2014 Election Issues - Childhood Education

Education is fundamental to economic and social prosperity. Top-rated schools attract businesses and prepare our children for success. Great teachers can have influences on students that last a lifetime.  I remember fondly many of the exceptional educators who left an impression on me as a young man.

Unfortunately, our existing school system has challenges that are impacting our ability to educate and develop our children. Too many students graduate high school without life and job skills needed to succeed. Many others don’t graduate at all.

Good teachers, who provide the greatest value in the classroom, end up overworked and underpaid.Their time is wasted on bureaucratic requirements that crowd out lesson-preparation, and their passion is sapped by standardized-testing mandates that crowd out actual learning time. Many end up leaving the profession for more lucrative or rewarding careers.

Parents, teachers, and taxpayers recognize these problems, so why does the status quo continue? Because politicians and bureaucrats are in charge, not parents and teachers.

To prepare our children for the real world, we need to adopt a modern approach that is proven to work and built to last. This means two things:

Parents, not politicians or bureaucrats, should be in charge of the education dollars spent on their children.

Teachers need to be freed from the politicized, bureaucratic status quo and rewarded for the education they provide.

To accomplish these twin goals, I propose:

1. Maximizing school choice through:
   • A universal system of tax credits and school vouchers from pre-K through graduate school,
   • Expansion of charter schools, and
   • Public-school matching programs.
2. Ending education fads:
   • Demand actual learning and eliminate artificial "Standards of Learning" that are merely a measure of how well teachers can prepare students for standardized tests, and,
   • Reward quality instruction - not just credentials and seniority, and
   • Pursue cost-effective solutions supported by teachers, not wasteful spending preferred by politicians.
3. Deregulating private schools, and encouraging public-school reform of:
   • Licensing/certification rules,
   • Accreditation requirements, and
   • State mandates.
4. Fostering, in every aspect of education policy, an open and competitive environment for education  - allowing parents, students and educators to collaborate on designing an education and educational approach that is effective for the student.

We need to encourage the effective education of our children, and instill a spirit of lifelong learning.  Those goals are best achieved through flexibility, collaboration and competition - not politicians and standardization.