When children have access to an education that sets them up for a joyful and prosperous path forward, we all win.
Education is at the heart of Kentucky House District 41, which includes Bellarmine University, Sullivan University, the Kentucky School for the Blind, Atherton High School, Assumption High School, Highland Middle School, Hawthorne Elementary, Klondike Elementary, St. Xavier High School, and more. An effective District 41 representative must love education and know the field well. These are Sara-Elizabeth’s top three education priorities.
1. Improve all schools by broadening school choice.
We can carefully craft charter school and voucher legislation to bring Kentucky on par with other states with robust school choice (including quality public schools). Quality legislation will improve our public schools while empowering marginalized minority learners to find the education that moves them farther, faster.
2. Reduce testing, especially for early learners and ELLs.
Excessive testing is a colossal waste of learning time and resources when spent on the children who don’t need it, with parents who don’t want it. Eliminate testing for kindergarten, first-grade, and English-language learners except by special request. Allow opt-out of testing at every level.
3. Enable more Kentuckians to become certified teachers.
Implement an alternative to the six-graduate-credit requirement to re-certify teachers wanting to re-enter the field. I call this option the Continued Involvement Portfolio. In addition, reduce the requirements to certify teachers to teach kindergarten through second grade. It does not take a four-year degree to teach both first grade and high school physics. We need an associate’s degree option to certify early elementary teachers.
I’m ready to take these ideas and radical questions and more to Frankfort, including discussions of implementing high-value skills instruction in high schools to open high-wage jobs to more young Kentuckians, empowering subject-level specialists to make more curriculum decisions, and encouraging service hours to be spent in volunteering with our most vulnerable learners.
