Blog: Oregon's Children Deserve Better Than 40th Place

Statement

In a couple of hours, I will be at Lane Community College talking about the challenges facing our public education system here in Oregon.

Did you see the statistic that Oregon ranks 40th in student attainment? And our graduation rate is even lower? Makes your heart drop, doesn't it? I could not be prouder of Oregon. It's my home. And it's where I raised my kids. But it kills me that we are wasting so much of our community's potential. And, I don't know about you, but I don't think it has to be this way. We can get angry, we can lash out at the politicians who allowed this to happen to our great state, or we can do something about it. I think it's time we rolled up our sleeves and got to work.

That's why I am running for Congress. We need to start a conversation about how we fix what's broken. How we can give every one of our sons and daughters the best possible shot at fulfilling their dreams. I don't have all the answers, but, you know what? Neither do any of those politicians in Washington D.C. I am sick of career politicians in Washington D.C. saying that they know our kids better than we do. They have to be tested by bureaucrats in the Department of Education because they don't trust our teachers to do their job to the best of their ability. Oregon can't set its own standards because D.C. has come up with a "Common Core' that renders our decisions about our schools obsolete. And "Race to the Top' says that the Federal Government will bribe states to do just as they say, rather than serve as the laboratories of experimentation that our Founders saw them as.

That's why I think it's time that we had a congressman who was for Oregon, for a change. Someone who knows that you know your children more than he does. Someone who thinks that the citizens of Oregon should decide our priorities again. Someone who thinks that we should teach to the child, not to the test.

As an educator myself, I believe that teachers teach best when they are free to reach the imagination of each child in their class. We know that kids who do what they love won't resent doing that extra bit of homework at the end of the day. It's time that we had an education that was as unique as every child in Oregon. We can be angry, or we can make it happen.

Source