The Race is On!

An interesting day yesterday with Gubernatorial Candidate Meg Whitman in town and speaking at a noon Chamber of Commerce event at the Convention Center. Whitman clearly is a small business advocate but has an interesting set of goals. Her intent is to be focused on 3 goals and not be deterred by other distractions (a good strategy many of us could learn from).

1. Creation of Jobs and streamline regulations that thwart that effort.
2. Reduction of Governmental Spending and the State workforce.
3. Improvement of K-12 Public Education.

Relative to the K-12 education solution she again has a 3 step approach:

1. Institute an A-F grading system for schools that provides information to parents regarding the quality of their student's school. She provides Florida as an example where this has been successfully implemented.
2. We should have more charter schools. Her contention is that charters are more successful and that we currently have a cap on the number of schools possible.
3. We should move authority and accountability for schools back from Sacramento to local school districts and communities.

While I would inclined to debate some of the specifics of her arguments regarding schools, I think she has the right ideas/principles/values in this area. IF we could have:

• a clear, simple accountability system that could be communicated to the public,
• provide for choice of schools within our era of choice, and
• move back to local control

-- we would all be better off.