Port Washington, NY - October 24, 2016 - Matt Varvaro, candidate for New York State Assembly in the 16th District, today released his plan to reform our public education system.
“Having attended Port Washington public schools K-through-12, I know how exceptional our school system is,” Varvaro said. “However, given the quality of parents, students, and teachers in our community, our goal should be to make Long Island schools the best in the world.”
Varvaro continued, “We live in a 21st-century information economy that puts a premium on skills, knowledge, and creativity. Our state needs to bring our public education system into the 21st century to ensure that our students are getting the high-quality education that they deserve.”
When Matt gets to Albany, he will work to improve the quality of education by:
Reforming Common Core. The rollout of Common Core was nothing short of atrocious. Our federal and state governments did a very poor job communicating to our teachers, parents, and students exactly what was being expected of them under these new standards. While we should maintain high educational standards, we need to reform Common Core by making its rollout slower and more manageable, releasing all of the previous year’s test questions, and increasing the amount of input from teachers to ensure that test questions are age-appropriate.
Promoting technology in the classroom. Technological innovation has revolutionized virtually every industry in this country. It’s time to bring those revolutions to our public education system. In this day and age, students process information by interacting with technology, like iPhones, iPads, and computers. While teachers will and should always be the center of the learning process, technology can be an extremely valuable tool in helping students learn. New York should invest in technology in the classroom to help our education system catch up to other industries that have benefited from innovation.
Enacting common-sense tenure and compensation reform. Our district has an excellent school system, and the overwhelming majority of our teachers are great at what they do. In fact, we should identify those great teachers, reward them with better compensation, and hold them up as examples for others to follow. For that small group of teachers who aren’t getting the job done, we should give them the training and support that they need to improve—and, if the results don’t improve over a substantial period of time, our schools should be able to replace them with excellent teachers. If students are going to get the outstanding education that they need and deserve, school districts need the flexibility to put the best and most qualified teachers in the classroom at all times.
Stopping the raid of Long Island school funds. Too often, the state uses Long Island schools as a piggybank to fund other programs in other parts of the state. Long Islanders’ hard-earned tax dollars should stay on Long Island and be used to educate our students.
Making college more affordable. The cost of college has risen very rapidly because the value of a college education is higher than it’s ever been. In our information economy, college graduates make about twice as much as non-college-graduates. Given the value of a college education, we should do everything we can to ease the financial burden of this important investment. For example, we should transition to income-based loan repayments, so that your loan obligations are proportional to the income you earn. We should also promote more competition in our higher education system by increasing transparency in our colleges and universities, and by expanding access to online educational opportunities.
Varvaro is the only candidate in this Assembly race discussing the issues. He previously laid out detailed plans to reform ethics and grow New York's economy, and will be releasing his proposals on other important issues in the weeks ahead.
