Education

I believe that education is the single most effective strategy to address nearly every challenge facing our state. From pre-K, to elementary and secondary education, to higher education, to workforce development—Indiana needs to invest in cultivating caring, knowledgeable, and productive citizens.

All Hoosier children need access to the kind of early childhood experiences that help position them for later school success. I will work hard to expand opportunities and funding for pre-K initiatives. Indiana is one of only ten states that fails to offer any state support for this most critical learning time. We must recognize that improving school readiness can help more students hit the ground running in kindergarten and better position them for future school success.

Regardless of how prepared students are when they enter the classroom, public schools must be able to meet all children where they are, and take them to where they need to be. We must give our schools the power and resources they need to help every child succeed academically. I will not support unfunded mandates or cuts in school funding. I will push for increased accountability, improved effectiveness, better and more empowered teachers, and greater efficiencies in public education services.

I support charter schools as one strategy for expanding choices, fostering innovation, and improving accountability. Like charter schools, all public schools must be held accountable for educating the students they serve. Chronically failing public schools must be closed or turned around.

We must track education spending more precisely to better determine the effectiveness of various programs and strategies. Our current system is unable to connect inputs to results in any meaningful way. We must make greater use of existing technologies to get smarter about how we fund public schools, or we will continue to argue in the dark every budget year over “how much is enough.”

Indiana must create more seamless transitions across the spectrum of educational opportunities. I will identify and promote innovative ways to improve access, affordability, and success at all levels. Many people in my district face an additional hurdle to both education and employment because they have been incarcerated. We must find ways to more successfully re-integrate ex-offenders into our communities and into productive lives.

As Indiana addresses the need for creating new jobs and reeducating workers for those jobs, we must ensure that all Hoosiers can meet the demands of new economies, not the economies of years gone by.