The current issue of the Economist has a great special section on the election. It's a well-balanced, issue-based look at the candidates. (Why is it that only foreign publications take the time to discuss the issues?) The Economist analyzes the candidates tax proposals, economic policies, foreign policy, approaches to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, health care proposals, and more. It's a great credit to Jed that if you've been reading this blog, most of what you'd read in the Economist's special section would be very familiar.
One issue that the Economist covers that we haven't yet discussed here is Education. The article opens with a discussion of how the US education system has been underperforming for years. It then details what the candidates say about education. Having read the article, I decided to check out the candidates' websites to verify what they say about education.
Obama's website offers a number of specific proposals, only a few of which I've excerpted below:
- Increase funding and quality of Head Start programs.
- Reform (but keep) No Child Left Behind (NCLB), including properly funding the initiative.
- Increase funding for the Federal Charter School Program, but make charter schools more accountable and close low-performing charter schools.
- Make math and science education a national priority.
- Increase access of high school students to AP or college-level classes by, for example, providing grants for students seeking college level credit at community colleges if their school doesn't provide those classes.
- Recruit more teachers by offering new college scholarships for students who agree to teach after graduation for at least four years in a high-need field or location.
- Assess, mentor, and train teachers and provide more rewards for successful teachers.
- Offer tax credits to cover college tuition, in exchange for community service.
McCain's website is light on specifics, but mentions these concepts:
- No Child Left Behind has exposed inconsistencies in how we apply standards to students.
- Students in underperforming schools should be able to change schools. Parents should have freedom to choose among schools for their children.
- Schools and teachers should be accountable and responsible.
The Economist summarizes the candidates proposals as follows:
[Obama's] plans run the gamut, from grants for preschool programmes to a $4,000 tax credit for university fees. He is vague about NCLB, but has resisted calls to throw out the law. He suggests improving it through more sophisticated tests, measuring students’ progress over time and giving schools more resources. In September he announced new plans to double federal funding for independent or “charter” schools. A separate “innovative schools fund” would help districts to create a portfolio of successful school types, including charters.
Perhaps most interesting are his plans for teachers. He would give extra money to districts that work with their unions to form “career ladders”. These could include pay increases for a list of achievements, from teaching in hard-to-staff schools to lifting students’ performance. But a good scheme on paper may be diluted in practice. Negotiations over pay are messy at best.
For his part, Mr McCain offers promising opinions but few details. He supports NCLB but has said little about how to strengthen its main tenets. He supports charter schools (like Mr Obama) and voucher programmes (unlike Mr Obama, who is dead-set against them), but has said little about how he might expand them. His boldest ideas centre around using federal money to let parents choose tutors and principals reward good teachers.
6 comments:
Great post Alex. Education is an area that I know very little about, but feel strongly that it needs to be improved, so I appreciate the insights.
I have to say though, that I agree with McCain's stance in favor of voucher programs. I'm not completely up to speed on vouchers but, from what I understand, they provide a means for parents to choose which school their children attend. I think this would breed healthy competition among schools and since I think all parents would have access to the vouchers (not just the rich), it would be fair competition.
Do you have any thoughts about why Obama is opposed to the system? Or can you (or anyone else) help me better understand the pros and cons of a voucher system?
You may know that Utah had a voucher issue on the ballot last year. It did not pass. The legislature passed a bill for vouchers, but citizens got up petitions and required it to be put on the ballot. The Utah bill was going to taking money away from public schools and use it for vouchers, claiming enough students would go to charter schools, so public schools wouldn't need as much. I thought this was baloney. They had no evidence to back up that claim. It was just an assumption.
I do believe in charter schools, but I think the people who use them should be able to pay for them. Not public money.
I also want to say that when you kids were in school we worked the system. We knew who the best teachers were and we made sure that's who you got. Doing that takes a lot of time and effort, but it can be done. I know we live in an area where that might be easier than in others. I also know that was some time ago.
But Alex and Sarah have done research. They found the area with the best school system and they bought a house there. If we take all of the top students out of public schools, who is left to be the role model?
The usual opposition to vouchers is that it diverts public money into private, usually religious schools (most private schools are religious schools). So, voucher programs verge on government financial support of religious institutions. The Establishment Clause of the Constitution has been interpretted by the Supreme Court to prohibit governments from supporting (including financially) a religion. Whether vouchers literally represent direct financial support of religious institutions is arguably up to interpretation.
There's a good article about this issue here.
Thanks for the article. It does bring up a lot of good points. I think the argument that vouchers are effectively government funding of religious organizations is a fair one. I also agree with the argument made in the article that vouchers will essentially pull state budget money away from public schools and toward private schools.
However, I do disagree with Joseph's argument stating, "Do we really want schools that are supposed to educate the children of this country competing for money and therefore students?" I hate arguments like these that speak in broad terms and evoke emotional responses rather than focusing on the fundamentals of the proposal. My opinion (admittedly uneducated though it may be) is that we absolutely want schools responsible for the education of our children to be competing for money and students. That seems to be how it works at the university level and it has provided some of the finest universities in the world. Why wouldn't we want the same for younger learners? I think the role of government in this area should be to ensure that every child has an equal opportunity to access the best schools.
Colleges can afford to compete for money and students because they don't have to educate everybody.
Elementary and high schools have a different charter. The country benefits from an educated citizenry. Therefore it's all our responsibility to contribute to the education of our children, even those of us who no longer have children in school.
I believe it was Martin Mayer who wrote a book called "Markets" (suggested to me by Alex) which made a compelling argument for the idea that not all pursuits thrive in a free market, and that education is a good example.
The preamble to the Constitution states that we the people want to "promote the general welfare", and education on one of the major items that falls under this category.
The book Pa referenced is called Everything for Sale: The Virtues and Limits of Markets by Robert Kuttner.
Post a Comment