Tom Foley’s Education Whitewash Shatters Out-Of-Touch Meter

UPDATE

: In a new ad, Republican candidate for governor Tom Foley says nothing is more important than a child’s education. “Over 100,000 Connecticut children are in underpreforming schools,” he declares in the spot, surrounded by school children, not one of them black or Hispanic. You’ve got to wonder how disconnected Foley is from the reality of underperforming schools when he disregards children of color from his advertising message.

Now certainly children of color do not hold a monopoly on low school performance, but when you examine education performance the greatest impact is in urban areas such as Bridgeport, the state’s largest city, where Foley has promised to devote more attention this election cycle and a specific urban agenda that has not yet materialized.

Foley also promises “Fairness and opportunity for every child” in the ad that includes his wife and their two young children.

How often has Foley visited an urban school district? Talked to teachers, students, parents? Attended a school board meeting? Does he know the dropout rate of Connecticut’s urban students dwarfs that of suburban kids?

“It isn’t fair,” he says in the spot, “when a child is not in a good school.”

Is it fair Foley is at the very least insensitive–perhaps totally disengaged–from the reality of actual school performance and urban students most impacted by it?

You’d think Foley, and his campaign handlers, would be a little more in touch by now.

Here’s what Foley told the Connecticut Mirror “when asked how a failing school would improve if it lost money every time a student left for a charter school.”

“I never heard that question,” he said.

Foley declined to identity any one dominant influence on his approach to education, though he admires former Republican governors who have made education reform a priority, starting with William Weld of Massachusetts.