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Governor Dannel Malloy was on MSNBC's Morning Joe show again, this time talking broadly about education. WNPR's Jeff Cohen reports.
As legislators, teachers, activists, and others continue to debate Malloy's plans to overhaul education in the state, the governor took his show on the nationally-televised road. Malloy was on the air to talk about his education agenda in Connecticut. He told viewers what he has said for some time -- children in the state's larger cities are at a disadvantage.
"We can't afford in some of our urban environments to fail or to be failing 40 to 60 percent of our students particularly in a small state where quite frankly we failed to grow jobs for a long period of time. I want to grow jobs again. I have to make sure that the work force is available to be able to do that."
Malloy also hit again on what he says is the importance of changing how we evaluate teachers.
"And the idea that we would evaluate just young teachers before they get tenure make no sense at all. We have people that are going to teach for 38 years. We should evaluate everybody every day."
Lastly, the governor spoke about the value of pre-k education.
"Coming to kindergarten prepared to learn is a 34 year old national standard. Every child should come ready to learn. But many of our children, particularly in urban environments, don't come ready to learn because they've been denied access to a pre-kindergarten experience which just about every middle class parent is able to link their child to."
Malloy's budget calls for adding new pre-k seats for just 500 children who can't afford preschool. He calls it a good first step towards universal pre-k.
For WNPR, I'm Jeff Cohen.
