Education

Issues:

  • No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation has tied the hands of districts wanting to introduce real and lasting education reform.  NCLB’s focus on ever-higher test scores prevents our schools from offering sound programs designed to address the needs of the whole child. 

  • Our current economic crisis has worsened the chronic underfunding of now critical retraining and new skills development courses essential to the retooling of our workforce.

  • Dramatic reductions in vocational and technical programs have produced more high school graduates lacking in basic workforce skills.  This trend has been one of the biggest educational mistakes made over the last three decades.

Solutions:

  • NCLB must be repealed and legislation that frees schools to enact real education reform must be passed.  School accountability is an essential component of educational reform, but we need clear goals, tied directly to student learning, and data driven assessments of our progress in reaching these goals. 

  • Continuous changes in technology make job retraining essential.  As a nation, we must support the programs that will keep our workforce competitive.  Opportunities to learn new job skills are critical to our nation’s recovery during the current economic crisis and will remain key to the nation’s future economic power.

  • Vocational and technical programs should be a part of the curriculum in all secondary schools.  Most people learn by doing.  Today’s students deserve the same opportunities that their parents had to be able to make critical connections between academic content and real life skills.