There has been no substantive conversation about K-12 education in the Republican debates, town hall meetings, or candidate rallies. Attention has been on other issues, but education is crucial both for the individual future of each of our children and for the future of our nation. We voters deserve to know what the candidates would do as President about K-12 education. What follows are key topics about K-12 education and what the candidates have said about them so far.
CT Viewpoints
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Don’t buy the Connecticut right wing’s propaganda
Special interests have declared war on state employees. Through spin mills like the Yankee Institute, they’ll tell you that we’re overpaid and don’t deserve it and have rich benefits that we don’t deserve. They’ll try to con you into supporting their scheme to take money out of our pockets and put it into theirs. Let them get away with it and your pockets will be next. That’s because, for them, the easy profits have gone overseas. The next mother lode is in your paycheck. Their profits will come from what they can take from you.
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New approaches to tackling Connecticut’s opioid epidemic
There are real and effective solutions to address the opioid epidemic, many of which are being employed right now. The solutions aren’t more pills or new high tech medical therapies. The solutions are connecting people and collaborating across disciplines to unlearn the old ways, and embrace the new ones.
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Connecticut is struggling to implement anti-concussion measures
Though the Centers for Disease Control maintain that concussions are a significant public health problem, Connecticut —once a pioneer in concussion legislation— struggles to implement basic safety measures. While other states laws mandate athletic trainers for contact sport events, limit contact practices, and penalize officials who fail to follow concussion protocols, it is difficult in Connecticut to implement basic policies to educate coaches, parents and athletes on concussion safety.
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Sports and the campus climate for women: ‘It’s on us’ men
The reported expulsion of a former Yale men’s basketball captain for alleged sexual misconduct that he disputes — and the team’s apology as teammates balance personal loyalty with support for “a healthy, safe and respectful campus climate”— can raise awareness at universities and beyond.
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Connecticut’s future should be based on policy, not politics
Connecticut’s next generation boasts many policy-oriented leaders. As millennials, we are sick and tired of problems being created or solutions postponed. We want solutions, and we will provide them by acting on our convictions. We pride ourselves on several core principles that define our generation – the values of innovation, choice, opportunity and empowerment.
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Phase out the tax on ambulatory surgical centers
Regarding CT House Bill 5493, phasing out the tax on ambulatory surgical centers. The tax structure ought to be enabling and empowering surgical centers to achieve the Triple Aim in order to bend the rate of increase of the unsustainable per-capita cost of health care — especially since surgical centers deliver the goods that are expected of them to our friends and neighbors.
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Connecticut must encourage millennials to stay — and here’s how
We’ve all heard it over and over—Connecticut is having a rough go of it lately. While it’s easy to latch on to the negativity, for many of us, there is true frustration about the lack of conversation around what is working in our state. What we should be focusing on are the bright spots and programs that are working to help find solutions to the challenges our state faces in 2016 and beyond. Two years ago we decided to come up with a real world solution to stem the flow of young people leaving the state by addressing some of the underlying causes of the exodus — a lack of career path jobs, student debt, and disengagement from the community. It is from that determination that Serve Here CT was launched.
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Let’s involve Connecticut patients in reducing medical errors
March 13 through 18 is National Patient Safety Awareness Week. As I sit here, thinking of what to write, stories of the people who have reached out to the CT Center for Patient Safety over the years are streaming through my mind. I am remembering the story of an infant whose high bilirubin level was not treated after birth and who suffered from kernicterus and now lives with severe complications of cerebral palsy; the story of the young mom who died sitting next to her 4-year-old after getting an allergy shot at the doctor’s office and going into anaphylactic shock. They didn’t have IV epinephrine to help her.
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We need to limit the consumption of juice by Connecticut children
Over 15 percent of Connecticut’s low income 2- to 5-year old children are obese, ranking us fifth in the nation in early childhood obesity. While it is tempting to think that chubby toddlers will grow out of their baby fat, this is all too often not the case. An overweight child aged 3 to 5 is three times more likely to become an obese adult. And overweight children who become overweight adults have more severe adult weight problems and higher morbidity and mortality than people that first become overweight as adults.
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Use of Connecticut student data brings both potential rewards and risks
There is great potential for the appropriate use of student data to bring positive outcomes for our children and students. However, the use of student data also brings with it immense responsibility and great risk to the safety and civil liberties of children and their families.
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Law barring access to CT history should be fixed by [name redacted]
Five years ago it wasn’t against the law in Connecticut to get historical records. Now, after the mental health community’s end run around proper legislative practice, it is time to once again enable our historians and researchers and poets and biographers access to the information they need to explain who we are to each other.
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Parents’ rights group: Education officials’ behavior rude and appalling
As part of Education Commissioner Dianna Wentzell’s “leadership strategies,” designed to urge superintendents to “encourage” parents to have their children take the SBAC test rather than to opt out, the commissioner called in superintendents from public school districts across the state to the department’s Hartford headquarters for a “training session” on how effectively to communicate with parents.
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Why isn’t media asking presidential candidates about education?
It is difficult to believe as a life-long educator that the media has yet to ask any of the presidential candidates about their views on K-12 public education. It is a well known fact the public education in Connecticut and across the nation has suffered immensely as an outgrowth of the policies of the George W. Bush administration with its No Child Left Behind (NCLB) program. Likewise, public education continued its downward spiral as a result of President Barack Obama’s appointment of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who ushered in the disastrous Race to the Top along with the Common Core State Standards.
Posted inCT Viewpoints, Talking Transportation
Stop cable TV’s big lie from derailing CT-N’s State Civic Network
CT-N has just proposed a new State Civic Network with up to ten channels of coverage via the web. The technology would allow viewers to do a key-word search of archives, wading through hours of coverage to find exactly what matters to them. Citizens (and media) could lift video clips at no charge. And all this would cost cable subscribers just 40 cents a month.