year, and for leading Pixelworks, Inc. – one of Oregon’s great high tech companies. In a few minutes I’m going to sit down in that chair across from Allen to answer his questions. But before I do that, I want to talk to you about education and the economy. Oregonians have traditionally thought about – and debated – these as separate and disparate issues.
We spend a lot of time talking about education. And when we run out of things to say – we switch and start talking about the economy. After we’ve focused on the economy for a while – it’s back to education. And we just keep going back and forth between the two in an endless loop. It’s time we say enough!
I want everyone in Oregon to understand that we no longer have the luxury of thinking about education and the economy as different challenges – requiring different solutions. In an age when the economy is global – and technology plays a role in almost all of the goods and services we produce – we need a long term vision that recognizes that education and the economy are interdependent. If we let education fail in Oregon you can be absolutely certain that the economy will fail us. As for how we make sure that education does not fail, let me borrow a line from a car commercial and say that what I propose for education is not your father’s paradigm.
The old way of thinking about education is that each sector – pre-K, K through 12, community colleges and universities – are separate budgets, separately funded, separately managed, and separately lobbied for. And workforce training? It has lost its footprint as part of the education system. That’s going to change.
My paradigm is that all of the sectors are viewed as part of one continuum that I call the Education Enterprise. That means education is budgeted and funded as one enterprise. Managed as one enterprise. And treated as one enterprise as students move from sector to sector. And we’re going to add a skills development and worker retraining piece to education that has simply lost its role in providing opportunity for our young people.
This is not complicated. If we make the necessary investments in education – including workforce training – we’ll end up with an economy capable of putting every Oregon citizen to work. Every Oregon business in the black. And every Oregon competitor finishing behind us. So here’s my first principle: The more we put into education the more we will get out of the economy. When I talk about putting more into education – I don’t just mean more money. If we’re going to re-engineer education in Oregon, let’s do it right. And let’s do it right not for the next two years or four years – but for the next twenty-five years.
That means first: Make sure we have predictable funding for the Education Enterprise – with enough set aside that we don’t have to make cuts every time we’re hit with a recession.
Second: Follow what I call the Einstein plan. Albert Einstein spent much of his life trying to fit all the forces in the universe into one unified theory. As I’ve suggested, we need to fit all of the competing forces in our education system – pre-K, K through 12, community colleges, universities, and workforce training – into one unified Education Enterprise.
Third – and this is too often overlooked – doing education right in Oregon means sending the right message. I’m convinced that many of our fellow Oregonians feel that when we talk about education – under the assumption that every student ends up in a four-year university – we aren’t talking about them, their families, and their future. And many believe that they won’t ever have the chance I had to turn a life of limited means into a life of unlimited potential. This is completely unacceptable to me. And it should be unacceptable to you.
The three biggest early influences in my life were the nuns who raised me and taught me not to be judgmental about other people; the Marines who taught me discipline and love for this country; and the GI Bill, which gave me the chance to go to college and law school. When I was a young man – the message I heard wasn’t: Education matters. The message I heard was: My education matters. But too many Oregonians are hearing something else – or hearing nothing at all.
Let’s be honest – does a 47 year old laid off wood products worker from John Day think that our current debate about education is about his future?
Does a 19-year-old woman from Portland who doesn’t want a four-year degree but wants a technical career think that our current debate about education is about her future?
Does the bright and ambitious 16-year-old son of a low-income family from Roseburg – with no hope of saving enough money for college – think that our current debate about education is about his future?
Does the owner of a small manufacturing business in Ontario who can’t find skilled workers think that our current debate about education is about her business’s future?
If the answer is no – our job is to change that answer to yes. And that’s exactly what I intend to do. Remember, less than one third of Oregonians have four-year degrees. If we want the public to invest in education – we need to start talking to, and listening to, the other two-thirds. Otherwise – the public will say the same thing it has said time and time again: Thanks, but no thanks!
I want every person who calls Oregon home to be able to look in the mirror and see not just a citizen – but a shareholder. To these millions of Oregon shareholders I say: Investing in education is not about making someone else’s life better – it is about making your life better.
I do not promise that our investment in the Education Enterprise will make every Oregonian rich. But I do promise that a fully funded and seamless Education Enterprise that teaches critical thinking skills – and the hands on skills necessary to build, maintain and add customer value to Oregon products – will do more to put earning power in the hands of citizens and businesses than anything else we can do.
I’m talking about a return-on-investment of real profits. But that is just the beginning. If we start taking the issues of education funding and management seriously – we will hit the economic mother lode, everything from high wage jobs, stronger pensions, greater productivity, and more affordable health care – to rapid innovation, new clusters, the best trained workforce, and leadership in the global marketplace.
I’m not calling today a new beginning. We’ve been working together on this issue since before I became Governor. But I am calling on the joint boards of education – and all Oregonians – to make 2006 the year when our talking about education turns into a plan-of-action that we will bring to the Legislature 12 months from now, pass with bipartisan support, and reap the economic harvest – for our children and state – that only grows in the rich soil of educational excellence.
Thank you.
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