You are an everyday normal Delaware citizen. You have two kids in school. One of them does well, the other struggles. You usually vote Democrat in elections, but you are on the fence with some issues this year. In your district, a Republican and a Democrat are running. You aren’t sure who to vote for. You get a flyer in the mail from one of the candidates. It talks about how their opponent decided not to vote yes for a bill about parental rights. You look into the issue and see it was a bill about parents opting out of standardized tests. Your one child came home stressed and miserable during those testing days. You thought about opting him out but the school pressured you into having him take it. That bill would have prevented that. You make up your mind: You are now firmly on the side of the candidate that sent the flyer.
For those legislators who are big on not voting yes for a suspension of rules, this could result in you being suspended from office: permanently. For those who wish to side with a departing Governor who WILL profit off education and the very policies he had a hand in after he leaves office, I would think twice about that. Jack Markell is a very shrewd man and he doesn’t care what happens after he gets his very excellent education job a year from now. Education is a fickle beast. It changes and morphs constantly in cycles. Todays big changes will be gone in ten years. But todays changes are things Jack Markell has been working on for the past ten years. He is a futurist. He plots and schemes with American dreams and uses people, legislators most of all. He isn’t a true Democrat. He is a corporatist through and through. He even said so during the 2012 Democratic Convention. It is his job to be against opt-out. Because for Jack, it is NOT about the students. It is NOT about the parents. It IS about the money and big business.
There may be issues among all of us about education and how to best serve the students of Delaware. But selling them out to the highest bidders and their alliance of thieves is NOT the way the students of Delaware will succeed. It is how the businesses succeed. Our children are more than test scores. Remember that today and vote with your conscience.
The Season Of Myths 
You’re basing an assumption that most voters are parents of school age children. Here is a recent example, that I believe challenges that assumption. Christina Schools District had 3 failed referendum questions last year, which both parents and teachers supported, but the rest of the community did not. Our political process has to take in account of a much larger group then teachers and parents and our issues are larger. We have larger issues here in Delaware.
Another example: Larry Hogan isn’t scared of parents and teacher. Maryland a blue state, look at Martin O’Malley the former Governor who is running for president. He was preceded by a Republican Larry Hogan who currently has much higher job approval rating the O’Malley ever had. Why because the Republican is cutting fees and balancing the budget. Maryland has similar educational reform policy in place. Hogan isn’t a fan of Common Core and PARCC, but he hasn’t done anything to affect it, but he has cut 68 million dollars of funding to select districts who claim to have higher operational costs. While I hope we don’t cut funding, I share this because funding has been cut all around the county. Schools have to do more with less.
Last spring near summer I was working with students from a very special school in Baltimore who have been labeled 90/90, which is 90% low income, 90% minority. A few students wore tee shirts that said in big type “I am ready for PARCC” (PARCC is to MD what Smarter Balance is to DE) I thought to myself who paid for those shirts. At the moment it seemed important, so I had to ask one of the 5th graders who wore a shirt, were you ready for PARCC? (I was fishing and it seemed like a reasonable question) He answered with a smile “It was hard, but so is life. I don’t know how I did, but I am proud of my work…” That was a paraphrase, I couldn’t believe what I heard from a 5th grader. Then I asked myself what’s going on in that classroom for this student to have that much confidence. You better believe they aren’t talking about opt-out at their PTA meetings.
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We don’t talk about opt out at PTO meetings. We talk about how to raise more money to be utilized by our teachers and their classrooms. I guess I could bring it up if I wanted too, but both of my kids do not have a fear of testing. They think its normal.
That being said, my kids go to a great school, in my opinion. But can you guess how many parents even attend PTO meetings? The last one was on Tuesday and there were 4 parents….yep 4. There were teachers there too, but only 4 parents. This is kind of what I said about the Common Core Standards……..the parents are not involved enough to care or learn about what their kids are learning.
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