Issue Position: Support and Improve Public Education

Issue Position

Supporting and improving our public education system is a priority to me. Both of my parents were school teachers, and in fact my 81 year old father just retired from being a High School Band Director last year! My wife Lisa has been a public school teacher as well.

I strongly support public education, but our current system of financing schools is broken and cannot be sustained. The challenge is finding a more efficient way to spend the dollars currently provided but even before the money, it all starts with agreeing on a definition of what a "quality education" is for our children. Without a good definition of quality education then we will never even know the goal to shoot for much less obtain that goal. We have spent decades and billions upon billions of dollars on our education system with, at best, minimally improved results. We must determine the difference between the "best" uses of money in our education budget from the "good" uses of the funds and we must eliminate the good and focus only on the best.

One of my key guiding principles in the area of education is that parents -- not government or any kind of education bureaucracy -- should have the final say in the education of their children. At the end of the day the ultimate leverage needs to be placed in the hands of the families.

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