EDUCATION - an election issue

The Long Thompson approach to education reform:

Jill Long Thomson, a former college professor brings a unique commitment to improving the state's education system. In order to grow Indiana's economy and keep businesses here, I feel it is crucial that Indiana reforms its education policy to better equip the workforce for the future.
I have encouraged Jill Long Thompson to establish a priority of early childhood education. That is where it starts.

Jill Long Thompson has a plan but I am suggesting that another priority be established within her framework and it recognizing the value of high quality early childhood to allow women to enter the workforce and support their young families.

• Early Childhood Education and Care: The child care needs of American women and their families have increased dramatically as women with children have entered the paid workforce in unprecedented numbers. Yet high-quality child care is too often unaffordable or simply not available. Women and their families thus have a tremendous stake in public policies that will help make high-quality child care available and affordable to those who need it. That is why I am working together with the National Women's Law Center to improve the quality, affordability, and accessibility of child care, with a special emphasis on ways to expand public and private financing of the changes needed to achieve these goals.

The Long Thompson administration will do the following:

• Create a public private partnership to offer free books to all Hoosier children from birth through age five: Modeled after Tennessee's partnership with Dolly Paarton's "Imagination Library." Children who enter kindergarten with the skills and love of reading are far more likely to graduate from high school and become productive and successful in the workforce.
• Reduce the high school dropout rate by putting more flexibility into our schools and personalizing education: Jill Long's approach will restructure the high school experience, provide more options and opportunities so that more students, including special education students, graduate with the ability to succeed in future endeavors.
• Improve access to higher education and lifelong learning opportunities by creating a seamless education system that allows easier transfer of credits and courses: Jill believes we need to make college level courses for credit more available to students in their junior and senior years of high school and transferable to any public post-secondary institution in Indiana, at no additional cost to the students or families.
• Expand the 21st Century Scholars Program: Jill will seek to expand the program to embrace a large percentage of lower and middle income families. She will research new ways of accessing college funding mechanisms.
• Create a Higher Education Fund for additional 21st Century Scholarships. She will immediately work to create its own higher education foundation to tap billions of dollars available in philanthropic aid just as other municipalities have done, and use these funds to pay for expanding the Scholars program so more deserving students can attend college.

• Please log on to http://www.collegeloanmarket.com/for new and innovative ways to assist families access lending for college.

There is much to do - and with some ingenuity, we will prevail.

Carole Stein