February 25 & 26, 2013: The Annual California PTA Legislative Conference (Teacher Evaluations)
There are so many reasons why California is poised to regain her leadership among states in public education. Most of them stem from the fact that policy-wise, we haven’t completely knuckled under to the damaging policies put forth by the Obama administration.
We’ve been evasive on bending to the conditions required for a Race to the Top waiver. We have a large Democratic majority in both houses of the state legislature and a good number of lawmakers who actually taught in public school classrooms or served as school board members.
We have a governor who has taken a strong stand against standardized testing. We have a State Superintendent of Public Instruction (SSPI) who taught, was a union member, and spent substantial time as an experienced legislator before becoming head of the state’s top education post. And little by little, as a state we’ve taken steps to revamp our K-12 public education system to make strengths out of what others might see as liabilities.
We’ve been evasive on bending to the conditions required for a Race to the Top waiver. We have a large Democratic majority in both houses of the state legislature and a good number of lawmakers who actually taught in public school classrooms or served as school board members.
We have a governor who has taken a strong stand against standardized testing. We have a State Superintendent of Public Instruction (SSPI) who taught, was a union member, and spent substantial time as an experienced legislator before becoming head of the state’s top education post. And little by little, as a state we’ve taken steps to revamp our K-12 public education system to make strengths out of what others might see as liabilities.