No shortage of ideas: In recent years, states have adopted many new policies to attract new teachers — and keep them in the classroom

By
Tim Anderson
|
Monday, September 23, 2019 at 01:27 PM
As a library media specialist in a Minnesota middle school, Rep. Mary Kunesh-Podein comes across potential teachers all the time. It’s the students themselves. “At our school, students are often mentoring other students, and we are flabbergasted at what we see,” she says. “They have the patience. They have the understanding. They connect well with that other student.
“And we think, ‘This kid would make such a great teacher.’”
As a legislator, Rep. Kunesh-Podein also thinks about this: What state policies could expose more of these young people to the profession, and get them on a path to becoming a teacher? One idea, part of a legislative proposal in Minnesota this year (HF 824/SF 1012), is to bring college-level, credit-bearing Introduction to Education classes into the state’s high schools; another is to identify and eliminate barriers (financial or otherwise) that stand in the way of lower-income individuals getting certified to teach.
Attracting more teachers, as well as retaining them, has been on the minds of many state policymakers in the Midwest, as evidenced by the burst of new legislative proposals, laws and investments over the past few years.

CSG Midwest

State Medicaid Buy-In Programs for Workers with Disabilities

By
Sydney Geiger
|
Monday, September 23, 2019 at 10:05 AM

Fear of losing Medicaid coverage can deter people with disabilities from entering the labor market. Medicaid buy-in programs allow workers with disabilities to purchase Medicaid coverage that enables them to participate in the workforce without losing health care benefits. A large majority of states such as Colorado, Illinois and Ohio, amongst others, are participating in or pursuing these kinds of programs.

In 2003, New York implemented the Medicaid Buy-In for Working People with Disabilities program, or MBI-WPD. In doing so, the state created an online toolkit outlining eligibility, income, financial planning resources, as well as other program requirements. The toolkit also provides a number of examples, worksheets and outlines for helping individuals create a Plan to Achieve Self-Support, or PASS.

CSG Hosts First National Task Force Meetings in Kentucky

By
Shawntaye Hopkins
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Friday, June 28, 2019 at 04:15 PM

The Council of State Governments hosted policymakers from across the country in June for the first meetings of its two national task forces: Healthy States and The Future of Work.

Energy mix of the future? State legislation, plans of some utilities envision power sector that emits much less carbon — or none at all

By
Ilene Grossman
|
Thursday, June 27, 2019 at 11:19 AM
The mix of electric power generation has changed dramatically over the past decade or so in much of the 11-state Midwest — more wind power and more natural gas plants, for example, and much less reliance on coal. Will the shift be even more dramatic in the years ahead?
That is the vision laid out in new legislative proposals this year in states such as Illinois and Minnesota, as well as in recent plans unveiled by some utility companies themselves.

CSG Midwest

CSG’s Efforts Drive Research on Military and Overseas Voting

By
Jessica Kirby
|
Friday, April 26, 2019 at 09:31 AM

The U.S. Department of Defense’s Federal Voting Assistance Program, or FVAP, recently released a research note with in-depth analysis on election data collected from the states using a data standard crafted in conjunction with The Council of State Governments’ Overseas Voting Initiative working group. CSG and FVAP originally entered into a cooperative agreement, the Overseas Voting Initiative, or OVI, in 2013 that led to the current iteration of the agreement running through 2022. The initiative targeted data standardization as a primary focus to assist states in better reporting of military and overseas voters’ ballot transmissions.