The best way to improve the U.S. education system is through innovation and opportunity.
WASHINGTON, DC (June 29, 2016) — The Center for Education Reform (CER) today released the following statement from Jeanne Allen, founder and chief executive, applauding Hillary Clinton’s “innovation agenda” for higher education:
“Hillary’s innovation-focused agenda is exactly what higher education needs. Her emphasis on how different forms of learning can empower young people and provide greater opportunity embraces a notion that reformers have long advocated: that one model doesn’t fit all students.
“Indeed, once upon a time, Hillary supported substantive changes to the status quo. In 1996, she wrote in her book, It Takes a Village, that she found the charter school ‘argument persuasive.’ Presumably, the First Lady would have favored the pro-charter policies her husband put forward, including legislation that he said would put America ‘well on [its] way to creating 3,000 charter schools by the year 2000.’
“And yet, in 2015, Secretary Clinton seemed to take an opposite point of view, repeating an oft-used but inaccurate portrayal of charters: ‘Most charter schools — I don’t want to say every one — but most charter schools, they don’t take the hardest-to-teach kids, or, if they do, they don’t keep them,’ she said.
“The innovations in higher education Hillary is calling for today actually originated in charter schools and have taken hold at all levels of schooling. We call on her to embrace once again the needed, widespread changes to the status quo and to be a leader in ensuring that the principles of innovation and opportunity are embedded throughout all levels of education.”
For more information about how innovation can transform education, see CER’s recently released manifesto, Here Is Everything That’s Wrong With the U.S. Education System — And How to Fix It.
The Center for Education Reform does not endorse candidates, but we will always recognize when someone’s on the right side of parent power and excellence for kids.