1:30 p.m.
Karen Floyd said right off that she’d heard there was no way we would endorse her. So for more than two hours, she really put her heart into trying to win our support.
I appreciate that. She was smart, charming, energetic, sincere, and full of ideas — ideas just chasing
each other across the boardroom table. So why would anyone assume we wouldn’t endorse her? Because she’s the school “choice” candidate in this five-way race.
But don’t we like charter schools, magnet schools, alternative schools? Sure. But we draw the line at diverting state resources to private schools, and she does not. She says it’s just one of 68 ideas she’s advocating. She prefers “crumbling the cookie piece by piece” to embracing any one, comprehensive approach.
Unfortunately, tuition tax credits are the one big "education" idea of our governor, and he has thrown party convention to the winds to endorse Mrs. Floyd over four other Republicans. We agree with the governor about a lot of things, but that is his worst idea.
It’s not Mrs. Floyd’s fault that he has inflated the stakes surrounding this one idea over her 67 others. But he has. It’s tough to ignore that, or the fact that pretty much everyone who likes his approach has endorsed her. At the same time, you can’t ignore that there’s more to her than this issue. That makes this one tough.
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Look for a plan of action from the candidates for state super of education and you find a dearth of information. The State, save Warthen’s interviews, has offered one article and that’s based on one issue – choice. The candidate websites offer little more. Jim Rex offers platitudes and nebulous goals. Bob Staton offers cutting waste as a panacea. Karen Floyd is the exception. She offers pages of relatively well thought out details. The problem is, her only plan that directly impacts learning is to use a fledgling big city plan to use private management of schools. The plan has been in use in Philadelphia for only 3 1/2 years – hardly enough time to evaluate the long term success. The majority of our state budget is directed to education yet the most important office in education will be held by a candidate who has yet to demonstrate a clear and in depth grasp of the problems in education.
The fact that Karen Floyd is endorsed by Lindsey Graham, traitor on immigration, is enough to cast doubt on her.
We have an education system which is designed with no end in mind and this has created problems in our public schools. The school choice IS NOT the solution to our problems, in fact, by saying yes to school choice, we will abandon our problems and create new ones. The solution to our public schools is to put back all of our resources and energy to create smart, sensible, common sense ideas such as: Quality leadership, quality teachers, competitive pay, better means of assessment, parent accountability act, safety, reducing the class size, creating nurturing environment, reducing drop out rate, creating a sensible ESOL (English for students of other languages) programs, and eliminating waste to re-shape our education system for better.
Tony Fayyazi
http://www.tonyfayyazi2006.com
Independent candidate for
Superintendent of Education