05/18/04 -- Both presidential candidates Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and President Bush have given speeches on education in recent days.
Kerry announced several education initiatives, including a plan to ensure that 1 million more students graduate from high school and a plan to recruit or retain 500,000 more teachers.
Bush, meanwhile, defended the No Child Left Behind Act, his chief education reform initiative. Kerry, who voted for NCLB, now criticizes Bush for failing to provide adequate funding for it.
During a campaign stop at an elementary school in Albuquerque, N.M., May 4, Kerry criticized Bush for failing to enforce the graduation provisions in NCLB and opposing initiatives to increase graduation rates.
He says current regulations allow school administrators to encourage low-performing students to drop out of school to boost test scores.
"It is time to stop shortchanging our education reforms and get this done right," Kerry says. "This Administration is not paying attention to graduation rates and is hiding the fact that more than 1 million kids drop out every year. We cannot let empty rhetoric and misleading test scores count as real results."
Kerry says he would enforce the provisions of NCLB that require full disclosure and accountability for graduation rates. He also wants to create an Education Trust Fund that will fully fund NCLB, strengthen middle schools through mentoring and college partnerships, strengthen high school education by promoting smaller schools and more challenging curricula, and provide literacy education for high school students who have fallen behind.
Kerry proposes paying for his education initiatives by repealing Bush's tax cuts for people making more than $200,000 a year. He says it would cost $100 billion over 10 years to fully fund NCLB, including $4.5 billion for the dropout prevention initiative and $30 billion for the teacher initiatives.
Bush, in a speech at Butterfield Junior High School in Van Buren, Ark., May 11, dismissed complaints that NCLB is underfunded and claimed that federal funding for education has increased.
In response to criticisms that NCLB is too punitive and has led to too much teaching to the test, Bush said: "We're not backing down. I don't care how much pressure they try to put on the process. I'm not changing my mind about high standards and the need for accountability."
"We're not going back to those days where we just kind of hope something happens," the President says. "We're not going back to the days where kids just got moved through and they weren't sure whether or not they could read, and at the end of the system, they said, oops, they can't read."
Bush did not criticize Kerry in his speech, but a May 4 statement by Bush-Cheney '04 spokesperson Steve Schmidt says Kerry now "is attacking the law he once called 'groundbreaking.' John Kerry's rhetoric is at odds with the reality of the law he voted for and praised just three years ago."
Schmidt also says "John Kerry's empty rhetoric on education reform is an obvious election-year stunt designed to obscure his decades-long record of doing nothing to make schools accountable to children and parents."
Meanwhile, in a speech at Woodrow Wilson High School in Los Angeles on May 5 -- Cinco de Mayo -- Kerry accused President Bush of breaking his promise to "leave no child behind" and to end the "soft bigotry of low expectations."
Hispanic students, in particular, have not been well served by the Administration's education policies, he says. Nearly 50 percent of Hispanic young people do not graduate from high school, and Hispanic 13-year-olds score significantly lower than other students in reading and math proficiency tests.
"We need real resources to back up real reform so that we can have real results," Kerry says. "No more crumbling schools. No more overstuffed classrooms. No more outdated textbooks. And no more calling for standards and reforms and sticking our states with the bill."
Kerry's proposal for teachers, announced in a speech at a High School in Colton, Calif., May 6, would recruit high-quality teachers for high-need schools and for subject areas like math and science by offering pay hikes of at least $5,000.
He calls for creation of a "new teacher corps," with scholarships and loan forgiveness covering the cost of attending a four-year public university, for new teachers who spend four years teaching in a high-need school.
Kerry also would improve teacher preparation by raising the standards at colleges of education, require rigorous tests for all new teachers, offer teachers more mentoring and career opportunities in the classroom, increase the pay for teachers who excel, make it easier for schools to replace poorly performing teachers, and provide incentive rewards to help turn around struggling schools.
Kerry also proposed $50 billion in tax cuts to help middle-class families pay for college tuition and a "Service for College" plan offering four years of free tuition in a public university for any student willing to devote two years to national service.