Sen. John McCain will use a speech he plans to give to the NAACP annual convention next week in Cincinnati to talk about education. According to this Associated Press story, he will talk about merit pay for teachers, and tutoring for low-income students on July 16. His chief education adviser, Lisa Graham Keegan, told a group of reporters last month that McCain's official education platform won't be unveiled until later in the summer or early fall, during "back-to-school" time when people are "listening." But apparently, next week's NAACP meeting has provided the Arizona senator with the "right opportunity" to talk ...

The L.A. Times this morning is throwing cold water on Sen. Barack Obama's ambitious plans to spend all sorts of money on improving education, making men better fathers, and cutting taxes for the middle class—among other things that carry hefty price tags. Budget analysts caution that in these tough financial times, Obama's big ideas will run smack into harsh economic realities. And education will be just one of many competing priorities fighting for money and attention....

So my colleague, Vashali Honawar, blogged Barack Obama speech at the National Education Association's convention this weekend. You can read all about it here. And you can watch most of the speech over at the Education Intelligence Agency. There's been quite a lot of reaction to the speech - and particularly Obama's mention of merit pay - out in the education blogland. For instance, according to eduwonk, the NEA replayed portions of the speech throughout its convention...but deleted the parts where Obama expressed support for merit pay and charter schools. And Joe Williams over at Democrats for Education Reform, ...

NPR this morning did a segment on just how bipartisan John McCain and Barack Obama really are. (Hat tip to Liam, over at Flypaper.) As an example of just how willing Obama is to break ranks with his party, NPR points to an interview the Illinois Democrat gave to Fox News Sunday, in which he pointed out that he embraces the not-so-Democratic ideas of charter schools and some sort of merit pay for teachers. But this Obama interview on Fox News was from the end of April. That was more than two months ago, before Hillary Clinton dropped out of ...

As the National Education Association's annual convention gets started, the nation's largest teachers' union unveiled its plan to fix schools by 2020. The crux: get rid of the No Child Left Behind Act, diminish the federal role in education while still giving states lots of money. More specifically, the NEA wants the federal government to focus grant money on recruiting, training, and supporting teachers in hard-to-staff schools, better fund Title I and special education, and require states to develop adequacy and equity plans to address funding disparities among school districts. The six-point plan also calls for revamping accountability systems to ...

Presumptive Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois wants faith-based organizations to get more involved in federal programs, including after-school programs, according to this New York Times story. The story goes on to describe how Obama (and GOP rival Sen. John McCain of Arizona) are courting religious voters. But it doesn't mention one key education demographic: religious homeschoolers, a well-organized and influential group of folks (as anyone who followed the come-from-behind win by Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas in the Iowa Republican caucuses can attest). I wonder what (if anything) McCain can do to get them excited about his candidacy. ...

There's been a lot of dust-up over the fact that sometimes, Barack Obama doesn't wear a flag pin on his lapel. So in hopes of assuring people that he really, really is patriotic, he delivered this speech yesterday about patriotism, in which he emphasized the role of schools in turning kids into good Americans: The loss of quality civic education from so many of our classrooms has left too many young Americans without the most basic knowledge of who our forefathers are, or what they did, or the significance of the founding documents that bear their names. Too many children ...

Because respondents in a new Associated Press poll list it as the most significant problem facing their child's school. Forty-seven percent think getting and keeping good teachers is a "very serious" or "somewhat serious" problem. Teachers are a bigger issue than overcrowding, lack of student discipline (which came in second), and school violence. Teacher quality also outranks the condition of school buildings, outdated textbooks, placing emphasis on the wrong subjects, low expectations of students, students not spending enough time in school, and thankfully, availability of athletic fields (26 percent think this is a serious problem!) A good chunk of Barack ...

A new poll out today reaffirms the obvious: Voters are really worried about their pocketbooks. Education ranks third as the most important issue this year, behind gas prices, and jobs and the economy, according to a poll taken last month by Lake Research Partners and sponsored by the Public Education Network. If you read the poll more closely, you can find some interesting nuggets about adults' attitudes toward the No Child Left Behind Act. (The most detailed polling information is in the PowerPoint presentation found here). First, adults don't seem to be nearly as opposed to the law as some ...

No, this isn't a merit-pay plan to reward teachers for performance. But, it's along those same lines—and I'm thinking this might be a good idea. John McCain is offering a $300 million prize to someone who develops a car battery that will "leapfrog" the current technology that powers our traditional cars and even newer hybrids. The goal, of course, is to drive down oil prices. In his remarks yesterday, McCain pointed out that many advancements—such as the mapping of the human genome—can be traced back to American inventors, and "often to the foresighted aid of the United ...