I know that education is an important issue for most voters, so I’ve worked very hard to make it look like I support our public education system.
This means making a lot of promises I can’t keep, including promising billions in new funding for education without any concrete proposal to pay for it.1
At the same time, I supported a budget designed by my conservative friends that cut education funding by $74 million.2
I am also a big supporter of charter schools, even though Washingtonians have already voted three times to keep them out of our state.3 Charter schools limit democratic accountability, which I support 100%. That’s because I think private business will make better decisions for your children’s education than families will.
These positions help me earn major corporate campaign donations, and the endorsement of other extreme conservatives, like Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, who has worked very hard to launch one of the most successful attacks on public education in the nation.4
The public education system is broken. Instead of trying to fix it, I want to give up and abandon the system to private companies.
CITATIONS
1 Katherine Long, Seattle Times, Jan. 17, 2012.
2 Josh Feit, PubliCola, March 5, 2012.
3 Joel Connelly, Seattle P-I Blog, Nov. 8, 2012.
4 Joel Connelly, Seattle P-I Blog, July 11, 2012; Valerie Strauss, Washington Post, July 13, 2012.