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State of California | June 5, 2012 Election |
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Education ReformBy Dan HughesCandidate for United States Senator |
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My first job out of college was supervising 50 UAW workers in a General Motors factory on the midnight shift. We all wanted to do the right thing and take pride in what we did. Our collective job was to manufacture parts for the assembly line to be able to use in the morning. Unfortunately, the work rules negotiated and enacted by the union leadership to `protect' people and `protect' jobs did exactly the opposite. I had a front row seat in watching how the work rule `handcuffs' placed on GM management bankrupted the company, which in the end cost many jobs and livelihoods. Today, we face the same problem in our public education system, and sadly the union work rules and the administrative bureaucracy are bankrupting our future generation, which is tragic. We need real leaders in DC, like myself, that have the depth and experience in facing major challenges like reforming our broken education system. I will lead the charge in returning education to the local level focused on students, not on corrupt union and administrative officials. We can and must institute freedom of choice in education so that parents can give their kids a fighting chance in life. Freedom of choice will raise the bar across the educational spectrum and will force local systems to perform through competition. Most of our teachers truly care about developing our children, but they are held back by a broken system. We need to `break' the concept of tenure so that good teachers can be rewarded and succeed and those who aren't performing well can move on to careers that suit them better. We cannot allow stifling work rules that don't allow competition and the ability to distinguish between `good' and `not so good' teachers to bankrupt our children. I have the courage, will and experience to lead the charge in reforming education. And throwing money at a broken system, which is Jerry Brown's idea of a solution, won't work and is a waste." |
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