August 13, 2007 08:54 AM UTC

Shafroth Colorado Daily Article

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• by: Thoreau

Here are a few clips from today’s Colorado Daily article about Will Shafroth:

…whoever wins the 2nd CD race will need to deal with geopolitical decisions regarding the Middle East, whether the U.S. withdraws troops from Iraq in 2008 or not. Shafroth said he opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq “from the beginning,” supported Udall’s pre-war vote against authorizing the action, and favors troop withdrawal as soon as possible.
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‘The true patriots among us are those Americans who love their country too well to let her do wrong,’” said Shafroth. “That’s kind of how I feel about the Iraq war – we’ve been doing wrong in that part of the world for the past five years.”
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Shafroth said the nation should be making targeted investments in renewable energy, energy efficiency and energy research instead. He said a significant amount of the research goes on in the 2nd CD at institutions such as CU and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and said he would go to bat for increased research funding if elected.
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He is also active as a volunteer with the Boulder Valley School District (BVSD), and worked to promote successful BVSD ballot measures in 1998 and 2006. He said he would place special emphasis on funding early childhood educations, “the best and most effective investment we can make in our children’s education,” and on increasing funding for or revising the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) program.

Shafroth said the NCLB concept of accountability for school performance is a sound concept, but said the federal government does not fund some of the NCLB requirements, creating an “unfunded mandate” situation. He also said the program should track a child’s performance over time as opposed to comparing the performance of groups of students in one year to the previous year.

“It’s driven teachers and school districts to teach to the test,” he said. “That’s not what education is about, in my belief. It’s about producing good citizens who have a set of knowledge and skills that are going to serve them as they go forward and participate as productive members of society.”