Gillespie Will Work To Ensure That Every Child Has The Opportunity For Quality, Personalized Learning
2017 Republican gubernatorial nominee Ed Gillespie today released a detailed, substantive plan to improve the K-12 education policy in Virginia. Gillespie’s plan will strengthen Virginia’s education system, ensure that every child, in every community, has access to a high quality, safe and student-focused public education, and better align our workforce development system with the demands of the marketplace of today and the future. This is Gillespie’s ninth major policy announcement in his campaign, and fifth since becoming his party’s nominee.
“The proper role of government is not to guarantee equality of outcomes, but equality of opportunity. That means we have a moral duty to ensure all children have access to an excellent public school,” said Ed Gillespie.“As governor, I’ll work to make sure that all students – no matter where they live – have the opportunity to reach their full potential and ensure our high school and college graduates are career-ready on day one, prepared with skills for life.”
Watch the video HERE.
Republican Nominee for Lieutenant Governor Senator Jill Vogel said, “Every child deserves access to a world-class public education, regardless of their ZIP code or their family’s income. By zeroing in on opportunities for reform, this plan empowers our teachers, strengthens Virginia’s commitment to excellence in public education, and expands the STEM-H and career technical education programs increasingly important to student success in the 21st century.”
“My wife, Lisa, was a teacher in Henrico, and we are raising four children in the same public schools we attended in Chesterfield,” said Republican Nominee for Attorney General John Adams. “We have seen first hand the importance of a quality education, caring teachers, and safe learning environments. Every child in Virginia deserves the ability to get a good education, regardless of where they live. It includes having an attorney general who will keep gangs out of our schools. Ed’s K-12 education plan will bring solid reforms and new ideas that will go a long way to making this a reality.”
The plan:
Gillespie’s “An Excellent Education for ALL Virginians” Plan is framed around four key priorities:
- Teacher Leadership. Greater freedom to innovate and work with parents to respond to the unique needs of individual children. This plan provides teachers professional autonomy to make decisions in the best interest of their students while ensuring accountability.
- Innovation. Virginia students will benefit by bringing innovation into the classroom to enable personalized learning.
- More Opportunities. Virginia students, teachers, and families will benefit from innovative solutions—driven by technology—to more efficiently deliver and monitor learning and teaching in the 21st century.
- Excellence. To secure optimum outcomes in student achievement, we must insist upon excellence at all points of the education experience—from teacher preparation to early childhood resources.
TEACHER LEADERSHIP
Virginia is blessed to be home to teachers and school leaders who view their work as a calling, a mission to provide opportunity and enrichment to a new generation. We must do more to support teachers and school leaders to do what is in the best interest of the child.
- Increase Teacher Compensation
- Teacher Paperwork Reduction Act
- Teacher Cabinet and Senior Advisor on Teaching
- Reform Teacher Licensure and Create an Adjunct Teacher Category
- Support the Implementation of Career Ladders
- Bolster Teacher Preparation Programs
INNOVATION
We all want to challenge children to reach as high as they can. But an overly restrictive system inhibits teachers from challenging their students. To succeed in the 21st Century, education needs to drive instructional decision-making as close to the classroom as possible. Only then can we create an accountability system based on measuring outcomes, rather than inputs.
- Next Steps on SOL Reform: Ensure Accountability AND Growth
- Recognize Growth
- Support Innovation School Districts
- Create an intergovernmental STEM Council
- Supplemental Course Choice Programs.
- Advance Blended Learning Opportunities
- Establish College Partnership Lab Schools
- Champion Career and Technical Education
MORE OPPORTUNITIES
Every child is unique, which is why families should have a variety of options when deciding how to educate their children. Creating new opportunities is about making public schools better, and giving families the freedom to choose the school that will help their children learn and grow. When parents are empowered to make the decisions that are best for their children, students will benefit from personalized learning.
- Advance Quality Public Charter Schools in Virginia
- As governor, Ed will –
- Work to pass legislation creating opportunities for more quality public charter schools, especially in communities where children are given no choice other than a persistently low-performing traditional public school. Legislation introduced and passed by Senator Mark Obenshain (R-Harrisonburg), Delegate Rob Bell (R-Albemarle) and Delegate Steve Landes (R-Verona) received bipartisan support, but it was vetoed by Governor McAuliffe. It was narrowly drawn to help children in failing school divisions while exempting most other divisions.
- Create a charter school incubator to help public charter schools benefit from new ideas, innovative leadership, and best practices. As the Center for Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) notes, “incubators recruit, competitively select, and support high-quality school founders as they design and build new schools in specific locations. By investing in our developing talented school leaders and connecting them with local networks of support, incubators are betting that they can increase the likelihood that new schools will perform well.” The incubator will also partner with traditional public schools to bring new ideas and tools to all of public education.
- Reform our public charter school law to allow us to recruit top charter school leaders and organizations to Virginia. The Commonwealth is home to some remarkable and visionary education pioneers, but until our state is more welcoming to charter innovation they will continue to take their talents elsewhere. We need to attract more charter operators like KIPP Academies, which teaches 80,000 students in 200 schools nationwide. Eighty-eight percent of KIPP’s students are on Free and Reduced Meals, 17 percent are English Language Learners – and 93 percent graduate high school, 80 percent start college and 38 percent get a four-year college degree – compared with a national average of ten percent of low-income students.As governor, Ed will work to bring home some of the remarkable education talent we continue to export to other states and bring home talent who will help low performing students meet their highest aspirations.
- Create a Centralized and Sustainable Statewide System for Full-Time Virtual Public Education
- Expand the Education Improvement Scholarship Tax Credit
- Establish Education Savings Accounts
- Promote Policies that are Fair to Homeschool Families
- Increase awareness of ALL education options
- Support Wrap-Around and Out of School Time (OST) Programs
- Become the Most Friendly State in the Nation for Special Needs Students
- Expand Programs for High-Ability Students
EXCELLENCE
If you believe, as Ed does, that the government’s role is to guarantee equality of opportunity for all, then we have a moral duty to work hard to ensure that all children have access to an excellent public school.
- Cut the Achievement Gap in Half in 10 Years
- Elevate the Office of School Improvement to report directly to the Superintendent of Public Instruction
- Advance School Readiness for At-Risk Children
- Re-Establish the Children’s Cabinet with Transparency and Accountability
- Enact School Suspension Reform
- Education Finance Reform
- Recruit Talented, Highly Motivated Teachers to Hard-to-Staff Schools
- Fund the Teacher Residency Program
The full plan can be found HERE. Gillespie has released eight other major policy proposals including:
- The “Cutting Taxes for ALL Virginians” Plan cuts individual income tax rates by ten percent across-the-board, putting nearly $1,300 more in the pocket of a family of four and creating more than 50,000 new full-time private sector jobs.
- The “FAITH In Our Government for ALL Virginians” Plan will close loopholes and give Virginians a better opportunity to hold elected leaders accountable for their actions.
- The “Efficiency + Effectiveness: A Government that Works for ALL Virginians” Plan will reorient government to more successfully address Virginia’s problems, demand evidence-based solutions, right-size our government to better steward taxpayer dollars, and incentivize our state government workforce to be more responsive to the needs of all Virginians.
- The “Removing Barriers to Job Creation for ALL Virginians” Plan will bring meaningful reform to remove barriers to job creation, making it easier for businesses to grow and thrive in the Commonwealth. It focuses on standing up for Virginia’s job creators, reforming Virginia’s regulatory climate, reforming occupational licensing and streamlining business formation.
- The Mental Health, Addiction, and Recovery Agendawill improve Virginia’s behavioral health system and address all facets of the opioid and heroin addiction crisis, including prevention, intervention, treatment and recovery.
- The Veterans and Military Affairs Agenda will improve career opportunities for veterans, give veterans a greater voice in our government, support our military and their families, and care for our veterans and their families.
- The “Job One: Keeping Virginia Safe” Plan will improve public safety in Virginia by eradicating gangs, reforming the system, and rewarding those who serve and protect.
- The Agriculture and Forestry Agenda shows exactly how Gillespie will champion Virginia’s agriculture and forestry industries, prioritizing efforts to expand exports and open new markets for Virginia products.