Politics K-12

September 2007 Archives

September 27, 2007

Sex Ed for 2nd Graders?

There are big problems in education. The achievement gap. High dropout rates. Struggling urban schools.

But this week, some presidential candidates are sniping about something that will do little to address any of those issues: whether the issue of same-sex marriage belongs in an elementary school classroom.

Republican Mitt Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts (where same-sex marriage is legal), lashed out at the Democratic candidates for their answers to a question during a debate on Wednesday night in New Hampshire sponsored on MSNBC. They were asked if they would approve of a teacher reading a story to 2nd graders that involved same-sex marriage. (Read the transcript here.)

The Democratic candidates who got a chance to answer that hot-button question were the front-runners--Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards.

Edwards said he was "absolutely" comfortable with such material being discussed: "What I want is I want my children to understand everything about the difficulties that gay and lesbian couples are faced with every day, the discrimination that they're faced with every single day of their lives," according to the transcript.

Obama echoed many of those thoughts. "You know, the fact is, my 9-year-old and my 6-year-old's -- I think, are already aware that there are same-sex couples."

Clinton was probably the most evasive. "With respect to your individual children, that is such a matter of parental discretion."

Thursday, Romney criticized the candidates in a statement for being "out of touch." He continued: "This is a subject that should be left to parents, not public school teachers."

What do you think? Should 2nd graders be exposed to this subject? Should the presidential candidates even be talking about it?

Posted by Michele McNeil at 3:16 PM | | 1 Comment | Recommend

September 26, 2007

Thou Shalt not Enforce the Law

While most people are keenly aware of the 2008 presidential race, there’s also a spirited race for governor in Kentucky that’s been pretty negative—with some of the harshest criticism involving religion in schools.

Former Kentucky Attorney General Steve Beshear, a Democrat, is facing incumbent Republican Ernie Fletcher, who is trying to hang onto his seat after a political-hirings-and-firings scandal that mired his first term. The two are in a tight race for the Nov. 6 election, with polls showing Fletcher may be trailing. Beshear is taking a political beating for issuing an opinion as Attorney General—26 years ago—enforcing in Kentucky a U.S. Supreme Court ban on displaying the Ten Commandments in schools. Take a look at school-themed ads here.

Beshear, according to media reports, responded to the ads by reminding voters of Fletcher's scandal and accusing his opponent of not abiding by the Ten Commandments himself.

This ad is also a sign that Kentucky is a closely watched race on the national circuit. These attack ads are paid for by the Republican Governors Association, which felt the heat last year when Democrats took control of a majority of gubernatorial offices for the first time since 1994. Republicans surely don’t want to lose any more governors.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 12:05 PM | | Leave a comment | Recommend

September 25, 2007

What About Full-Day Kindergarten?

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards may be putting the cart before the horse -- or, in education lingo -- the preschooler before the kindergartner.

While his education plan unveiled last week focuses on reforming the No Child Left Behind Act, giving incentive pay to teachers in high-poverty schools, and bringing federally funded preschool to more 4-year-olds, his proposal didn't address whether 5-year-olds should spend all day in kindergarten.

The Reno Gazette-Journal in Nevada took note of this and asked Edwards in a telephone interview about whether he supported full-day kindergarten. His response was perplexing:

"Let me think about that," Edwards told the newspaper for a story posted today. "That is the first time I've literally ever been asked that question. What you're saying is in Nevada there's no full-day kindergarten? Is there state kindergarten?"

No, in fact, there's no full-day kindergarten in about 41 states, according to a 2005 report by the Education Commission of the States. Edwards lives in one of the nine states with full-day kindergarten—North Carolina.


Posted by Michele McNeil at 12:44 PM | | Leave a comment | Recommend

September 24, 2007

"Corridor of Shame"

South Carolina's poor, rural schools are getting attention from the Presidential hopefuls again.

Democratic U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York makes her ad debut in South Carolina today, with a heavy focus on education. She continues her campaign mantra that middle- and lower-income families will not be "invisible" if she is elected president.

Clinton hits on South Carolina's so-called "Corridor of Shame" --a stretch of low-performing, rural schools along Interstate 95. The struggle of these schools was chronicled in a 58-minute documentary, called "Corridor of Shame: The Neglect of South Carolina's Rural Schools," made in 2005.

Clinton seems to blame President Bush for failing to help. In her radio ad, she says: "If you are a child in a crumbling school along the corridor of shame, you are invisible to this president."

Posted by Michele McNeil at 2:25 PM | | Leave a comment | Recommend

September 21, 2007

Edwards Proposes Education Platform

John Edwards is unveiling his education platform today in DesMoines, Iowa. He promises to build a universal preK program, to improve the quality of teachers, and to rewrite the No Child Left Behind Act.

To replace what his campaign calls NCLB's "unproven cookie-cutter solutions," the former U.S. senator from North Carolina would model attempts to fix failing schools on a current program in his home state. He would create a School Success Fund that would assign experienced educators to help distressed schools improve. He also would try to increase the pool of successful schools, either by expanding existing ones or building new ones.

For teachers, Edwards would offer an extra $15,000 in salary to those in successful schools serving high-poverty students. He also would start the National Teacher University to prepare 1,000 new teachers every year. He says the new university would be comparable to the West Point Military Academy.

Edwards also would start the "Great Promise" program, which would offer preschool to 4-year-olds. The program would start in areas with schools that have low-student achievement and expand to be available nationwide. It would have an academic focus and would charge parents a fee based on a sliding scale. In addition to the preschool, Edwards would start a program to improve child care for younger children and another to improve all children's health.

Posted by at 1:29 PM | | Leave a comment | Recommend

September 20, 2007

Vouchers: It’s about the children, not the money!

That’s the mantra of Reg Weaver, the president of the National Education Association, who didn’t want to talk about how much money his national teachers’ union was going to give to its Utah affiliate, which is in a fierce ballot fight to get the country’s first universal voucher law off the books in Utah. This statewide referendum will be one of the most interesting education elections to watch on Nov. 6.

Last week, I asked him six different ways how much the NEA will spend to defeat vouchers. Weaver refused to bite, insisting that the real issue isn't money, but that vouchers will stand in the way of a good education for all students. “Any time you mention a dollar figure it has a negative impact,” he told me.

Campaign finance reports filed with the state offer some indication, showing the NEA donating $1.53 million to the Utah Education Association as of Sept. 17. In addition to national support, the UEA also received $57,700 in small-dollar donations from Utah teachers and a couple of legislators, plus donations from the teachers’ unions in Maine, Colorado, Ohio, and Wyoming. An umbrella group of public school advocates, Utahns for Public Schools, collected thousands more in teacher donations.

The opposing side, represented chiefly by Parents for Choice in Education , has raised less, at about $330,000. Who’s funding the pro-voucher side? Most of the donations are from within Utah, but a $50,000 donation came from New York City investor Thomas Kempner, Jr. The CEO of the shopping site Overstock.com, Patrick Byrne of Park City, Utah, donated $90,000 to the voucher group, plus $200,000—the only donation—to the Informed Voter Project, which is in favor of vouchers.

Notably absent from the campaign finance reports is the national pro-voucher group All Children Matter, based in Michigan, which helped defeat legislative candidates in Utah last year. Don’t look for that group to stay quiet in Utah for too long. My experience from covering this group, which is involved in elections in more than a dozen states, is that it comes in late in the game, and with hard-hitting, controversial ads. The group's tactics have gotten it in trouble this year in Wisconsin and Ohio.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 10:43 AM | | Leave a comment | Recommend

September 19, 2007

Are We Getting Dumber?

The Washington Post has a nifty feature on its site called “The Fact Checker” that attempts to provide the facts behind the presidential candidates’ political spin, and a recent post tackles the issue of just how smart we are.

Sparking the post was former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel’s proclamation that Americans are getting “dumber.” He made that announcement on Yahoo’s Democratic Candidate Mashup, which is also worth visiting because you can play video snippets of the Democratic presidential candidates’ views on education.

While the Post’s Fact Checker asserts we aren’t getting dumber, there are plenty of stories in Education Week every week that could provide evidence for Sen. Gravel’s assertion. Our latest edition of Diplomas Count reveals that graduation rates have remained stagnant since 2002 at around 70 percent (which Gravel correctly points out), which means that an estimated 1.2 million of the Class of 2007 didn’t graduate. Another story highlights a study that found that improvement in test scores for 4th graders in reading has fallen off over the last several years, and slowed in math, while efforts to close the achievement gap have practically come to a stop.

While it may not be politically correct to label your potential voters as “dumber,” Gravel is calling attention to an issue that lies at the heart of most education reform proposals—the need to improve student achievement. Or, as Gravel would probably put it, the need to make our students smarter.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 1:46 PM | | Leave a comment | Recommend

September 18, 2007

Education on the Ballot

The next 14 months will be pivotal for education. Not only is there a presidential race next year, but control of Congress is also at stake at a time when the federal No Child Left Behind Act is up for reauthorization.

But let’s not forget about the states—the laboratories of education reform. This year, the nation’s first universal voucher program will be voted on in Utah. Voters in Kentucky, Mississippi, and Louisiana will elect governors. And 2008 will be an even busier year for states.

Here, we’ll talk about these important campaigns and elections, what education promises the federal and state-level candidates are making, and why these elections matter for public schools.

Where should the conversation start? Probably with what schools and political candidates want more of:

Money.

Although the presidential candidates are paying little attention to education issues, they should. In addition to all the obvious reasons, here’s another one: Individuals who work in or represent education, either nonprofit or for-profit, have already contributed more than $4 million to the $265 million raised by the presidential candidates, according to the user-friendly Web site www.opensecrets.org. This doesn’t count labor unions, which are tallied in different category.

The biggest education beneficiary? Democratic Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois at $1.5 million. Fellow Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York is further behind at $900,000. Coming in third is a Republican—former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, at $448,000.

Education campaign contributions will grow tremendously if the 2004 presidential election was any indication. According to opensecrets.org, donations from the field of education ranked 8th in total campaign giving compared with other industries. Educators donated more to the 2004 presidential candidates than donors from the insurance and pharmaceutical industries did.


Posted by Michele McNeil at 9:34 AM | | Leave a comment | Recommend

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