Paul Panos
Minority Leader
Board of Education

Born in Lewiston, Maine and educated at the University of Maine in Engineering, graduating in 1966.  Began work as a power boiler engineer for Combustion Engineering of Windsor. Interrupted work to serve in the Army from 1966 to 1969.  Returned to Combustion Engineering in 1970 as a power boiler design engineer. I received a Master’s Degree in economics from the University of Connecticut, while working.  Combustion Engineering eventually became part of GE. I retired in 2017.
 
My wife, Denise, is a recently retired Speech Pathologist (Windsor Public Schools). Together we raised three children who went through the Windsor Public School System. They graduated in 1999, 2002, and 2005.
 
I have been a member of the Windsor Board of Education since 1997, except for two years, from 2017 – 2019. I returned to the Windsor Board of Education in 2019. I am committed to serve Windsor Public Schools, and help to raise the academic performance of its students.
 
Due to my long tenure on the Board, I have a detailed historical perspective of the failed and damaging educational fads that have come and gone, with some remaining and others returning under new names with slight variations. They are all introduced with great fanfare that they will “transform” education and lead to great achievements for all students.
 
But Windsor academic scores have been declining over the decades. The data from standardized tests show that 60% to 65% of Windsor’s finishing eighth graders are at least one year behind in language arts and math, with large percentages being two and three years behind. Scarcely 25% of them are at or above the eighth-grade level. But they are all promoted to the High School.
 
Clearly, what we have been doing does not work.
 
These educational fads are called programs, models, or frameworks. They are each marketed with a fancy name, but share many common features. They exist at all school levels, but are most commonly applied at the elementary level; less so at the middle school level, and least at the High School level.
 
Some names are “Whole Language,” “Accelerated schools,” “Basic School Model,” “Scientifically Researched Based Instruction,” (SRBI), and MTSS, or “multitiered systems of supports.” These are fads that overemphasize some small aspect of traditional instruction to the exclusion of all others – especially direct instruction, minimum standards for promotion, and levelled classes based on competitive performance. None of them require that a student know the material of the grade they are in before being promoted. None of them prepare students for the competitive world of knowledge that we live in.
 
I think it is essential that Windsor Public Schools require rigorous standards for promotion, beginning in the first grade, and that our students be required to compete academically for levels within each grade. It is only by becoming accustomed from a young age to such high stakes academic competition that they will acquire real knowledge and be able to compete successfully in a world-wide market for intellectual talent.