Congressman Mike Honda [Dem.] represents the 15th District in California - those of us outside the state can think of his district as Silicon Valley. Honda has been a teacher, principal and school board member, so public education isn’t just a hot topic for him.
Honda hosted a telephone town hall meeting about public education, and his office has made it available on his website. You can listen to the full call [about an hour] or individual questions.
I’m not convinced by many of Honda’s answers, and I tend to yawn at contradiction. At 24:07 in the call, Honda says:
24:07: “It’s not that the state [California] is cash-poor, it’s where the cash flows and how much of it - where it goes - and who controls it.”
Makes sense. But in answering a followup question submitted after the call:
“The greatest barrier to improving education is insufficient funding.”
There are certainly bigger sins than mixed messages in a town hall format, though.
Honda touches on the importance of teacher/principal quality around the 36th minute - and a telephone poll taken by listeners on the call showed that 70% saw teacher quality as more important to a school’s success than the school environment. I’d like to hear specifics about how Honda thinks California, or schools anywhere, can attract and maintain solid academic talent for its teachers and principals [especially those principals].
Having said that, this telephone town hall is an excellent feature. It’s cheap/easy to produce and is accessible to constituents, media and other interested parties - there’s no excuse for other members of Congress not to do the same.
Well done, Mike Honda - hopefully this is the first of many education telephone town hall events with you and other members of Congress. I’m not on board with many of your solutions, but I love the way you’re going about it.
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