EDUCATION
While I was an early supporter of President Obama, on this issue we part company. Having spent 34 years as a public school teacher and then Principal, I have witnessed a federal assault on public education going back to Ronald Reagan’s seminal report “A Nation at Risk.”
While there are many and serious problems for public schools perpetrated and maintained at the State level, there can be no question that the federal support for the difficulty and enormity of the problems we face in public schools is atrocious. We penalize, we do not incentivize. We continually abandon public schools and seek to set up parallel systems. We fail to grasp the unique nature of educating the public in this unique of all countries.
To insist that every student should be equally proficient on the same high stakes test is counter to the individualism and creativity that has made this country so great. To believe that each teacher has access to an equal homogeneous set of students, and to judge them on an equality of progress is to deny the reality of the disparity in subject matter, student ability and teaching assignment.
We desperately need a system of multiple measures for our multi-faceted student bodies.
We desperately need a system that compensates teachers on their knowledge, continual preparation, and the skills demonstrated in their unique situations.
We desperately need to fully fund federal mandates for the poor and the disadvantaged.
We desperately need to make postsecondary education affordable and accessible to all members of our population.
The improvement of public education in this country requires a federal commitment to working with teachers in promoting high quality learning and high quality learning environments.
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