Candidates rip GOP education policy
Teachers union applauds the stand; Mihos also says he would cut MCAS
WILLIAMSTOWN -- Four candidates for governor strafed the Republican administration's education policies and one of their rivals, no-show Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey, before a largely approving audience last night at a forum sponsored by the Massachusetts Teachers Association.
Voicing a chorus of criticism were Thomas F. Reilly and Deval L. Patrick, both Democrats; Christy Mihos, an independent; and Grace Ross, a candidate for the Green-Rainbow Party, all of whom attacked cuts in funding for local communities and for remediation programs, as well as Governor Mitt Romney's recent veto of funding for early childhood education programs.
``Absolutely disgraceful," Reilly, the two-term attorney general, said of the remediation funding cutbacks.
Mihos, a businessman, said the administration, with help from the Legislature dominated by Democrats, had ``stolen" more than $2 billion from local communities by cutting local aid.
Of cuts in funds for school drug rehabilitation programs, Patrick said they were ill-advised: ``We pay for it at the other end," he said.
Mihos, a former Republican, caused a stir by declaring that, if elected, ``we are going to do away with MCAS."
The high-stakes tests, implemented after the 1993 Education Reform Act, have merely proved, he said, that students in well-funded communities score better than their counterparts in less-affluent cities and towns. Ross, a community organizer, said she opposed it as a high school graduation requirement, and Patrick said he supports the tests but only as one tool to measure child development.
Healey, who is unopposed for the Republican nomination and did not respond to an MTA questionnaire, continued her practice of declining to appear at forums with the Democrats vying to face her in the November election. The third Democrat, venture capitalist Christopher Gabrieli, had planned to attend but did not because he has suspended campaign appearances since the death of his mother last week.
The forum, attended by nearly 300 MTA members who are attending the statewide union's annual summer conference at Williams College, was free of rancor or even conflict. Candidates generally agreed on most issues, including expansion of preschool and after-school programs, opposition to vouchers, investing more in public higher education, protecting pension benefits for teachers and other public employees. All were harshly critical of the standards-based federal No Child Left Behind law, which creates additional burdens that local districts say they can't afford.
Indeed, ``ditto" was uttered so often during the event, as candidates agreed with one another, that it became a running gag over the 90-minute forum.
No one put a price tag on any of these initiatives, however; only a few general suggestions were offered on paying for them.
At one point, however, Patrick, a former chief federal civil rights prosecutor, took a veiled swipe at Reilly, who supports a one-year rollback of the state income tax to 5 percent.
``I don't see how we'll meet the unmet needs and roll back the income tax at the same time," said Patrick, who has said he won't support a rollback until he is satisfied the state's economy can sustain it.
Mihos also said the surpluses were sufficient to support his proposal to fix the percentage of aid to cities and towns at 40 percent of state revenue, up from about 28 percent now.
Ross called for an overhaul of the state's tax-and-fee structure to shift the burden to upper-income residents but did not offer specifics.
Though the candidates criticized cuts in state spending, the budget Romney signed into law last month included increases for schools and municipalities. Some officials have said those increases do not offset earlier cuts in spending, however. The state budget for this year will add $63.2 million for public higher education, a 6.9 percent increase over last year, plus $216 million for kindergarten through high school education, a 6.5 percent increase, another $375 million for local aid, an 8.5 percent increase, and $14 million more for the environment, a 7.4 percent increase, the Globe reported last month.
MTA president Anne Wass said the association's board of directors voted ``practically unanimously" on Sunday not to `recommend to its members any Democrat before the Sept. 19 primary but to support the eventual Democratic nominee. ``Any of the three would be better for us on our issues," than another Republican, she said.
