Issue Position: Education

Issue Position

I am a teacher, and have been for nearly 25 years. I want what we all agree that our children need: good schools, strong teachers, excellent curriculum and high expectations. A major part of this is having school facilities that meet the demands of a 21st Century education. I have been working for more than 6 years on the School Building Needs Commission. Currently, we are working on the high school building project. Until now, this project has lacked strong advocacy from our legislative delegation. I plan to be an important member of the team to realize this project, but I will play a different role as your state representative. It is critical to have someone in Boston that knows this project inside and out. As the state representative I will be in a position to help facilitate progress on this initiative and keep Pittsfield on track for funding.

We also need to take a long hard look at the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS). Its name suggests that it is a comprehensive assessment system, but we know it is really a high-stakes test. MCAS has forced teachers into a different way of teaching, not for the sake of learning, but rather to be able to answer questions in a prescribed and robotic way. Education should be about the strength of our teachers and their ability to motivate their students in their own unique way. In order to try and meet the state-established standards, school leaders have developed programs where Math and English are the only subjects some kids receive. Important subjects like Health, History and World Languages are left to waste. We have an entire system that strives to be "proficient", yet there are no incentives to achieve beyond that all important score of 240.

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