McCain and Obama differ on vouchers, other education issues
While Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama announced a series of education proposals several months ago, Republican John McCain has offered more limited statements about education and plans to release more details this fall.
Both candidates have said they support holding schools accountable and strengthening teacher quality, but they differ in several areas. McCain supports merit pay for teachers based on student achievement, for example, while Obama favors differential pay based on criteria developed by teachers and school officials.
Obama says his plan for preK-12 education would cost $18 billion a year, while McCain has not put a dollar amount on his education proposals.
Vouchers
Perhaps the biggest difference is McCain’s support for private school vouchers, a concept Obama opposes.
McCain argued in favor of school choice, including vouchers, in a speech to the National Urban League’s annual conference Aug. 1. “Equal access to education has been gained,” he said. “But what is the value of access to a failing school?”
In touting New Orleans’ new voucher program, McCain said: “Parents ask only for schools that are safe, teachers who are competent , and diplomas that open the doors of opportunity. When a public system fails, repeatedly, to meet these minimal objectives, parents ask only for a choice in the education of their children. Some parents may choose a better public school. Some may choose a private school.”
At the League of United Latin American Citizens annual convention July 8, McCain called the failure to properly educate Hispanics and African Americans the “civil rights challenge of our time.”
In the same speech, he said it is “unacceptable” that U.S. students score near the bottom among industrialized nations in math and science. “We need to shake up failed school bureaucracies with competition; hold schools accountable for results; strengthen math, science, technology, and engineering curriculums; empower parents with choice; remove barriers to qualified instructors; attract and reward superior teachers; and have a fair but sure process to weed out incompetents,” McCain said.
McCain’s official statement on education says public support should follow children into schools that parents choose. The school “must have the resources and management authority to deliver on that responsibility” and also must “report to the parents and the public on their progress.”
“All financial support must be predicated on providing parents the ability to move their children, and the dollars associated with them, from failing schools,” McCain says, noting that federal funding “should be controlled by the leader we hold accountable: the school principal, with a single criterion to raise student achievement.”
Obama, in a July 14 speech at the NAACP convention, talked about his ideas for lifelong education, promising to “make sure that every child in this country gets a world-class education from the day they’re born until the day they graduate from college.”
After dismissing vouchers as the “same tired rhetoric” that’s been around for 30 years, Obama said, “We need to fix and improve our public schools, not throw our hands up and walk away from them. We need to uphold the idea of public education, but we also need reform.”
In a July 13 speech to the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), Obama said he supports public school choice and well-designed charter schools. “But what I do oppose is using public money for private school vouchers,” he said.
No Child Left Behind
McCain believes the No Child Left Behind Act “has focused our attention on the realities of how students perform against a common standard,” his campaign website states. The Arizona senator says the nation “can no longer accept low standards for some students and high standards for others.”
Due to NCLB’s reporting requirements, McCain says the nation is seeing “what is happening to students who were previously invisible.” He also vows to “build on the lessons” of the legislation.
“There should be an emphasis on standards and accountability,” McCain says. “However, our goal cannot be group averages. Instead, our focus should be to inspire every child to strive to reach his or her inner potential.”
McCain says he would expand struggling students’ access to tutoring programs by having the federal government, not states, certify education service providers. Title I money would be distributed directly to the provider.
In his speech to the NAACP, McCain said parents should be able to receive direct public support for tutoring “without having to deal with the same education establishment that failed their children in the first place.”
McCain’s education adviser Lisa Graham Keegan, a former Arizona state superintendent and former chief executive officer of the Educational Leaders Council, said McCain is “not in favor of national standards.” But, Keegan added, McCain would like to see states benchmark accountability systems against other states, to the National Assessment of Education Progress, and to international standards, such as PISA.
When asked whether NCLB is underfunded, Keegan said “only if you compare the authorization number with the appropriations number. . . . There’s a heck of a lot more money in education now, but not enough of it is going to the classroom.”
Obama told the AFT that he believes in NCLB’s goals—improving teaching, closing the achievement gap, ensuring more accountability and higher standards. “But,” he said, “promising all this while leaving the resources behind is wrong. Labeling a school and its students as failures one day and then abandoning them the next is wrong.”
“We must fix the failures of NCLB by providing the funding that was promised, giving states the resources they need, and finally meeting our commitment to special education,” Obama said.
Obama’s education plan recommends an accountability system that encourages schools to improve, “rather than focuses on punishments.”
Obama believes teachers “should not be forced to spend the academic year preparing students to fill in bubbles on standardized tests.” He supports “assessment models that provide educators and students with timely feedback about how to improve student learning, that measure readiness for college and success in an information-age workplace, and that indicate whether individual students are making progress toward reaching high standards.”
Assessments, he says, should evaluate continuous progress for students and schools, consider measures beyond reading and math tests, and create incentives to keep students in schools through graduation, “rather than pushing them out to make scores look better.”
Teachers
Obama believes teachers are the “single most important factor” in determining student achievement, his education plan states. His $1 billion “career ladder” initiative would provide grants for mentoring programs and reward veteran teachers who become mentors.
Districts would receive funding to create compensation systems, “with the participation of their teachers’ associations, that recognize knowledge, skills and accomplishment in the classroom, as well as willingness to provide leadership in hard-to-staff locations.”
Obama supports the “professionalization” of teaching through recruitment efforts that restore prestige to the career and financial incentives, including adequate entry-level salaries and scholarships. He would create 40,000 new “teaching service scholarships” of up to $25,000 each, covering the costs for high-quality teacher preparation or alternative certification for those who are willing to teach in a high-need field or location.
The Illinois senator also proposes $100 million to stimulate teacher education reforms built on school-university partnerships. One proposed initiative calls for the creation of “professional development schools” that would allow teachers to learn from practitioners in the field. Obama compares the concept to teaching hospitals and says it will allow prospective teachers to learn from experts while completing their coursework.
Obama would expand “teacher residency” programs to assist high-need school districts. Beginning teachers would receive a yearlong living stipend or salary during the training program while learning from an experienced mentor and earning a master’s degree and teaching certificate. In exchange, the teacher would continue to teach in that district for three years.
According to McCain’s website, schools should be able to “compete for the most effective, character-building teachers, hire them, and reward them.” McCain supports bonuses for teachers who agree to work in underperforming schools and “demonstrate strong leadership as measured by student achievement.”
McCain proposes using 60 percent of Title II (highly qualified teachers) funds for incentive bonuses—provided directly to teachers—for high-performing teachers who work in the most troubled schools, teach math or science, and demonstrate student improvement.
Keegan said McCain supports differential pay for teachers based on student performance. Mentors and “master-level teachers” who have more responsibility and spend more time working should be paid more, she said, as should teachers in high-need, urban schools.
McCain also supports alternative certification. His website says he would devote 5 percent of Title II funding to states to recruit teachers who graduate in the top 25 percent of their class or who participate in such programs as Teach for America or the New York City Teaching Fellowship Program.
“You can be a Nobel Laureate and not qualify to teach in most public schools today,” McCain said in his speech to the Urban League. “They don’t have all the proper credits in educational ‘theory’ or ‘methodology.’ All they have is learning and the desire and ability to share it. If we’re putting the interests of students first, then those qualifications should be enough.”
Technology
McCain’s website calls for targeting $50 million in current federal funds to build new virtual schools and develop online courses.
He proposes allocating $250 million through a competitive grant program to support states that commit to expanding online education opportunities. Grants could be used for virtual math and science academies to expand the availability of Advanced Placement math, science, and computer science courses; online tutoring for students in traditional schools; and foreign language instruction.
McCain also proposes $250 million for “digital passport scholarships” to help students pay for online tutors or enroll in virtual schools.
Obama promises to “emphasize the importance of technology literacy, ensuring that all public school children are equipped with the necessary science, technology, and math skills to succeed in the 21st century. He says all schools should have access to “next generation broadband networks.”
Other issues
McCain supports placing more emphasis on mathematics and science instruction and plans to release more details this fall.
Obama says he would make science and math education a national priority and would work with governors to ensure all students have access to strong science curricula.
McCain has not addressed the issue of early childhood education, while Obama proposes an annual federal investment of $10 billion a year for early childhood programs and encourages all states to adopt voluntary universal preschool.
Obama also has announced proposals aimed at reducing the high school dropout rate, another area not yet addressed by McCain. Obama’s plan includes federal support for small schools and grants for alternative schools and other initiatives to help students graduate.
The Democratic candidate also proposes programs to expand summer learning opportunities, college outreach, transitional bilingual education programs, expanded after-school programs, and $200 million for initiatives to extend the school day and year.
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