Tom Vilsack on Education Democratic IA Governor

We need educational revolution, NOT "No Child Left Behind"

Support a funded No Child Left Behind program

Demand funding for disabled learning

More pay for teachers, with merit pay

[My proposed] plan is driven by a simple principle: For our children to achieve their very best, they must be taught by the very best. We can no longer take quality teachers for granted. In a world of opportunity, quality comes at a price.
1. It requires a rigorous course of study to become a teacher and participation in a multi-year induction or mentoring program in the first two years of teaching.
2. It establishes a research-based program of continuing education designed to improve student learning.
3. It proposes to strategically increase teacher pay.
4. It creates a variable pay program that rewards teachers, administrators, and certified staff for annual improvements in student achievement.

Offer every parent Charter Schools and public school choice.

Create World-Class Public Schools
Now more than ever, quality public education is the key to equal opportunity and upward mobility in America. Yet our neediest children often attend the worst schools. While lifting the performance of all schools, we must place special emphasis on strengthening those institutions serving, and too often failing, low-income students.

To close this achievement and opportunity gap, underperforming public schools need more resources, and above all, real accountability for results. Accountability means ending social promotion, measuring student performance with standards-based assessments, and testing teachers for subject-matter competency.

As we demand accountability, we should ensure that every school has the resources needed to achieve higher standards, including safe and modern physical facilities, well-paid teachers and staff, and opportunities for remedial help after school and during summers. Parents, too, must accept greater responsibility for supporting their children’s education.

We need greater choice, competition, and accountability within the public school system, not a diversion of public funds to private schools that are unaccountable to taxpayers. With research increasingly showing the critical nature of learning in the early years, we should move toward universal access to pre-kindergarten education.

Goals for 2010
• Turn around every failing public school.
• Make charter schools an option in every state and community.
• Offer every parent a choice of public schools to which to send his or her child.
• Make sure every classroom has well-qualified teachers who know the subjects they teach, and pay teachers more for performance.
• Create a safe, clean, healthy, disciplined learning environment for every student.
• Make pre-kindergarten education universally available.

Improve and invest in public schools.

Principles of the Democratic Governors Association:

IMPROVING PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND INVESTING IN OUR YOUNGEST CHILDREN

Democratic Governors are leading the way with highly-trained teachers, strong standards and accountability, increased funding to repair and modernize public school facilities, access to technology and computers, and more discipline and safety in the classrooms. Democratic Governors believe the most important aspect to insure a child’s education is to have the best possible teachers in the classroom. They believe that we must value teachers as professionals, encourage their development to be the best teachers they can be for our children and compensate them accordingly. Democratic Governors favor greater parental choice, but oppose measures that weaken public schools diverting taxpayer dollars to private schools with no accountability for results. Democratic Governors around the country are also forming innovative public-private partnerships to create programs to provide early childhood education, nutrition and health care services to ensure that our children have the best possible start in life.