Matt Lewis on Education
Two of the critical roles that our State Government is tasked to manage that have interweaving dependence are Public Education and Job Development. Unfortunately, these responsibilities have been mishandled by the representation in Columbus, causing hardships to Ohio’s hard-working families and to our vulnerable children in our public schools.
Proper education ensures that our students are able compete in a highly globalized and interdependent world. We need leadership which understands that merely throwing money at the problem while increasing the size of government won’t improve our children’s education. The education of each child is an individual process that the current administration ignores in favor of adding more layers of bureaucracy and standardization.
The Strickland Administration’s answer to Ohio’s education problems is the implementation of the “Evidenced Based Model”, a scheme that standardizes how all schools in Ohio are funded regardless of the special needs of each district. Under the Strickland plan, our children in the Youngstown City Schools and other low income districts will be valued the same as those in prosperous districts statewide. Essentially, this allows high property value districts the same state funding as low property value districts. This creates an unfair system for financially struggling schools which need more attention from the state and ignores the constitutional requirement to “secure a thorough and efficient system of common schools throughout the state”. It also ignores the heart of the problem, the student. The current flawed “Grand Plan of the Day” reinforces the failed notion that a student is a mere monetary figure and ignores the thousands of students that need special attention.
We need to move away from the stifling Federal Government intervention that strips control from the teachers and parents that can actually make a difference to a student. Teachers are forced to merely “train” the students to pass a standardized test, while ignoring the fundamentals which lay the building blocks for further development. Allowing teachers to teach to each student according to their ability will enable those “gifted” students opportunities to be challenged and excel while those that need special attention can be taught appropriately for their needs. The teachers are educated to teach; the standardized tests tie their hands and hinder their creativity in the classrooms. The State Government needs to restore control to the local school boards and teachers as they uniquely understand the individual needs of the schools and students.
Funding K-12 schooling is a vitally important job for the State Government, but if money is tight because of the diminishing tax revenue from lost jobs, it is irresponsible to create bloated programs that spread teachers thin and challenge the school boards and administrators to do more with less. The first thing needed is to cut the layers of bureaucracy, expense, and control that have grown under the current leadership, and restore decision making to the local districts.
Principles to Improve Education:
- Matt Lewis wants to diminish the “Big Government” control over the classrooms giving more authority to the Local School Boards and teachers who work in the classrooms.
- Matt Lewis wants to allow teachers to teach the necessary fundamentals to each student according to their ability.
- Matt Lewis believes that Ohio needs to expand State educational tax credits for higher education.
- Matt Lewis wants to encourage the development of Charter Community Schools state-wide which provides competition and drives innovation.
- Matt Lewis understands the need to emphasize K-12 education at our school systems, responsibly focusing on at-need districts with state and federal block money.
- Matt Lewis firmly holds to expand programs like the EdChoice voucher system so that parents can take control of their child’s education.
- Matt Lewis wants to make sure that 100% of school systems in Ohio are capable of competing with states like Tennessee or Texas in federal programs like “Race to the Top”.
