Jill Stein, a medical doctor and environmental health activist from Massachusetts, is the Green Party candidate for president. She also ran under the Green banner in 2012, when she got 0.36% of the vote after getting on the ballot in 37 states. Her positions on education are right in line with Democratic contender Hillary Clinton and the teachers’ unions. Here are some of her views on education:
Student debt:
We can forgive the crushing student debt burden and liberate an entire generation of young people who are being turned into indentured servants.
We have the power to abolish student debt and provide education for all as a right.
Campaign announcement, June 2015
Charter schools:
We’ve seen a common pattern with the education agenda pushed by Wall Street and standardized test corporations: high-stakes testing sets up public schools to fail, paving the way for the takeover of education by charter schools with their profits subsidized by taxpayer dollars.
Jill2016.com
Free education:
We can provide tuition-free education from pre-kindergarten through college - an investment in our future that will pay off enormously.
Campaign announcement, June 2015
Teacher evaluations:
Evaluate teacher performance through assessments by fellow professionals. Do not rely on high-stakes tests that reflect economic status of the community, and punish teachers working in low-income communities of color.
Jill2016.com
Standardized testing:
We must end the high stakes testing that is harmful especially to challenged learners, and used to justify closing and privatizing schools, and to dis-empower teachers and unions.
Acceptance speech at Green Party convention, August 2016, Houston
Federal funding:
Increase federal funding of public schools to equalize public-school funding.
Jill2016.com
Teachers:
It’s time to provide small classrooms, to pay our teachers well, to honor their unions, and to teach to the whole student for lifetime learning – with enriched with arts, music and recreation, and nurture the independent, creative minds and spirits that Democracy depends on.
Acceptance speech at Green Party convention, August 2016, Houston
Discipline:
Use restorative justice to address conflicts before they occur, and involve students in the process.
Jill2016.com
Use Department of Education powers to offer grants and funding to encourage metropolitan desegregation plans based on socio-economically balanced schools.
Jill2016.com
Personal education background:
Stein, 66, was born in Chicago and raised in the northern suburb of Highland Park. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College in 1973 with a concentration in Social Relations, a combined major of anthropology, sociology and psychology. She told The Harvard Crimson last November that Harvard introduced her to “a level of dialogue that was very elevated and compelling.”
She started at Radcliffe College, the women’s college that later got subsumed into Harvard, when it still had “an independent, small, non-corporate identity,” she told television host Rock Newman.
She went on to graduate from Harvard Medical School in 1979. She lives in the historic town of Lexington with her husband, Richard Rohrer, a Boston surgeon. They have two grown sons, Ben and Noah, who are entering the medical profession.
Stein ran for governor of Massachusetts in 2002 and 2010 representing the Green-Rainbow party.
She is the co-author of two reports: In Harm's Way: Toxic Threats to Child Development, published in 2000, and Environmental Threats to Healthy Aging, published in 2009.
