| Andrew Romanoff spoke and fielded questions from a mom who had her daughter in a magnificent early childhood kindergarden. The teacher, who worked with this group of children, successfully taught the youngsters to read. She brought them to an extraordinary level of accomplishment. The class was reading from the works of Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement as well as about the United Farm Workers led by Cesar Chavez.
Another gentleman questioned Andrew about his crafting of legislation regarding immigration reform under Governor Owen's administration. There was a Citizen's Ballot Initiative to Amend the Colorado Constitution to prevent undocumented citizens from receiving services under Colorado law; Andrew helped draft a statute instead. He explained that an amendment to the constitution (remember TABOR) is difficult to change or revoke because it requires more than a simple majority vote in the legislature. By drafting a compromise that mirrored the specifics of what is already in Federal Law, Colorado was able to prevent codifying these exclusions into state law.
Andrew pointed out that he stands for Comprehensive Immigration Reform and that reform must occur at the Federal level. Andrew did vote against the Dream Act which would have allowed in-state tuition to students who lived here but who did not have legal status. Their in-state tuition status would not provide them with legal status. Being able to enact Comprehensive Immigration Reform is one of the reasons he is running for the Senate seat.
Is there a consensus among Bennet supporters that line them up with a corporate attitude about running schools?
I feel like the underlying question for Democrats is whether we believe in solutions handed down from designated authorities or whether solutions should come from those of us who bear the weight of those decisions.
There seems to be a belief (not mine) that privatization and corporate solutions are paramount.
Over and over I see a coalition of democrats like Arne Duncan, Barack Obama, Michael Bennet, Jared Polis, and Michael Johnston pushing Race to the Top; a competition, not a collaboration, that will transform education.
Colorado's Senate Bill 191 is another manifestation of corporate modeling to recreate the delivery of education. These are schemes which incentivize/lure financially starved school districts and state governments to excise their most valuable asset, teachers, by designating them as the cause of educational deficit disorder.
Teaching and learning are a person to person endeavor. It is anathema for a corporation to tolerate any operation that can't be quantified on a spreadsheet.
I oppose strong-arming teachers to teach "the right answer". Teaching and coaching students to analyze and to form a solution or to select a path to a destination should be the goals of education. While a "right answer on a test" can provide data for a chart or spreadsheet, it is an illusion of activity but doesn't equate to actual accomplishment. |
