Issue Position: Education

Issue Position

My first priority will always be education. Children are our future and the better we educate them, the better they will manage the world they inherit from us. There is no doubt that Pennsylvania's educational system needs serious reform. Below I have highlighted a few problems and solutions.

End Political Hirings. We don't spend too much money on education; we just spend it in the wrong places. How many school boards hire teachers based on political contacts or outright bribes? The result erodes our education system and the public trust. Let's end it. School boards must concern themselves with financing their districts and finding highly competent principals and superintendents to run them. We should allow the professional administrators to oversee the daily operations of schools and let them hire the teachers. Principals and superintendents can finally base their hiring on the quality which matters most, teaching ability. Our teachers can once again be hired on merit, and we can get politics out of education. School boards are an important part of the educational process, but they're not educators. Let's leave the staffing to the professionals and be sure we get the very best teachers for our money.

Fewer Government Mandates. Mandates are another huge drag on our educational process. The federal mandate, No Child Left Behind, is a good example. This program promises federal money, but to qualify states are mandated to reach near-perfect graduation rates. This favors the quantity of graduates over the quality of what they've learned. To meet these goals and get the money, the Pennsylvania Department of Education adopted a watered-down curriculum with too much focus on standardized testing. I seek to end this mandate-driven, remote-controlled education. We must empower local school districts so they oversee the education process, not bureaucrats in Harrisburg or edicts from Washington. Only at the local level can people be aware of specific students' special needs, abilities, and progress. No state test or bureaucrat can do that. Better educational services come from our communities, not from state mandates.

More Classroom Technology. Too often, the pace of education is dictated by the slowest students in the class, holding back the best and the brightest. Technology can set students free to learn at their own pace if we can provide teachers with the tools they need to make their lesson plans more nimble, interesting, and effective. Technology should allow us to successfully teach students of all ability levels. As your State Representative, I will find more technological tools for the classroom by reallocating money from the currently failing curriculum writers in Harrisburg. We don't need to rewrite; we need to revamp. More technology, used better, will result in more education, higher graduation rates and be a benefit to students and teachers.

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