Education - Wenstrup for Louisiana

PETER’S VISION: EDUCATION

Non-negotiable: From birth to age 20, every child should have a high-quality educational experience.

In the twelve years I’ve spent in the classroom, I have been fortunate to teach and learn from a great number of students, families, and fellow educators. Each child that I’ve had the opportunity to work with has immense potential, and we owe it to them to fully fund a robust educational system that elevates their brilliance from birth through post-secondary schooling. When policy is made by economists rather than educators, education becomes a private commodity rather than a public good.

We should invest heavily at the federal level to give tools to communities, but trust state and local government to respond to families.

When I listen to voters, the concern I hear the most – even during hurricane season in a pandemic – is that they want to make sure we invest in our children’s schools. We all want our children – our neighbor’s children, our grandchildren, our siblings – to have the best possible education. That’s how we build a foundation to remain the most free and most innovative country in the world.

Yet education is too often an after-thought for our politicians. There’s no money in it, or when there is, it isn’t on the side of our children.

It’s time to send a teacher to the United States Senate. As your next Senator, I will fight to make our children’s schools the centerpiece of our efforts to invest in American greatness. I’ll do that by completely re-imagining the federal government’s role in education.

Conservatives understand well that we should trust local and state governments to make important choices for their constituents and to be fiscally responsible. Liberals understand that we need to tax the wealthy and invest much more in our country’s future. When you combine these, you get the idea that we should invest heavily at the federal level to give tools to communities, but trust state and local government to respond to families.

My idea is to take the biggest non-discretionary line-item in education budgets and move it to the federal level. We need teachers to have schools, so let the federal government pay for that. The federal government would provide salaries per teacher position – from $108,000 in districts with the highest child poverty rates to $60,000 in districts with the lowest child poverty rates.

With this, the federal government communicates that our children’s schools are important and that fairness is important.

Then, we cut almost all other K-12 education spending from the federal government and move it to the state level. States will respond to voters to make decisions about testing, curriculum, and teacher training.

At the local level we empower principals – not districts – to staff their schools. For the generous salaries they receive, teachers will have to give up tenure and compete on the market for professional salaries. Hopefully, we’ll see creative models like three year contracts for beginning teachers that start low and move up. Or paying experienced teachers part-time salaries- upwards of $50,000 in high-poverty schools –  to allow them more time with their families. Or letting great teachers defer salary to a shared assistant to help with grading or data input.

How do we empower families and communities? First, principals report to school boards and serve four year terms. They can choose to align themselves with non-profit charter organizations or utilize administrative services from the school district. Either way, they are accountable to the people, through the school board. Second, I believe there should be some school choice where feasible. This would not be the chance-not-choice system we have now where most families pick between several underperforming schools. This would be a choice between three nearby high quality schools – maybe between one with an exceptional arts program, another with excellent trades education, and a third that utilizes project-based learning. Cities may not want the full-district choice plan that New Orleans has, but families should have the option to pick between three different schools in their area. School boards could use these preference numbers to understand what families are looking for in a school.

I often tell people that our current system for promoting teachers is like the Saints moving Drew Brees to quarterbacks coach after he won the Super Bowl. Good teachers leave the classroom too often to become master teachers, administrators, educational consultants, or representatives for industry. Billionaire philanthropists pay a lot of great teachers not to teach. A generous federal investment in teachers would flip that in a way that is common sense to most parents. Would you rather have a $30,000 first-year teacher with a well-compensated “coach” or administrator, or would you rather have the master teacher teach your child? Most parents would want the master teacher teaching their child. Our funding model should reflect that.

This plan – paying teachers a professional salary and giving more choice to communities – has plenty of other benefits as well. It helps break the cycle of poverty by investing additional resources into communities with the most need. It incentivizes districts to be socio-economically integrated so that all of our children are learning together. It provides an incentive for talented young people in poor communities and Communities of Color to return to their communities to teach.

A federal investment directly in teacher’s salaries would cut waste and invest in what’s most important to parents. Meanwhile, other educational decisions would be pushed down to states, cities, and families.

An investment in our children’s future. More control to families and school boards. A great teacher in every classroom. This is solution-oriented. This is not politics as usual. It’s time for Louisiana to send a Teacher to the US Senate.

The average cost of childcare in Louisiana is over $7,000 per year. What’s the best way to ensure quality care from birth to age 5?

SOLUTION 1
SOLUTION 2
SOLUTION 3
Expand the Child Tax Credit
Expand Head Start
Universal Child Care

Expanding the child tax credit to $4,000 would allow families to potentially receive a refund of $3,600 based on an earned income formula.

Increasing Head Start and Early Head Start funding to $20 billion to provide services to 50% of low-income three- and four-year olds. 

Every child in America would be able to attend free full-day childcare from birth through age three and then free pre-Kindergarten starting at age three.

SOME SPECIFICS ON THE PLANS:

  • Child Tax Credit:
    • The child tax credit aims to reduce tax liability for parents and provide more disposable income for families. Increasing the child tax credit gives parents choice; a parent could stay at home, paying themselves for the labor of raising children; or they could choose to put that money towards daycare so both parents can work.
    • Funding childcare through our complicated tax system could mean sufficiency (ex: the maximum potential refund from increasing the child tax credit is less than half of the average cost of childcare in Louisiana) and efficiency (ex: low income people make up a disproportionate percentage of those who don’t file taxes) challenges. 
    • Funding families directly also does not provide any assurance of the quality of educational experiences provided.
  • Head Start:
    • By focusing on early investments into children of families below 200% of the Federal poverty line, this plan targets the children who are most in need of services to be ready for kindergarten. Early investments in the most disadvantaged children have been shown to have the highest return on investment, up to $8 for every $1 spent. The Head Start program already has a robust infrastructure and curriculum, and has been shown to support strong, emotionally supportive environments to children.
    • However, critics remain concerned about state-to-state variability in the quality of instruction in Head Start programs and the further segregation of low-income families through the expansion of this program.
  • Universal Child Care:
    • Providing a high-quality childcare seat to every child in America would provide for equal access to an early intervention that has been shown to decrease criminality and increase lifetime earnings and happiness. With the government administering the program, there can be better pay parity between early childhood educators and K-12 teachers, and more standardized early childhood instruction. This plan also has the potential to impact the 2 million parents who report making career sacrifices because of problems with childcare.
    • Those who are against a universal childcare option are leery of government inefficiencies and point to disparities that already exist in the K-12 system. Additionally, this plan has the potential to crowd-out in-home childcare options that many parents prefer.

How and when should we return to school this fall?

SOLUTION 1
SOLUTION 2
SOLUTION 3
Safe Schools
Safe Communities
Virtual Learning

We can reopen schools when there is a positive test rate of 5%. Schools have regular testing, adequate PPE, lower class sizes, and practice social distancing.

We can reopen schools when there are fewer than 1,500 cases nationwide. To get there, we implement a 17-day lockdown and test 50 million people.

The 2020-21 school year begins 100% online. The Federal government provides technology grants to ensure digital access for families. 

SOME SPECIFICS ON THE PLANS:

  • Safe Schools:
    • A 5% positive test rate is an indicator that we are testing enough people and can quarantine most cases. With funding from the Federal government, we can empower schools to stay safe, including testing everyone in the building every two weeks, professional-quality masks for staff, and reducing class sizes and bus capacity. 
    • Safely reopening schools would be very expensive. To reduce every class size in the country from 25 to 15 students would require $100 billion in extra teachers. Testing, PPE, cleaning supplies, and bus capacity would increase this cost. Schools would also have to be prepared with contingency plans for potential future outbreaks.
  • Safe Communities:
    • During a 17-day nationwide lockdown, we set the goal of testing 50 million Americans. To prepare, families stock up on supplies and cities focus on training and equipping businesses. With contact tracing and government-operated quarantine sites, we can drastically reduce and control the spread of the virus, allowing us to reopen schools.
    • This would be a massive undertaking, requiring coordination at all levels of government and between the public and private sectors. Stimulus and staffing funds alone, allowing families to prepare, hazard pay for those who must work during the lockdown, and to hire contact tracers, would cost more than $400 billion. 
    • Read more about my 17-day plan here.
  • Virtual Learning
    • Rather than threatening funding, the Federal government could provide $15 billion in technology grants to cities and local education agencies to support 100% distance learning. Incentives could also be offered to education technology companies (think Khan Academy) to partner with teachers to ensure high-quality digital instruction.
    • Research has shown that student performance fell drastically in the spring when students were at home, especially for poorer students and students of color. Many parents and caregivers are being asked to return to work and won’t have the capacity to support at-home instruction like they did previously.

As a result of skyrocketing college costs and student debt, housing markets and new business starts are experiencing negative impacts. How do we ensure the next generation has the opportunity to pursue its dreams?

SOLUTION 1
SOLUTION 2
SOLUTION 3
Free Community 
College
Three Free 
Semesters
Increased Pell Grants

67% of Americans do not hold a bachelor’s degree. Our first priority should be giving these folks access to a high-quality, skill-based education that allows them to participate fully in a 21st century economy.

Students fund their first two semesters through traditional programs - grants, loans, tuition. The US government pays for semesters 3-5. Semesters 6-8 are financed through income-based repayment plans, with rates based on the institution.

Investing $100 billion in the Pell Grant program, to allow it to cover the costs of non-tuition expenses and expand access to more low- and middle-income students.

SOME SPECIFICS ON THE PLANS:

  • Free Community College
    • This program has the most progressive funding model. We would be investing in the lives and economic prosperity of students who would benefit the most.
    • Critics say that having “skin-in-the-game” is crucial for students to persist through college, and recommend students, via loan or tuition payment, to ensure continued investment by students in their education,
  • Three Free:
    • This program requires an initial investment from students to ensure college is an intentional, rather than default, choice. Three free semesters in the middle represent a massive investment in education to keep our nation competitive with others in producing a highly-skilled and well-trained workforce. The income-based loans for semesters 6-8 provide a market mechanism to evaluate how well students are prepared for the work environment. Colleges and universities that do the best job of preparing students for the workplace would have a lower interest rate. Thus, schools would be encouraged to adjust their tuitions to the quality of education they provide.
    • Some critics say that failure to support the first year would reduce access for many young people. Critics also say that income inequality is already baked in by the time that students arrive at a college. This program, via lower interest rates based on institution, would perpetuate inequality by allowing the richest students at the richest colleges to pay the lowest interest rates.
  • Increased Pell Grants:
    • This program would expand the Pell Grant program by allowing it to cover non-tuition expenses and making it accessible to more Americans. 
    • Advocates support this plan because the Pell Grant program has not been able to keep pace with the increased rates of college attendance or the soaring costs of four-year institutions. However the infrastructure is already in place to fund students using this mechanism. 
    • Critics raise concerns about Pell Grants as a reactionary mechanism and worry that increased pell grants won’t do anything to change the fundamentals of runaway college costs.

     

    First
    We should invest heavily at the federal level to give tools to communities, but trust state and local government to respond to families.

    When I listen to voters, the concern I hear the most – even during hurricane season in a pandemic – is that they want to make sure we invest in our children’s schools. We all want our children – our neighbor’s children, our grandchildren, our siblings – to have the best possible education. That’s how we build a foundation to remain the most free and most innovative country in the world.

    Yet education is too often an after-thought for our politicians. There’s no money in it, or when there is, it isn’t on the side of our children.

    It’s time to send a teacher to the United States Senate. As your next Senator, I will fight to make our children’s schools the centerpiece of our efforts to invest in American greatness. I’ll do that by completely re-imagining the federal government’s role in education.

    Conservatives understand well that we should trust local and state governments to make important choices for their constituents and to be fiscally responsible. Liberals understand that we need to tax the wealthy and invest much more in our country’s future. When you combine these, you get the idea that we should invest heavily at the federal level to give tools to communities, but trust state and local government to respond to families.

    My idea is to take the biggest non-discretionary line-item in education budgets and move it to the federal level. We need teachers to have schools, so let the federal government pay for that. The federal government would provide salaries per teacher position – from $108,000 in districts with the highest child poverty rates to $60,000 in districts with the lowest child poverty rates.

    With this, the federal government communicates that our children’s schools are important and that fairness is important.

    Then, we cut almost all other K-12 education spending from the federal government and move it to the state level. States will respond to voters to make decisions about testing, curriculum, and teacher training.

    At the local level we empower principals – not districts – to staff their schools. For the generous salaries they receive, teachers will have to give up tenure and compete on the market for professional salaries. Hopefully, we’ll see creative models like three year contracts for beginning teachers that start low and move up. Or paying experienced teachers part-time salaries- upwards of $50,000 in high-poverty schools –  to allow them more time with their families. Or letting great teachers defer salary to a shared assistant to help with grading or data input.

    How do we empower families and communities? First, principals report to school boards and serve four year terms. They can choose to align themselves with non-profit charter organizations or utilize administrative services from the school district. Either way, they are accountable to the people, through the school board. Second, I believe there should be some school choice where feasible. This would not be the chance-not-choice system we have now where most families pick between several underperforming schools. This would be a choice between three nearby high quality schools – maybe between one with an exceptional arts program, another with excellent trades education, and a third that utilizes project-based learning. Cities may not want the full-district choice plan that New Orleans has, but families should have the option to pick between three different schools in their area. School boards could use these preference numbers to understand what families are looking for in a school.

    I often tell people that our current system for promoting teachers is like the Saints moving Drew Brees to quarterbacks coach after he won the Super Bowl. Good teachers leave the classroom too often to become master teachers, administrators, educational consultants, or representatives for industry. Billionaire philanthropists pay a lot of great teachers not to teach. A generous federal investment in teachers would flip that in a way that is common sense to most parents. Would you rather have a $30,000 first-year teacher with a well-compensated “coach” or administrator, or would you rather have the master teacher teach your child? Most parents would want the master teacher teaching their child. Our funding model should reflect that.

    This plan – paying teachers a professional salary and giving more choice to communities – has plenty of other benefits as well. It helps break the cycle of poverty by investing additional resources into communities with the most need. It incentivizes districts to be socio-economically integrated so that all of our children are learning together. It provides an incentive for talented young people in poor communities and Communities of Color to return to their communities to teach.

    A federal investment directly in teacher’s salaries would cut waste and invest in what’s most important to parents. Meanwhile, other educational decisions would be pushed down to states, cities, and families.

    An investment in our children’s future. More control to families and school boards. A great teacher in every classroom. This is solution-oriented. This is not politics as usual. It’s time for Louisiana to send a Teacher to the US Senate.

    The average cost of childcare in Louisiana is over $7,000 per year. What’s the best way to ensure quality care from birth to age 5?

     

    SOLUTION 1 SOLUTION 2 SOLUTION 3

    Expand the Child Tax Credit

    Expand Head Start

    Universal Child Care

    Expanding the child tax credit to $4,000 would allow families to potentially receive a refund of $3,600 based on an earned income formula. Increasing Head Start and Early Head Start funding to $20 billion to provide services to 50% of low-income three- and four-year olds. Every child in America would be able to attend free full-day childcare from birth through age three and then free pre-Kindergarten starting at age three.

     

    SOME SPECIFICS ON THE PLANS:

    • Child Tax Credit:
      • The child tax credit aims to reduce tax liability for parents and provide more disposable income for families. Increasing the child tax credit gives parents choice; a parent could stay at home, paying themselves for the labor of raising children; or they could choose to put that money towards daycare so both parents can work.
      • Funding childcare through our complicated tax system could mean sufficiency (ex: the maximum potential refund from increasing the child tax credit is less than half of the average cost of childcare in Louisiana) and efficiency (ex: low income people make up a disproportionate percentage of those who don’t file taxes) challenges.
      • Funding families directly also does not provide any assurance of the quality of educational experiences provided.
    • Head Start:
      • By focusing on early investments into children of families below 200% of the Federal poverty line, this plan targets the children who are most in need of services to be ready for kindergarten. Early investments in the most disadvantaged children have been shown to have the highest return on investment, up to $8 for every $1 spent. The Head Start program already has a robust infrastructure and curriculum, and has been shown to support strong, emotionally supportive environments to children.
      • However, critics remain concerned about state-to-state variability in the quality of instruction in Head Start programs and the further segregation of low-income families through the expansion of this program.
    • Universal Child Care:
      • Providing a high-quality childcare seat to every child in America would provide for equal access to an early intervention that has been shown to decrease criminality and increase lifetime earnings and happiness. With the government administering the program, there can be better pay parity between early childhood educators and K-12 teachers, and more standardized early childhood instruction. This plan also has the potential to impact the 2 million parents who report making career sacrifices because of problems with childcare.
      • Those who are against a universal childcare option are leery of government inefficiencies and point to disparities that already exist in the K-12 system. Additionally, this plan has the potential to crowd-out in-home childcare options that many parents prefer.
    How and when should we return to school this fall?

     

    SOLUTION 1 SOLUTION 2 SOLUTION 3

    Safe Schools

    Safe Communities

    Virtual Learning

    We can reopen schools when there is a positive test rate of 5%. Schools have regular testing, adequate PPE, lower class sizes, and practice social distancing. We can reopen schools when there are fewer than 1,500 cases nationwide. To get there, we implement a 17-day lockdown and test 50 million people. The 2020-21 school year begins 100% online. The Federal government provides technology grants to ensure digital access for families.

     SOME SPECIFICS ON THE PLANS:

    • Safe Schools:
      • A 5% positive test rate is an indicator that we are testing enough people and can quarantine most cases. With funding from the Federal government, we can empower schools to stay safe, including testing everyone in the building every two weeks, professional-quality masks for staff, and reducing class sizes and bus capacity. 
      • Safely reopening schools would be very expensive. To reduce every class size in the country from 25 to 15 students would require $100 billion in extra teachers. Testing, PPE, cleaning supplies, and bus capacity would increase this cost. Schools would also have to be prepared with contingency plans for potential future outbreaks.

    • Safe Communities:
      • During a 17-day nationwide lockdown, we set the goal of testing 50 million Americans. To prepare, families stock up on supplies and cities focus on training and equipping businesses. With contact tracing and government-operated quarantine sites, we can drastically reduce and control the spread of the virus, allowing us to reopen schools.
      • This would be a massive undertaking, requiring coordination at all levels of government and between the public and private sectors. Stimulus and staffing funds alone, allowing families to prepare, hazard pay for those who must work during the lockdown, and to hire contact tracers, would cost more than $400 billion. 
      • Read more about my 17-day plan here.
    • Virtual Learning:
      • Rather than threatening funding, the Federal government could provide $15 billion in technology grants to cities and local education agencies to support 100% distance learning. Incentives could also be offered to education technology companies (think Khan Academy) to partner with teachers to ensure high-quality digital instruction.
      • Research has shown that student performance fell drastically in the spring when students were at home, especially for poorer students and students of color. Many parents and caregivers are being asked to return to work and won’t have the capacity to support at-home instruction like they did previously.
    As a result of skyrocketing college costs and student debt, housing markets and new business starts are experiencing negative impacts. How do we ensure the next generation has the opportunity to pursue its dreams?

     

    SOLUTION 1 SOLUTION 2 SOLUTION 3

    Free Community College

    Three Free Semesters

    Increased Pell Grants

    67% of Americans do not hold a bachelor’s degree. Our first priority should be giving these folks access to a high-quality, skill-based education that allows them to participate fully in a 21st century economy. Students fund their first two semesters through traditional programs – grants, loans, tuition. The US government pays for semesters 3-5. Semesters 6-8 are financed through income-based repayment plans, with rates based on the institution. Investing $100 billion in the Pell Grant program, to allow it to cover the costs of non-tuition expenses and expand access to more low- and middle-income students.

     SOME SPECIFICS ON THE PLANS:

    • Free Community College:
        • This program has the most progressive funding model. We would be investing in the lives and economic prosperity of students who would benefit the most.
        • Critics say that having “skin-in-the-game” is crucial for students to persist through college, and recommend students, via loan or tuition payment, to ensure continued investment by students in their education.
    • Three Free:
      • This program requires an initial investment from students to ensure college is an intentional, rather than default, choice. Three free semesters in the middle represent a massive investment in education to keep our nation competitive with others in producing a highly-skilled and well-trained workforce. The income-based loans for semesters 6-8 provide a market mechanism to evaluate how well students are prepared for the work environment. Colleges and universities that do the best job of preparing students for the workplace would have a lower interest rate. Thus, schools would be encouraged to adjust their tuitions to the quality of education they provide.
      • Some critics say that failure to support the first year would reduce access for many young people. Critics also say that income inequality is already baked in by the time that students arrive at a college. This program, via lower interest rates based on institution, would perpetuate inequality by allowing the richest students at the richest colleges to pay the lowest interest rates.
    • Increased Pell Grants:
      • This program would expand the Pell Grant program by allowing it to cover non-tuition expenses and making it accessible to more Americans. 
      • Advocates support this plan because the Pell Grant program has not been able to keep pace with the increased rates of college attendance or the soaring costs of four-year institutions. However the infrastructure is already in place to fund students using this mechanism. 
      • Critics raise concerns about Pell Grants as a reactionary mechanism and worry that increased pell grants won’t do anything to change the fundamentals of runaway college costs.