On Tour: Education Reform

Education reform took to the road last night as Governor Dannel Malloy hosted the first in a series of planned statewide forums.
“If you don’t educate your children…then we cannot be competitive as a state,” the Governor told a standing room only crowd in Hartford. “I just want to get to the point where we don’t give excuses why we can’t educate our children.”
The Governor’s proposals for reforming the state’s failing public school system are outlined in Senate Bill 24, which the legislature now is addressing.
Although the bill features a wide-ranging series of initiaitives, questions last night focused on provisions designed to better support teachers and administrators, including overhauling the tenure system. 
“Number one, we don’t do a whole lot about tenure in this package,” the Governor said in response to a question. “I don’t know what you’ve been told by other people. What we do is we implement the evaluation system that your [teachers’] union has already agreed to.
“The system made it very difficult, if not impossible, to remove teachers. In fact, the standard of incompetence is an insult to the 45,000 teachers, the vast, vast majority of whom are good to great teachers.”
To date, education reform forums are planned for West Hartford (March 6), New Haven (March 13), Windham (March 14), and New London (date to be determined).