Issue Position: Education

Issue Position

As someone who attended Georgia schools and received the HOPE scholarship to attend the state's flagship university, Houston knows how a quality education can change lives and position students for a life of productivity and success. Houston will fight for a K-12 education system that empowers our students to succeed by keeping our state's QBE formula fully funded and safeguarding the HOPE scholarship, HOPE grant, and HOPE pre-k programs.

But more than that, Houston will fight to liberate our teachers and administrators from the one-size-fits-all model of education -- encouraging them to tailor curriculum for our students based on individual needs, challenges, and goals. Reducing bureaucratic barriers like excessive standardized testing will allow our teachers to focus on teaching and our children to concentrate on learning. By taking these measures, we will increase local control and improve 3rd grade reading proficiency, cut dropout levels, and boost graduation rates.

Houston also believes that students should be empowered to pursue the robust opportunities our state has to offer after graduation, whether they want to obtain a post-secondary degree or pursue technical training. Schools should enable our young people to meet local workforce needs by increasing technical training -- so that more students are graduating high school with skill sets that enable them to find high-paying jobs in our community. This means improving the partnerships between local businesses, developing industries, and our technical colleges in the region to fill the specific gaps in our workforce here at home.

First and foremost, Houston will enable teachers to make real investments in our young people and bring the focus of Georgia education back to our students and back to the local level. By cutting the education bureaucracy, rewarding innovation and performance from teachers, and holding our local school systems accountable, we will push more dollars directly into the classroom where they have the greatest impact on our children and multiply throughout our community.

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