2018 Gubernatorial Race
MAE Beavers
Thank you for taking the time to share with our
educators today. On behalf of our members, I would
like to say we are grateful you are offering yourself
for Governor. Please share with educators a little about
who you are, and why you are running for Governor.
I am Mae Beavers, candidate for Governor. I am a wife,
a mother and a grandmother to five. I am a graduate
of Trevecca Nazarene University. I served on the Wilson
County Commission, and in the State House and the State
Senate. I just resigned from the Senate after 15 years in
order to run for Governor because of the problems I saw that
needed to be solved.
We made quite a few changes in public education in
Tennessee the last decade - some necessary, some
debatable. What are we doing right?
There have been efforts made over the last few years to
reform education. I have heard from parents and teachers
about the reforms and the negative impact it is having
on our teachers and our students. We are losing great
teachers who want to use their talent to teach but because
they are having to teach to a test cannot enjoy teaching as
they once did. Standardized testing, which is costing $110
million a year, has had many problems over the last few
years. I believe it should be left to the local school district to
determine what test they want to use, standardized or the
ACT or SAT we have used for so many years.
(B) Our teachers should not have to teach to a test but should
be able to use the talent they have to teach our children.
(C) We need more transparency in education, whether it be
the mandated testing or the Basic Education Program.
(D) We need more technical schools since not every child is
interested in going to college. We need to restore technical
classes to our high schools and provide the student with a
certificate in certain areas so they can get a good paying
job out of high school if that is what they want to do. This
would help train the employees we need to recruit jobs to
Tennessee.
(E) We need to undo bad decisions rather than trying to fix
those bad decisions.
(F) We need to provide adequate security and protection
for our teachers in classroom settings and back them up
when they are confronted with angry, unruly and potentially
violent students
What are the steps that the state and local districts
need to take to address the challenges you identified?
What impact will that have on classroom teachers?
State and local government need to make the changes
necessary to make our education system work and make
sure our children get a great education. The more local
control the better since counties from Mountain City to
Memphis are so different.
In your opinion, what are the top 3 challenges still
facing education in Tennessee? Any final thoughts you’d like to share with our
educators?
(A) We need to teach children to read by the 3rd grade
before they go on to the next grade. We need to teach
phonetic based reading again. We also need full immersion
in the English language before a child is put in a classroom. We need to try to do whatever we can to retain our talented
teachers whose only desire is to teach our children.