A)  To Whom do you see as most representative of what the people want in educational policy.  The Governor or the Legislature?

B)  As you know, as people discover what Common Core really is, it is disappearing state by state as fast as free beer at an all-school kegger. Are you prepared to offer a new plan if asked to by this legislature?  What are your ideas on what it should do?

C)  Do you read kavips?

D)  Have you yourself taken the Smarter Balanced Assessment?  If so, which grade?  Which test?

E)  If there becomes a war between the Federal Government and State Government over who is responsible for a child’s education, which side will you be on?

F)  You have a budget of $1.3 Billion.  Yet your schools are all operating above maximum efficiency.  How good are you at convincing Legislators to provide more revenue? (Now is a good time to start… )

G)  How do you feel about eliminating Charters?  Then how do you justify the hardship that Charters create by taking money away from public schools?   Would you support legislation removing  Charters from the per student funding formula and funding them strictly with a line item in the state budget?

H)  One of the reasons you are here is because of the debacle caused by switching from the DCAS to the Smarter Balanced Assessment.  Ohio just dropped PAARC and went solo with AIR and will use what used to be our state’s former DCAS to test all its students.   Of all the tests DSTP, DCAS, and Smarter Balanced Assessment, which do you feel best exemplified student achievement, and why?

I)  Standardized testing is wrong.  Yet we need some way to determine whether a child is able to advance to the next grade which is objective and does not facilitate social promotion.  Where do you see your department 3 years from now in achieving this?

J)  Should there be a test in 11th grade that determines graduation?

K) Rigor has been brutally panned by every single educational expert.  How do you feel about imposing rigor in our classrooms?

L) Charter Schools in a recent study only out-preformed Public schools 17% of the time.. They were worse then their public school 37% of the time..  How do you justify continued support of Charter Schools when they waste so much money for so little results?

M)  We would like a report back from your office showing how much money we could save in our public school systems if we simply eliminated charters.  How long do you estimate it would take to get that back to us?

N)  100% of Child Psychologists have recommend that all children opt out of the Smarter Balanced Assessment.  What is your feeling about continuing this test against such overwhelming negative medical opinion?

O)  If confirmed are you willing to sign your entire salary over to kavips.

P)  Although dissed by our current governor, poverty is the prime negative factor in improving education.  Great gains have been made by some districts in this state to at least make sure students are fed despite whatever conditions they may face at home.  What other ideas might you have of ways you can make children from environments we can’t even imagine, be able to relax and feel comfortable enough to learn?

Q)  Look, I’m a legislator, not an educator… So can you explain to me in plain language (no alphabet soup) how it is possible that with all the checks and balances and tests we make our teachers jump through in order to be put in front of a classroom, how someone (Teach For America) who only gets 5 weeks of classroom (25 days), and one day of student teaching (5 hours),  can be put in charge of a classroom  for two years with no accountability for poor results?

R) Follow up to the above?  Can you explain why the Markell administration and the previous director actually thought it was a good idea to fire teachers with doctors or masters of education, and replace them with young kids having no real training?  That never made sense to me. and your predecessor always threw out word soup when I asked him to explain it.  It doesn’t make sense to me; what am I missing. How on earth is that good policy?

S) Would you support legislation undoing the anti-strike legislation that was imposed by the Carper administration that still makes it illegal for teachers to strike?

T) With the Smarter Balanced Debacle, Common Core Debacle, Priority Schools Debacle, Charter Schools Debacle, all of which are supported by Rodel and Paul Herdemann, can you give this body any real reason why we should pay RODEL and its $267,000 spokesperson any time of day whatsoever?

U) One of the strong points of your vocational system of yesteryear was that it by not being included in the initial state testing program, actually graduated students who could read, write, and do math proficiently.  Many felt the testing programs in regular public schools were a detriment to achieving great results, and used your district as proof.  Having no tests led to good results.  How do you see bringing the entire state on line to such a program as you successfully ran in your vocational district… where no tests yield great results?

V) Trick question  (laughter)… Who is the most important entity in a child’s education.   The Governor (raucous laughter, foot stomping, table pounding), the Secretary of Education (total silence), the State Board of Education (minus its executive director), Local School Boards, the principal of each school, the child’s teacher, the student, or … the parents?

W) Who do Charters really benefit?  Their students, …or the financial owners?

X) Would you actively campaign and travel the state to make the case for higher taxes on Delaware’s wealthy to generate tremendous additional revenue for education, which would not raise taxes on property values by a single dollar?

Y)  Assuming you are partial to vocational education… I should note that a Brookings Institute study recommended that America needs more plumbers, more electricians, and more fiber optic specialists.  This question is tailor-made for you. What improvements would you like to see in our vocational schools, and what do you need from us to help you?

Z)  If confirmed… how can you use your influence to make the  Charter School Network please leave us alone?  Under Kendall Massett they are always up our asses,  Wanting this, Wanting that,  Putting out their hand like a doorman in New York City. With them in here it is like having a bevy of little Pomeranians following us around… “yip, yip, yip, yip, yip, yip.”.. I’m sick of it.. What can you do in your new position to permanently dissolve this ubiquitous problem?