I know this group is particularly interested in education, and this is a very important interest of mine. Now, I'd never refer to myself professionally as a "teacher", but in reviewing my career I realized that teaching is the one single thing that I've done the most.

Some of my job titles have been: Senior Analyst, System Architect, Director of Computing, Quality Assurance manager, V.P. for Software Development, and so forth, mostly at Long Island companies (including Grumman, Robotic Vision, Megadata, and Brookhaven Lab) plus a few ytears as an independent consultant with clients acreoss the country (including Microsoft, before it became a corporation!). Since my technical field is always rapidly changing, teaching is usually a big part of my job - from formal lecturing, to hiring and managing trainers to being a student.

I have taught at four colleges, and currently hold two Adjunct Professorships: at Suffolk Community, and at my alma mater now called Polytechnic University. I was a Physica Ph.D. candidate, there, back when it was called Brooklyn Poly, While in undergrad and grad school, I spent most summers at camp as Director of Nature & Campcraft teaching kids, ranging from 5 to 17, how to pitch tents, track wildlife, pack canoes for whitewater rapids, and participate in many conservation projects. I devised curricula, wrote lesson plans, and managed a staff of 7 instructors. In BSA, I've taught scouts and adult leaders, as a Commissioner, a Scoutmaster, and on the trail to become an Eagle Scout.

When my children were much younger, I was elected to several terms on the School Board of the North Shore Montessori School. Now, with my son in High School and my daughter in Middle School (both in honors), I've just received my fourth appointment to another subcommittee of my district (Longwood).

I feel somewhat at home here, but I would never identify myself as a "teacher" -- because I have the utmost respect for that profession, and for the critical role it plays in the lives of our future citizens.

With that out of the way, I want to be very up-front regarding my own views on so-called "Public Education", and I'm well aware that some of what I have to say may not be comfortable to some in this audience. be that as it may.
As a Libertarian, I am unalterably opposed to any form of coercion, compulsion, or threatened violence -- no matter what the motive, and regardless of whether the agressor is a person, a group, or a government. The non-agression principle is the core of libertarianism, and to be a member of the Libertarian party one must renounce the "initiation of force to achieve political or social goals".
Furthermore, as a parent and as a citizen, I feel that education is far, far too important to be left to politicians -- especially career politicians in the State and Federal capitals. In short, I don't trust either New Gingrich or Teddy kennedy to dictate what is best for my children's education! Likewise, Shelly Silver or Joe Bruno. Education is just too vital to be a political football.
There is only one primary beneficiary of education: the child -- who doesn't even have a vote, and whose best interests are best represented by local community and parents, rather than by some faceless, powerful bureaucrat in Albany or Washington.
One thing I want to do in the state legislature is to begin the return of decision-making power to the local communities and parents. The state Department of Education should be setting uniform standards fro reading and Regents exams -- NOT for buildings and paperwork!
My own experiences on various district committees was both enlightening and very depressing! We weren't allowed to fix leaky roofs or replace broken boilers unless we also brought the adjacent areas "up" to new codes. Codes that required nine-foot ceilings in Kindergartens, extra windows in courtyards, and lots of other nonsense apparently inserted to pay off some special-interrest group that had made campaign donations to some legislator.
These mandates and new codes must be stopped!! Unless they have a provable, direct bearing on learning, then the Dept. of Education should be stripped of all powers to enforce its whims on local school boards! It's about time to re-empower the locally-elected school boards, and administrators they hired, to do what is needed -- and to hold them accountable for the results.
Of course, one major obstacle is that most of these excesses are tolerated by local school boards simply because they are "aidable". But this is simply a shell-game, which decouples the local boards from all responsibility for any cost/benefit analysis of the millions of dollars they spend. What school board member would dare turn down a wasteful but aidable expenditure?? (Only one not running for re-election. :)
The whole idea of sending dollars to Albany, then spending as much as you can to get some of it back, is ludicrous and fundamentally corrupt. Any state monies collected for education should be allocated strictly on the basis of student poulation in the district -- for the very same reason that there must be "one-person-one-vote" in legislative representation. It is a violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to allocate state education monies on any other basis, and it is disgusting to watch school districts compete with one another for pork barrel funding like hogs at a slop trough. I want to see the boards and superintendent focusing inward to their students, not to Albany.
Send the state deucation dollars directly to the districts, based on a pre-determined formula; dismantle the vast "Education" bureaucracy in the state capital, and empower local districts to spend in the best interests of their students and neighbors!