Expectations are a HUGE factor in education. The research is well known.
• We form expectations
• We communicate that.
• The object of our attention tends to adjust their behavior accordingly
• What we expect to get, we get

My child could have stayed in that fourth grade class he was failing and never been successful. I could have withheld privileges and punished him daily. It wouldn’t have helped. What he needed was the opportunity to learn and engage his brain during the school day. I think it is a reasonable intervention that should be offered to all.

We have outstanding educators working tirelessly to meet the intellectual needs of children in spite of “the system” that confines them. They quietly work around it and within it when they are able.

We read about the teacher that left the school district after decades of trying to get them to adopt reading strategies that were very effective. He opened a series of charter schools in which all his Kindergartners learn to read.

I served on a working committee in Salem to iron out differences, work out ways to compromise on an education bill that had been brought forward for years. Administrators, School Boards, Teachers Union, and Community Colleges were represented. I and another parent spoke on behalf of students. We lost. The bill went forward and will have little effect on students or schools

The nationally recognized principal who raised achievement at the Title 1 school (poor-mostly minority) was forced out of the district and accepted a settlement. She left the state.

I am running for State Superintendent of Public Instruction as a Mom to represent student learning needs. The system should be designed around appropriately challenging curriculum and effective instruction. The current system of delivering services is costly in terms of money and lost human potential.

Accountability should rest with the adults on the payroll charged with educating children. We have the means to measure and report individual student achievement year to year.

That is the measure to guide education policies.
• Teacher education colleges should be accredited and funded accordingly. If teacher college graduates are not up to the task in the classroom, teacher education colleges should reevaluate their offerings and how they serve children’s learning needs.
• Teachers of students that make gains year to year should receive merit pay as a reward in addition to the reward of sending on successful students.
• Teachers of students that fail to make gains year to year should receive necessary training or redirection of talent toward another area.
• If, in fact, “New teachers do not know how to teach children how to read.” a close look at the need for the Teacher Standards and Practices Commission is in order.

Without appropriately challenging curriculum and effective instruction, none of the rest of it really matters, and can be the cause of great harm.