ISSUE Thread: Education

[shugah]

Barack Obama:

Early Childhood Education
* Zero to Five Plan: Obama's comprehensive "Zero to Five" plan will provide critical support to young children and their parents.
* Expand Early Head Start and Head Start
* Affordable, High-Quality Child Care

K-12
Reform No Child Left Behind
Make Math and Science Education a National Priority
Address the Dropout Crisis
Expand High-Quality Afterschool Opportunities
Expand Summer Learning Opportunities
Support College Outreach Programs
Support English Language Learners

Recruit, Prepare, Retain, and Reward America's Teachers
o Recruit Teachers
o Prepare Teachers
o Retain Teachers:
o Reward Teachers

Higher Education
o Create the American Opportunity Tax Credit
o Simplify the Application Process for Financial Aid

Details: http://www.barackobama.com/issues/education/

Hillary Clinton:

Early Childhood Education
* Nurse home visitation programs to help new parents develop parenting skills.
* Quality child care and Head Start.
* Pre-kindergarten for all four-year olds.

K-12
* End the unfunded mandate known as No Child Left Behind.
* Meet the funding promises of IDEA to ensure that children with special needs get the attention and support they deserve.
* Recruit and retain thousands more outstanding teachers and principals, especially in urban and rural areas.
* Cut the minority dropout rate in half.
* Create "Green Schools" in order to reduce energy costs and eliminate environmental hazards that can hinder children's development.
* Expand early-intervention mentoring programs to help one million at-risk youth aspire for college and job success.
* Identify at-risk youth early on and provide $1 billion in intensive interventions, such as early college high schools and multiple pathways to graduation, to get them back on track.
* Double the after school program to ensure that 2 million young people have a safe and stimulating place to go between 3 and 6 p.m.
* Invest $100 million in a new public/private summer internship program.
* Provide opportunity for 1.5 million disconnected youth in job programs linked to high-growth economic sectors.

College Access
* Create a new $3,500 college tax credit.
* Increase the maximum Pell Grant.
* Strengthen community colleges through a $500 million investment.
* Create a graduation fund to increase college graduation rates.
* Increase to $10,000 the college scholarship for those who participate in AmeriCorps full-time for one year.
* Get rid of the red tape in financial aid.
* Hold college costs down and hold colleges accountable for results though an online college cost calculator, a college graduation and employment rate index, and truth in tuition disclosure.
* Challenge selective colleges to expand access for students from low-income communities.

Details: http://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/education/

[Aloha Spirit]

1. Bar none, education reform is the reason I'm most excited to vote (D) this Fall....

"... I will join millions of citizens and stagger into the voting booth come November, like a boxer in the 12th round, all bloodied and bruised with one eye swollen shut, looking for the only thing that matters -- that big 'D' on the ballot."
-Michael Moore

[shugah]

4. we need something better

that is for sure! it's difficult to find fault with either dem candidate on education, and both seem to understand the urgency.

[shugah]

2. both are good on education

i have to admit, i prefer scrapping NCLB (Clinton) as opposed to reforming NCLB (Obama).

Making Math and Science Education a National Priority (Obama) is good, and i think very important to keep our students competitive.

Green Schools (Hillary) is an intriguing idea.

[Aloha Spirit]

3. Agreed-- Green schools will make children less sick. Same with green police stations, homes.....

[shugah]

5. Obama speech on K-12 "Our Kids, Our Future"

Some excerpts:

In this kind of economy, countries who out-educate us today will out-compete us tomorrow. Already, China is graduating eight times as many engineers as we are. By twelfth grade, our children score lower on math and science tests than most other kids in the world. And we now have one of the highest high school dropout rates of any industrialized nation in the world.
~~~~~

I do not accept an America where only twenty percent of our students are prepared to take college-level classes in English, math, and science - where barely one in ten low-income students will ever graduate from college.

I do not accept an America where we do nothing about the fact that half of all teenagers are unable to understand basic fractions - where nearly nine in ten African-American and Latino eighth graders are not proficient in math. I do not accept an America where elementary school kids are only getting an average of twenty-five minutes of science each day when we know that over 80% of the fastest-growing jobs require a knowledge base in math and science.

This kind of America is morally unacceptable for our children. It's economically untenable for our future. And it's not who we are as a country.

Transcript and video here: http://www.barackobama.com/2007/11/20/remarks_of_senator_barack_obam_34.php

[shugah]

6. Clinton speech on K-12

Excerpt:

Because the fact is, we cannot succeed in the global economy today unless our children universally are given the best start in life and then can take advantage of education and enter the world ready to be productive. Obviously if you look at the entire education system there's a lot of work we have to do. We have to make college more affordable and I've talked a lot about that. We have to make it possible for our teachers to have working conditions that give them the chance to be the best teachers we can be. There's a lot of things we need to do to reform and change No Child Left Behind, which is an unfunded mandate on our school. But we all know that preparing children to attend college or to start a career, to get the skills they need, starts way earlier than that. I'm going to be proposing throughout my campaign, additional investments in even younger children; those 0-3 because parents need high quality child care and much more in the way of parental support in education about how to do best job they can. Today, fewer than 20% of our four year olds in America are in pre-K programs that are funded by our various states. That's what I want to discuss because I think our educational system needs to be strengthened from start to finish, but we have to start where it all begins.

Full transcript: http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/speech/view/?id=3893

[Aloha Spirit]

7. kicked

[smalll]

8. What about Pastor Wright's views on Education? Can that be part of this "issue thread"?

Are whites left-brained and blacks right-brained?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

9. No, Wright is a non-issue.

Try using at least half of your brain someday. Either side will do.

[shugah]

13. *snicker* n/t

[shugah]

10. there are several threads about reverend wright currently active in GD: P

perhaps your question is addressed in one of those?

i did not see any reference to left-brain/right-brain learning on either of the dem candidates web sites. perhaps if it is an important issue to you you could query both or either Obama or Clinton via email or some other method?

[rinsd]

11. K&R for issues discussion

:thumbsup:

[Aloha Spirit]

12. I like this part-- seems like a fresh idea with legs...

"Hold college costs down and hold colleges accountable for results though an online college cost calculator, a college graduation and employment rate index, and truth in tuition disclosure."

[shugah]

15. more details on that

# A new online Higher Education Cost Calculator. This calculator will provide an estimate of the amount of aid (from all sources – federal, state, local and the institution), a student is likely to receive. Under this proposal, colleges and universities will submit information about a typical range of low to high income students and their financial aid in their freshman and sophomore years to the Department of Education. The Department of Education will use it to develop a cost calculator, which students and families would be able to access online to find out roughly how much they should expect to owe out of pocket in their first and second years, if they chose to attend that institution.

# A College Graduation and Employment Rate Index. Hillary will also ensure that the Department of Education makes available information about the outcomes produced by all colleges and universities, including the four- year and six-year graduation rates and the percent of the senior class that is employed upon graduation or enrolled in further education, including information on earnings and field of employment."

# Truth in Tuition Disclosure. As a condition of federal financial aid eligibility, state and local institutions of higher education will be required to set multi-year tuition and fee levels for each cohort of students at the beginning of each student’s freshman year, so students and families will have a sense of how much their costs will be in the coming years.

http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/release/view/?id=3671

[shugah]

14. kicking in hopes of some responses

i'm not finding much about the candidates education policies and positions other than what is on their websites.

anyone have anything good/bad/indifferent about where Obama and Clinton are on education?

[Aloha Spirit]

16. I don't know the answer to the question, but I'll play kickball with you!

[shugah]

19. cool!

i'm giving one last kick for the evening.

i'll post some more issue threads when i can - i'm at 3 for now.

[Aloha Spirit]

20. okay!

[Barack_America]

17. Hillary's Pre-K plan, is that mandatory? n/t

[shugah]

18. hmmm...

it is not clearly stated as mandatory, but it does seem to be implied.

i don't know. i'll see if i can find something about it.

[Zodiak]

21. Some reactions

Obama

Good - I like that he puts emphasis on teachers. Without that profession, education would fall down the crapper. We are having a hard time retaining teachers as-is, and we do not treat the profession as we should. Good to see such emphasis there.

Bad - College costs are through the roof and show little sign of abatement as the academic community gets squeezed and squeezed. Obama's proposals are a band-aid to this big problem.

Clinton

Good - Like Obama, I am glad that she sees a problem with our horrendous dropout rate and is prepared to do something about it through many specific proposals, many of which go father than just the classroom.

Bad - Her college proposals do not do anything to reduce college costs, but rather emphasize reporting those costs as if they are not freely available already. Holding colleges accountable for not having students obtain jobs is kind of moot in an economy where there are so few jobs for college graduates.

In short, both have the good and the bad. Like health care, neither is proposing any actual solutions for our problems but rather, a scattershot of smaller programs that will help some, but leave many out in the cold.