Presidential candidates speak out on education
04/08 -- The leading contenders for president of the United States have come out with more details on their plans for education in recent weeks.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) supports school choice and has spoken favorably about vouchers for public schools.
According to a statement on his website, federal funding should be predicated on “giving parents the ability to move their children, and the dollars associated with them, from failing schools.”
When asked about No Child Left Behind at a campaign event in Indianapolis Feb. 22, McCain called the law “a good beginning.” He said it would be a mistake to scrap the law, but acknowledged that it needs to be improved.
“There are problems with funding,” McCain acknowledged, as well as problems with the testing of non-English-speaking students. “There’s a lot of things that need to be fixed about NCLB, but scrapping the law, which was the first real attempt at trying to gauge and reward performance,” he said, would be a “mistake.”
“But should we sit down and fix it? Yes. And we should do it in a bipartisan fashion and recognize that . . . the first challenge that this nation has is to provide a qualified work force, he said.”
McCain’s website also says schools should be able to compete to be the “most innovative flexible, and student-centered,” and should be able to compete for the “most effective, character-building teachers, hire them, and reward them.”
The Democratic frontunner at this point, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill), has been more critical of NCLB, and Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) wants to eliminate NCLB altogther. Clinton’s website says NCLB “represented a promise -- more resources for schools in exchange for more accountability -- and that promise has not been kept.”
Obama’s campaign website says “teachers should not be forced to spend the academic year preparing students to fill in bubbles on standardized tests.”
Obama wants to provide more funding, better assessments, and “improve NCLB’s accountability system so that we are supporting schools that need improvement, rather than punishing them.”
Obama has clarified his position on private school vouchers after a meeting with the editorial board of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, where he expressed skepticism about vouchers but said they might be worth trying.
When asked about private school vouchers, the newspaper reported Feb. 13 that Obama stated: “My view is that you’re not going to generate the high quality of schools to meet the demand. . . . If there was any argument for vouchers, it was ‘Let’s see if the experiment works,’ and if it does, whatever my preconception, you do what’s best for kids.”
His campaign later issued a statement calling that report “misleading” and noted that “throughout his career, Obama has voted against voucher proposals and voiced his concern for siphoning off resources from our public schools.” He believes “there is no evidence that these programs are in the best interest of our kids.”
Obama’s proposed “zero to five” plan would provide support for infants, young children, and their parents to ensure children are ready for kindergarten and would include grants to help states “move toward voluntary, universal preschool.”
He would “make math and science education a national priority” by recruiting professionals in these fields to become teachers. He would tackle the dropout crisis by funding intervention strategies in middle schools, such as personal academic plans, intensive reading and math instruction, and extended learning time.
He also supports funding for after-school programs and summer school, outreach programs to prepare more youths for college, and transitional bilingual education programs.
Obama proposes “teacher service scholarships” that would pay the college costs of teachers who agree to work at least four years in a high-need field or location. And he supports “new and innovative ways to increase teacher pay that are developed with teachers, not imposed on them.”
According to a Feb. 22 Associated Press report, Obama’s education plan would cost $18 billion. He would pay for it in part by delaying elements of the space program.
Clinton proposes $10 billion for universal preschool and $1 billion in intensive interventions for at-risk youth.
Clinton calls for more funding for special education, the creation of “green schools,” and programs to recruit and retain thousands of outstanding teachers and principals especially in rural and urban areas. And she has announced a plan to double the number of African-American and Latino students who complete high school.
Reproduced with permission from
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