Presidential Primaries Impact Education Policy (1/4/2008)

With the Iowa caucuses, the Presidential election season officially went into full swing this week. Despite the ever-increasing media coverage of the race, education remains low on the priority list for most candidates. Following debates and speeches dominated by talk of Iraq, immigration, and fiscal policy, education is often lost. However, as the primary season draws forward, voters should begin to focus more on the various issue areas for each candidate.

What do the Iowa caucuses mean for education? Republican candidate Mike Huckabee, who won the GOP caucus in Iowa, advocates a return to more traditionally conservative ideologies. From his own website, as well as interviews and other statements, Huckabee’s stance on education, basically, entails the following:

• Making arts and music education integrated in the curriculum, not extracurricular;
• Allowing states to set benchmarks and achievement goals for No Child Left Behind (NCLB);
• Encouraging home schooling and school choice programs;
• Testing teachers and imposing waiting periods for teacher tenure; and
• Creating teacher-designed performance-pay systems.

This move toward more state control is the predominant viewpoint among GOP candidates. All Republican candidates advocate either for amending NCLB to allow states more control and flexibility or aborting NCLB altogether. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is also calling for greater state control and flexibility when it comes to meeting benchmarks under NCLB. While Senator John McCain (R-AZ) has not detailed a specific education platform, he has repeatedly stated his opposition to federally imposed national standards for education.
Former Senator Fred Thompson (R-TN) has called for NCLB to be discarded altogether, opting instead for states to set their own education priorities. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani continues to stay away from discussing NCLB, and instead focuses his education platform on supporting school choice as the best method for reform.

For Democrats, with just four days until the New Hampshire primary, Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) is scrambling to find a strategy to counter to Senator Barack Obama’s momentum after his convincing win in Iowa. Education will not likely be a critical part of this new strategy because the education debate, thus far, has lacked any true substance and neither candidate is eager to generate new education initiatives out of Washington or tackle the nuances of NCLB.

The candidates are proposing education platforms that have remained unchanged over the last 20 years: addressing the drop-out crisis, afterschool opportunities, better training, and recruiting and pay of teachers and principals. “The parties are mired in the tired debates they've been having since the 1990s. The candidates' K-12 education proposals are, by and large, the same old same old,” writes Mike Petrilli, Vice President for National Programs & Policy of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation. And he is right.

Both Clinton and Obama argue that NCLB needs to be reformed, but the details are absent, even if Clinton is more rhetorically aggressive against the law’s testing and sanctions. So what does the Iowa caucus mean for federal education policy? Not much actually. The presidential election, thus far, is about issues other than education.

So as November approaches, keep in mind that the critical education policy makers are the same as they were in 2007: Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and the staff of the Committee on Health Education Labor and Pension and George Miller (D-CA) and the staff of the House Committee on Education and Labor. The federal education activity will come from those offices in 2008.

Resources:
Mike Petrilli, “Parties like it’s 1999,” Education Gadfly, November 29, 2007, http://www.edexcellence.net/foundation/gadfly/issue.cfm?edition=&id=317#3720.
“Education,” Obama ’08, http://www.barackobama.com/issues/education/
“Supporting Parents and Caring for Children,” Hillary for President, http://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/family/
“Education and the Arts,” Mike Huckabee for President, http://www.mikehuckabee.com/?FuseAction=Issues.View&Issue_id=7
“Raising the Bar on Education,” Mitt Romney for Education,
http://www.mittromney.com/Issues/education
Authors: DAD, SAS

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Presidential Hopefuls Comment on NCLB

Fred Thompson and Bill Richardson, both hopeful candidates for the 2008 Presidential Elections, turned their attention to education in September, specifically focusing on No Child Left Behind (NCLB). While other candidates spent this week campaigning on issues such as universal health coverage, and Iraq, Governor Richardson, and former Sen. Thompson spoke on the state of American education, and the direction they would take the country if they were elected next November.

While campaigning in Florida, Republican hopeful Thompson suggested that it's time to move past NCLB, suggesting that the federal government has gotten too involved. Thompson’s comments surprised some, considering that, as a senator in 2001, he voted for NCLB. Campaigning in the Republican stronghold of Jacksonville at the start of a Florida campaign kick-off bus tour, Thompson said the President's signature education program isn't working and promised that, if he is elected, he would provide federal school funding with fewer strings attached. Thompson said his message to the states would be: "We expect you to get objective testing done and publicize those tests for the local parents and for the local citizens and suffer the political ramifications locally if things don't work out right."

Meanwhile, New Mexico Governor, and Democratic hopeful, Richardson published an editorial in USA Today regarding his views on NCLB. Richardson agrees with Thompson regarding NCLB’s failure to improve schools, but his proposals focus more on enforcing strict standards and rewarding teachers. Richardson wants to provide public schools with what the National Education Association (NEA) refers to as the three R's — Responsibility, Respect and Resources. His key to improvement is respecting teachers. He discussed a law he signed in New Mexico that pays teachers a professional salary, and promised that, if elected president, he will fight for a national average starting pay for teachers of at least $40,000 a year. He also called for universal pre-K for all students. Finally, he is advocating for strong academic standards aligned with the needs of today's workforce.

Neither Richardson nor Thompson are considered front runners, though Thompson is likely further ahead on the Republican side than Richardson is with Democrats. However, both hopefuls have been the only candidates to discussion education in-depth while on the campaign trail. Sen. Hilary Clinton (D-NY) discussed a few education-related matters with the NEA, but no other candidate has offered any real suggestions thus far, focusing much more on the war in Iraq, and other, more high-profile issues. Thompson and Richardson’s actions this week show how those candidates that are behind in the polls tend to focus more on domestic issues, trying to connect with American voters, rather than offering rhetoric on the big issues, like every other candidate. It is unlikely that education will take a greater prominence in Presidential debates, but this week’s news at least shows that it is still a concern for registered voters.

Resources:
Gov. Bill Richardson, “NCLB Fails Our Schools,” USA Today, September 7, 2007.
Mark Silva, “Thompson: Leave 'No Child Left Behind' Behind,” Baltimore Sun, September 13, 2007.
Author: SAS

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Early Childhood Issues

On Wednesday, Senator and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (D-NY) presented the most detailed education initiative of the escalating 2008 presidential campaign.



The proposal would expand pre-kindergarten classes to all children by creating a pre-K matching grant system. States would have to establish high quality plans, as defined by Clinton’s proposal, for making voluntary pre-K services universally available for all four-year olds in the state. In exchange for this plan, the federal government would provide matching grants that would increase over time. Where state-committed and federally matched funds are insufficient for universal access to pre-K, the plan would place a priority on assistance for low-income families and for kids learning English. States would be able to use these funds to expand their Head Start programs.
The federal government would allocate $5 billion in the first year to states to establish and administer universal Pre-K. Over the next five years, the federal commitment would increase to $10 billion as states increase their commitment to Pre-K.
Sen. Clinton’s proposal is a likely indication of proposals to come. Early childhood investment has been popular for years in Washington, but the Brookings Institute has been actively promoting the early education programs by touting the educational and fiscal benefits, something that campaigning politicians are eager to hear in tight financial times. Early childhood investment, argue Jens Ludwig and Isabel Sawhill of Brookings, delivers great return on the investment:
The United States currently spends around $7,300 on elementary and secondary public schooling for each school-age child (five to seventeen years old), for a total of around $530 billion. But family background generates large differences in child outcomes well before children start school and even before they are old enough to participate in the federal government’s preschool program for disadvantaged children. [….]
The program that Brookings has proposed, and that Sen. Clinton is echoing, would provide early intervention and, they claim, generate economic and social benefits that would far exceed the program’s costs while providing efficiency savings to the government throughout the student’s education career. This is a win-win for federal deficit reduction, public education and other related social programs. Accordingly, we can expect to see a number of similar proposals throughout the presidential election cycle and, potentially, in the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind.
Resources:

“Success by Ten: Intervening Early, Often and Effectively in the Education of Young Children,” February 2007, http://www1.hamiltonproject.org/views/papers/200702ludwig-sawhill.htm
“2 Candidates to Roll Out Domestic Proposals,” New York Times, May 21, 2007.
Author: DAD

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