We know that all students are not the same. They have different gifts, talents, and learning styles. They have different hopes and dreams. As a teacher, I focused on doing all I could to ensure that all of my students made academic progress and gained valuable life skills to prepare them for life. I experienced frustration alongside my students when a "one-size-fits-all solution" had been handed down from Washington or Columbia to my classroom. As a parent, aunt, coach, and mentor, I have watched how the very same child could move from one learning environment to another and have dramatically different outcomes.
From these experiences springs my commitment to supporting real choice in education.
Zip code and geography are convenient but flawed methods in determining how and where a child is educated. Parents must be empowered to match their children's needs, abilities, and aspirations with the right opportunities. This will require a meaningful commitment to offering parents more choices.
I believe that individualizing learning by giving parents more educational choices is essential to preparing each child for the workforce or college and citizenship.
No child should have to wait for the system to get better. We need real school choice now because our schools are not currently providing every child a high quality education. One size does not fit all. One surefire way to improve the quality of education is to allow as many options to emerge as possible and to empower parents to make informed decisions about how their children are educated and where to take their educational dollar.
Even in great schools we need to empower parents to drive the individualization of their child’s learning. The quality of education is in part the nature of the service provided or product sold but also the degree to which the good or service is customized to the need of an individual. Living next to a fire station is great when you have a fire, but what about when you need the police? The same is true for learning. A great school or class may not be great for all kids, all the time, simultaneously.
An assembly line system cannot value each child. I believe so deeply in the importance of each child receiving a high-quality education that I am ready to fight for a system that moves away from being convenient for adults, to a system that is accountable to each student’s needs. Choice—real educational freedom—must be part of this environment.
Parents know best what their children need. Parents have a vested interest in making sure their child is served well. Parents have control, and rightly so, over most every detail relevant to their child’s well-being; every area but the one that has the biggest impact on whether they as a parent meet their role in ensure that their children meet the purpose for which God placed them on this earth.
Competition would be healthy for our system of education. In sheltering education from the risks of competition, we prevent education from experiencing the benefits that competition brings to almost every other industry. Competition forces participants to eliminate inefficiency. It compels competitors to offer the highest quality product for the lowest possible cost in order to grow market share. Competition drives service providers to innovate so that they become more efficient or appeal more to customers. The stagnation of the education system reflects what a lack of competition offers- resistance to change, focus of nonessentials, excuses rather than successes, and inefficiency.
As you next State Superintendent of Education, I will fight to ensure that the zip code in which a student lives does not determine the quality of education they receive. By allowing and encouraging diverse learning environments and empowering parents to make effective choices, we can ensure that every student is ready for life after high school.
From these experiences springs my commitment to supporting real choice in education.
Zip code and geography are convenient but flawed methods in determining how and where a child is educated. Parents must be empowered to match their children's needs, abilities, and aspirations with the right opportunities. This will require a meaningful commitment to offering parents more choices.
I believe that individualizing learning by giving parents more educational choices is essential to preparing each child for the workforce or college and citizenship.
No child should have to wait for the system to get better. We need real school choice now because our schools are not currently providing every child a high quality education. One size does not fit all. One surefire way to improve the quality of education is to allow as many options to emerge as possible and to empower parents to make informed decisions about how their children are educated and where to take their educational dollar.
Even in great schools we need to empower parents to drive the individualization of their child’s learning. The quality of education is in part the nature of the service provided or product sold but also the degree to which the good or service is customized to the need of an individual. Living next to a fire station is great when you have a fire, but what about when you need the police? The same is true for learning. A great school or class may not be great for all kids, all the time, simultaneously.
An assembly line system cannot value each child. I believe so deeply in the importance of each child receiving a high-quality education that I am ready to fight for a system that moves away from being convenient for adults, to a system that is accountable to each student’s needs. Choice—real educational freedom—must be part of this environment.
Parents know best what their children need. Parents have a vested interest in making sure their child is served well. Parents have control, and rightly so, over most every detail relevant to their child’s well-being; every area but the one that has the biggest impact on whether they as a parent meet their role in ensure that their children meet the purpose for which God placed them on this earth.
Competition would be healthy for our system of education. In sheltering education from the risks of competition, we prevent education from experiencing the benefits that competition brings to almost every other industry. Competition forces participants to eliminate inefficiency. It compels competitors to offer the highest quality product for the lowest possible cost in order to grow market share. Competition drives service providers to innovate so that they become more efficient or appeal more to customers. The stagnation of the education system reflects what a lack of competition offers- resistance to change, focus of nonessentials, excuses rather than successes, and inefficiency.
As you next State Superintendent of Education, I will fight to ensure that the zip code in which a student lives does not determine the quality of education they receive. By allowing and encouraging diverse learning environments and empowering parents to make effective choices, we can ensure that every student is ready for life after high school.