Mark Takano: “If I might join in a little more, I became a teacher-- more than, wow, gosh, it must be 30 years ago now--having…”

“If I might join in a little more, I became a teacher-- more than, wow, gosh, it must be 30 years ago now--having experienced the disparity in the public schools in the Boston, Massachusetts, area; some days being a substitute teacher in Brookline, Massachusetts, and other days being a substitute teacher in inner city Boston. The contrast between the wealthy Brookline School District and then the inner city Boston where you walk through a metal detector woke me up. And I really believed that if we did not address the achievement gap in our country, that if the American Dream of social economic mobility was only available to some and not all of our students, that our very democracy would be in jeopardy. It pains me to see from the incoming Trump administration such a superficial, extreme profit-driven notion of improving our schools. I wish that both President-elect and Betsy DeVos could see some of the great work that is being done at my schools in my congressional district where we have a teacher--I am blanking on his name, but he is responsible for one-fourth of all the Latinos in the State of California that score 4s and 5s on the physics AP test. Remarkable work being done in a regular school that does not cherry-pick its students. It is a public school in the Val Verde Unified School District that is making remarkable strides.…”