Education

I am a retired teacher. I remember taking the Iowa Test of Basic Skills once a year when I was a child. We were not given special instructions for taking the Iowa test. We were not given pep assemblies or advanced preparation lessons on test taking. We just took it and the test provided helpful information as to how we stacked up nationally. It took one day from our school year, then we got back to our regular curriculum. Now the tests are the focus of everything.

Some of my friends were actually kicked out of school so they would not be able to take the test and potentially lower the overall score.

My issue is education reform. I was a teacher in Pasadena for a couple of years with Teach for America and I absolutely loved it. I left education because, in large part, I wanted to have and raise a family, and on a teacher's salary I just didn't think I could do that. That to me is a fundamental problem with education. We don't pay our teachers enough. As a lawyer, I sometimes get 8 times a teacher's salary. I get paid more than the people who taught me to be lawyer. We have to change the way we pay teachers. Not only from the first year, but for their 25th, their 40th year.

I am a former Denver Public School student. I lived in Denver all of my life until I went to college. Standardized testing, and how it is measured has directly affected my education. How the tests are measured is often unfair. Read More >

I work at West High School. Demographically, we are 96% Hispanic, and we are 92% free/reduced lunch, and we are about at 50% capacity. Those numbers play a very significant role. Unfortunately, the most important one is the 50% capacity. Read More >