|
The quality of education, while a concern in all communities, is a pressing concern in urban communities in light of local, state, and national data indicating that urban children, particularly poor and minority children, perform poorly on most standard assessments. If there is one thing that all of the presidential candidates agree on, it is that urban schools are a problem. Most candidates also advocate some type of additional investment in, or at least attention to, education.
There are several broad issues that have captured the attention of the candidates. Perhaps the most important issue is the on-going debate about the best strategy for generating improved educational opportunities for all children. On one side are those who argue that we should be investing in strengthening the existing federal, state, and local systems of education through national standards and tests, improved training for teachers, and a more demanding curriculum. On the other side are those who maintain that improvement will only come by extending more choice to parents and creating a climate of greater competition among a more diverse set of schools, including public schools, charter schools, magnet schools, and private schools.
A second issue for some candidates concerns the substance of the curriculum and approaches to instruction. Candidates such as Pat Buchanan and Alan Keyes have taken stands in favor of excluding things such as multiculturalism and whole language instruction and of including prayer in schools. Other candidates have avoided these issues, and at least one candidate, George Bush, has explicitly stated that such issues are less important than the outcomes of schooling.
Bill Bradley
Bradley favors positions on education that are generally consistent with the educational establishment. He favors national standards, investments in teacher training, greater use of technology in schools, and investments in lifetime education for U.S. citizens.
Pat Buchanan
Buchanan's views on education combine decentralization approaches with some specific positions on the culture war. He supports abolition of the federal department of education, charter schools, magnet schools and school vouchers. He opposes national standards and national testing. He supports policies to protect the rights of parents to home school their children. He advocates allowing voluntary prayer in school and rejects the use of multicultural curricula.
George Bush
Bush has embraced a range of educational reform proposals that combine government control with parental control. He has focused particularly on the education of disadvantaged children in formulating his proposals. He supports high standards and accountability coupled with a devolution of power to the states to give them the flexibility and authority to run schools and spent federal funds. He supports the expansion and redirection of Head Start to focus it on early reading and learning. He supports a policy of English Plus that would teach all students English, plus other languages. He favors investments in teacher training, high standards and the end of social promotion. He supports charter schools and school choice. He has developed a voucher program under Title I that would take Title I money from schools that are failing disadvantaged children and give it to parents to use elsewhere, including for other public schools, charter schools, private schools, tutoring, etc. Bush has voiced his support for whatever program will work to get the desired results for children. For example, he would favor English emersion programs or bilingual programs as long as they work to give children English proficiency.
Al Gore
Gore has developed a series of recommendations for education, including: preschool for all 3 and 4 year olds, improved teacher quality, rigorous tests for new teachers, the establishment of a federally subsidized teacher corps, a renewed focus on discipline and safety, a reduction in the size of high schools, efforts to turn around failing schools, improved technology for schools, and a tax-free savings plan for parents and grandparents to pay for college. Gore also advocates investments in quality after-school care and expanded opportunities for lifeline learning. He advocates raising standards and improving the basics, reductions in class size and connecting all classrooms to the internet. He has supported more character education, more drug counselors and violence prevention coordinators, expanded Pell grants, and HOPE scholarship tax credits to expand access to higher education.
Alan Keyes
Keyes advocates greater attention to moral education and character formation with a return to prayer in school. He opposes value free education and outcomes based education. He opposes school-to-work programs as being crass vocationalism and decries whole language learning and fuzzy math as diminishing traditional academic work. Keyes favors school choice to permit parents to send their children to schools that reflect their values and their faith, including both public and independent schools. He sees a need to break the government monopoly on public education.
John McCain
McCain supports policies that return control of education to parents while also providing some assistance to schools to improve performance. He has called for a nationwide test of school vouchers and has made a specific proposal for a voucher plan featuring $2000 grants to help parents send their children to private schools with funding coming from an end to federal subsidies for oil and gas industries. He has also supported policies to help schools hire and retain quality teachers, including teacher testing and merit pay. He intends to provide more opportunities for disadvantaged children, encourage proficiency in English plus other languages to increase our global competitiveness and increase parents' options to save for their children's education.
Clearly, the candidates represent a range of opinions on how best to address educational problems. The Democratic candidates tend to embrace traditional solutions that involve strengthening the existing system of public schools as well as extensions to that system such as preschool, after-school programs, and opportunities for lifelong learning. The Republican candidates are more likely to consider private market-based solutions such as vouchers. The impact of these two quite different courses of action on urban schools and poor and minority children are anything but clear at this point. It is this lack of clear evidence that makes the topic one of lively debate. The only candidate who has detailed positions bridging these two paths is also the only one with state level executive experience, George W. Bush.
|
