RE “THIS school zone offers change, hope” (Metro, Feb. 5): The proposed innovation zone legislation backed by Governor Baker and some misguided legislators is nothing like the Springfield Empowerment Zone. The thrust of the initiative in Springfield is to empower educators in schools and free them from policies and regulations. The elected teacher leadership teams in these schools are empowered to work in collaboration with the entire teaching staff to create work plans to address the needs of students. The proposed legislation has no such language.
This is a veiled back-door attempt by the governor to achieve what he failed to achieve last November in his push for passage of Question 2. This legislation would expand privately run, publicly funded schools with little or no local control.
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The governor would seem more sincere about improving schools if he stopped submitting budgets that short-fund our public schools by $1 billion a year.
Education reform has never worked the way we all want it to because educators have always been the object of reform; it’s time to let them be reform architects.