By Kyle Stokes
(From State Impact – NPR, June 11th, 2012)
On the occasion of his official nomination Saturday, Indiana GOP gubernatorial candidate Mike Pence outlined his platform.
His policy address to the state’s Republican convention “offered more aspirations than specificity, as is common early in a campaign,” reported Indiana Public Broadcasting statehouse reporter Brandon Smith.
With state Democrats set to nominate John Gregg to top their ticket this weekend, Pence’s policy rollout provides a chance to compare where the two candidates for governor stand on education.
“We cannot succeed in the marketplace if we fail in the classroom,” Pence, a five-term U.S. House member, told the GOP convention Saturday. Conservative blog Hoosier Access has the full text of his address:
Our schools must work for all of our kids regardless of where they start in life and regardless of where they want to start their careers. This means our next goals must include improving the reading and math skills of elementary students, increasing graduation rates, and improving the quality of Indiana’s workforce until the Hoosier state has the best educated and the best skilled workforce in America. That will mean holding students to higher standards, where every fourth grader can read, where more kids are succeeding in the math and science courses so critical to finding a good-paying job. And I believe the time has come to make vocational education a priority again in every high school in Indiana.
At least when it comes to education, Pence would likely continue the policy direction of Gov. Mitch Daniels’ administration. As the The Associated Press points out, Pence did bring a former Daniels’ education aide onto his staff.