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BOE Candidate Focus: Michael Fryar

By Steve Goode

October 27, 2009

Here's the next in our BOE Candidate Focus series.

Michael Fryar, a Republican.

Age: 41

West End

Married with two children

Attorney - primarily representing children

Four years in Hartford

One of the most pressing issues facing our students is the still unacceptable dropout rate. This is a personal issue for me since I dropped out of high school myself. I have since earned a GED, a bachelors degree, a masters and finally a law degree. While I understand the reasons for dropping out of high school, I also understand what it takes to motivate a drop out to continue on with their education or professional training.

Increasing student retention requires early identification and intervention to prevent seemingly minor issues from becoming irreversibly larger ones. Individualized or tailored instruction can engage students by providing positive reinforcement for good work while identifying issues or problem areas. In a perfect world each of our students would receive individualized instruction. This can be achieved with the creative use of technology. Each student can receive tailored instruction and up to the minute assessment and reporting. Teachers would immediately know the strengths and weaknesses of a student and accomodate this with appropriate lesson plans. By instituting and using more technology, we can ensure greater student engagement and more positive experiences, which lead to greater student retention.