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FitzGerald Announces Six Education Principles
Special to The Truth
Last week, in a speech to the Ohio Education Association,
Democratic gubernatorial candidate and Cuyahoga County
Executive Ed FitzGerald announced six principles that will
guide his education policy as Governor.
Include Educators in Decision-Making and Policy
Formulation at the State and Local Level Educators are
the experts on education. The FitzGerald administration
education policies will be shaped by someone who is actually
in the classroom every day. It's long past time we stopped
blaming educators, and started including them.
Increase State Investment
FitzGerald will invest in our public education system at
the state level. Ohio's working families shouldn't face
higher local taxes every year because the state is funding
tax breaks for the wealthy, rather than our schools. Tax
cuts for the top one percent are not going to educate Ohio's
children.
Stop Teaching to the Test
A FitzGerald administration will also end the unhealthy
obsession with standardized testing that's bad for students
and teachers, including placing a moratorium on the third
grade guarantee.
The Race to Privatize our Public Education System is a
Race to the Bottom FitzGerald will reform a funding
system that benefits for-profit institutions regardless of
performance, and put the focus back on creating quality
public schools.
Address the Development of the Whole Child A
FitzGerald administration will treat children as human
beings, not numbers. A complete education should include
art, music, physical education, foreign language, and
business education. Stripping our schools of everything but
high-stakes testing is a recipe for increasing the dropout
rate.
Invest in Early Childhood Education States across
the country have implemented successful early childhood
education initiatives, but Ohio's children are falling
behind. Students that do not start kindergarten prepared to
learn are at risk for falling behind and staying behind for
the rest of their education. |
