How disheartening to go to the government election 08 website and find this headline: “Education Unlikely to Be Predominant Campaign Issue: Americans not particularly concerned about educational reform.”
I clicked away.
Education is not a major issue? How can this be?
As we wring our hands about the short term apocalypses, we need to prepare for the future, too. We are waging war on two fronts; we are dependent upon foreign oil and, while we’ve been rattling our sabers in Iraq, China has been developing, growing, educating their children (in shoddy schools, alas, but educating them nonetheless) and buying our dollars. Without an educated population, our future will be even more dire than the most realistic amongst us predict.
I was looking for information about Obama’s vs. McCain’s educational policies. There is no doubt in my mind that I’m a passionate Obama supporter, but I’m always looking for concrete things to say on the issues that matter so that, when I talk to an undecided voter, I can offer a substantive, coherent, and rational list. I’m a professor and the mother of two. I am an ardent public school supporter. (I’m white & I went to majority-minority schools from K-12; my daughters are white, too, and are also racial minorities in kindergarten and daycare.)
I was born after JFK died, but I still remember his name being invoked during my Cold War-era gym classes. As I struggled to do a chin ups, my teachers would invoke those standards and remind me that I needed to rise to that level—Kennedy’s level--of strength as part of an American challenge. It was scary and weird and I’m not by any means nostalgic for those days.
However, it was clear to the hawks of the Cold War that part of our competition with the USSR, as we then called it, involved engaging the youngest citizens in a sense of pride and duty to achieve and excel, to grow strong in mind and body.
Education seems to have completely dropped off the map. In this campaign-without-issues, education, this perennial secondary issue, an issue that, for real governmental reasons is always primarily a local one, is almost invisible. As an educator, I’m stunned and saddened to note it.
I felt some moment of dim hope when I read this, Deoliver47’s, plea yesterday:
I waited today for someone to do a diary about the specifics of the education plan that Barack laid out today in VA, and has brought up in previous speeches, including comparisons to the reactionary proposals of the McCain campaign.
I waited in vain.
I decided not to write that diary. Because it wouldn't get read anyway, except by a small contingent of readers who are interested in the issues.
And this this rather intimidating comment from teacherken:
You don't want what I have to say because I am actually quite critical of Obama's approach to education, as are many people in the educational policy community. Were this a Democratic contest where we could pick and choose among different alternatives, all of which are better than anything any Republican offered, it would have been appropriate for me to offer my criticisms.
In fact, there is little new about education in what Obama is saying now as compared to when he put his plan on the web, which I critiqued at that time.
My offering criticism now - when he is NOT going to change what he is saying, when he has decided which among those advising him on education he wants to listen to - will not advance his candidacy, so I so no point in writing about it.
I went from feeling discouraged and intimidated to feeling challenged.
There are a couple places where you can read about McCain’s education policy. If you’re looking to engage with McCain-leaning mommies in a civil way, this mommy blog aims to post “fair and balanced” (I know—some red state folks don’t hear that as a FOX slogan but a virtue) issue-based information. The point is this: McCain’s education policy seems to be utterly true to his nickname, McSame. He has no new proposals, wants us to do what we’re doing now, only better, and strongly favors school “choice.”
In my opinion, “choice,” which usually means vouchers for lower- and middle-class families to send their children to private schools, is one of the key ways in which we as citizens decimate our public school system. This usually ends up meaning Catholic or religious schools. Tuition there is around $8K/year as compared to around $25k/year and up for the elite private schools of the rich.
I live in downtown Jersey City and, with two young children, know something about what it’s like to stress out about schools that aren’t good enough.
Still, when involved parents opt out, we do our culture a grave disservice.
Obama, by contrast, favors charter schools: alternative schools that work within the public school system. He would continue No Child Left Behind (NCLB), a program that has me deeply suspicious for its over-emphasis on testing. But he also talks about investment in education. He supports students learning Spanish in school and arts education: both things that are crucial for global competition, self-esteem, and holistic social, emotional, and intellectual development. So, I can grit my teeth about NCLB when I hear about art, music, Spanish, and gym, too: it’s not just about teaching to the test here. Instead, Obama seems to see NCLB as an existing mechanism through which he could insist upon accountability.
Obama gave a speech on his education policy yesterday. There wasn’t much new in it, but the New York Times covered it favorably, paying special attention to the fact of Obama’s lifelong commitment to and interest in education. The conclusion of the article highlights a key Obama talent: listening to and taking advice from advisers.
The two men arrived with no entourage and sat down with the staff in a library. Mr. Obama asked about the best way to train teachers, according to those who participated. What would it take to keep qualified teachers from leaving the profession? Would merit pay help? “He wasn’t checking his Palm Pilot,” recalled Karla Kemp, a teacher.
Mr. Obama has brought a similar intensity to discussions of early childhood education, on which he proposes to spend $10 billion a year. A Chicago expert who has influenced his thinking on this is the Nobel laureate, James J. Heckman, an economist at the University of Chicago. Mr. Obama’s plan cites Dr. Heckman in connection with research that found that for every dollar spent on prekindergarten education and the care of infants and their families, there is a $7 to $10 decrease in spending on special education, remedial education and prisons.
The two men have never met, even though they live so close to each other in the Kenwood neighborhood that they use the same dry cleaner and it occasionally sends Mr. Obama’s suit coats to Dr. Heckman’s home.
Last year, when Mr. Obama started his presidential campaign and began preparing his education plan, an assistant to Mr. Obama contacted Dr. Heckman and asked him to react to an early draft of the early childhood plan.
“I completely redrafted the section,” Dr. Heckman said. “Most striking about the campaign was that they listened to what I said.”
At the college level, where I can speak as a teacher, Obama offers some innovative plans for financial aid. True enough, the $4K tax credit won’t get you very far at most 4-year institutions. Nonetheless, it takes 18-year-olds a long time to earn four thousand dollars working in their financial aid job. McSame offers nothing comparable to even this slender help. Here is more (.pdf; with my cuts noted with [snip]) from his websites plan on “Improving College Readiness and Completion”:
IMPROVING COLLEGE READINESS AND COMPLETION
The U.S. used to rank first in the world in the number of young people with a postsecondary degree; now we have fallen to seventh. This is not because our young people do not try, but because too many do not graduate. [snip] We need to refocus on preparing our students to enter college ready to succeed, and Barack Obama and Joe Biden will make college readiness the central component of their high school reform efforts by launching a national “Make College A Reality” initiative.
Support Advanced Placement, Dual Enrollment, and College Credit Initiatives [snip]
Increase College Awareness and Access: Barack Obama and Joe Biden have proposed to create a new $4,000 American Opportunity Tax Credit and eliminate the confusing federal financial aid application process to make college affordable and accessible for all Americans. [snip] Obama and Biden will allow the students to complete their community service component by participating in proven college retention programs that engage college students in preparing high school students for college, similar to the National College Advising Corps (NCAC) …
It’s pretty dry stuff, but it sounds promising.
In my fourteen years of teaching at the college, I’ve seen three programs that, in my opinion really work. Each is compatible with the Obama-Biden plan and each one, I hope would be the kind of thing to get continued (even increased) support and funding in the Obama administration.
Those programs are the Consortium for a Strong Minority Presence at Liberal Arts Colleges (CSMP--a program in need of a better name if there ever were one), Posse, and The Higher Education Opportunity Program (HEOP).
CSMP takes young scholars of color and gives them a year or two post-doctoral teaching appointment at a liberal arts college. Since so few PhD. candidates are people of color, each one is widely sought and most end up teaching in major research institutions. The CSMP gives minority teacher-scholars a taste of liberal arts college life early in their career; it also gives students at these storied, often lily-white institutions, a chance to interact with a smart young professor of color. When the school fits, it often hires that faculty member into a tenure-track line. Even when it doesn’t the experience is an eye-opening one for all.
Posse takes multicultural groups of kids from public high schools and sends them, together, to the same elite college. The idea is that these students arrive with an automatic peer support group; I’ve seen it work again and again—and this was while teaching at a small college in a very red county of a very red state.
HEOP explains itself this way:
HEOP serves New York State residents who are both academically and economically disadvantaged. Disadvantaged students are individuals from low-income families with potential for successful collegiate experiences but who have not acquired the verbal, mathematical, and other cognitive skills required to complete their college work.
Thus, HEOP students get admitted to a participating university even though their grades and test scores are a little lower than those of their peers. The estimate is that the 10% or so gap in scores can be explained by their economic and educational disadvantages upon entrance. They attend a summer institute on college readiness and have access to skilled free tutoring. It’s a tremendous program and I see many young people on their way to law and medical school who were once shy and nervous HEOP freshmen in my Basic Writing class.
To sum up this amazingly long diary, then, I can see no good reason to support McCain on education and dozens of promising ones to think about Obama.