Campaign K-12

For the American Federation of Teachers, Hillary Clinton's concession on Saturday means that it's time for the union to repair any lost love and throw its full support behind Barack Obama. Although the Obama campaign will certainly appreciate the AFT's organized foot-soldiers, the union will have to work a little harder to wield any influence since it spent the last several months aligned with Clinton—and is a late-comer to the Obama bandwagon.

Unlike the National Education Association, at least the AFT endorsed a candidate when it still mattered.

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If Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton weren't in a fierce political battle for their party's nomination, then students like Brian Griffin and Kaci Gardner probably wouldn't have gotten so involved in the campaign.

Growing up in a state like Indiana—as I did—you realize that presidential candidates don't pay much attention to you when your electoral votes are a foregone conclusion. (I think Indiana's electoral votes—there are 12 now—have gone to the Republican nominee since the dawn of time.)

Of course, it was mildly exciting when Indiana provided George H.W. Bush with his vice president. (That would be Dan Quayle.)

But that's nothing compared with the enthusiasm being generated in Indiana this week by Clinton and Obama. So as the Democrats slug it out before the May 6 primary, it's refreshing to see a state like Indiana become relevant—and its students become politically engaged—even if such relevance is likely to be short-lived.

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....who would it vote for?

Turns out, that's not such an absurd question, because ED in '08 chairman Roy Romer is a superdelegate.

Although ED in '08 has struggled to raise the level of dialogue about education, it may have some leverage since Romer, a former Democratic national chairman, is a superdelegate who hasn't committed to either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. In such a tight race, both candidates are scrambling to boost their delegate tally, and are vying for votes from each state's "superdelegates."

Interestingly, ED in '08 makes the point over and over again that it's a nonpartisan advocacy group, yet Romer finds himself in the unlikely situation—as all superdelegates do—of potentially having significant input on the outcome of the Democratic primary. And this USA Today blog item makes the case that Romer, who was a supporter of Bill Clinton's presidential campaigns, may be an Obama supporter.

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The AFL-CIO—a traditional Democratic ally—hasn't decided who to campaign for. Leaders are reportedly torn between Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.

But, they know exactly who they want to campaign against: presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

As the Democratic primary battle wages on, the union is helping the Democrats make their general case against McCain by distributing information to their members on a range of issues, from the economy to health-care to yes ... education. And its materials are targeted. For instance, members of the American Federation of Teachers (which has endorsed Clinton) will get information on McCain's education views.

And in this more general brochure, "John McCain Revealed", the union takes McCain to task for opposing $1.6 billion in school constructing funding back in 2002. Also, in a section stating that McCain "doesn't like unions," the AFL-CIO cited the senator's criticism of teachers' unions.

The brochure also cited this New York Times article, from February 2002, in which McCain said:

It’s time to break the grip of the education monopoly that serves the union bosses at the expense of our children.

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Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., yesterday released a statement that amounted to a back-handed compliment of the U.S. Department of Education's plan to allow up to 10 states to use "differentiated consequences" in implementing the No Child Left Behind Act.

"While a small pilot, this is a long overdue step in the right direction. By allowing states to differentiate between schools that need modest improvements and those that are chronically failing, this pilot will provide some much-needed flexibility," Clinton said in the March 18 statement. "This step, however, should be just the beginning. No Child Left Behind is a failed policy that needs fundamental overhaul - not tinkering around the edges."

There's broad support in Congress for differentiated consequnces, which would permit districts and states to use seperate sets of sanctions for schools that missed the law's achievement targets for most of their students, as opposed to those that failed to make progress with one or two subgroups, such as students in special education. Clinton's support of the proposal isn't a surprise.

What's more intriguing is that Democratic presidential candidate's statement on the pilot takes her recent anti-NCLB rhetoric up a notch. She says:

"As president, I will work with Congress to end the No Child Left Behind Act, and put in its place a more sensible law that stops micromanaging our schools from the federal level and provides real support to struggling schools."

But it's still unclear just how Clinton (or the other presidential candidates) would revamp the law. Would we still have an NCLB-like federally driven accountability system, just with a different name? NCLB is a reauthorization of the decades-old Elementary and Secondary Education Act. I find it difficult to imagine that any president would completely scrap that law.

Still, if nothing else, the statement shows that Clinton (or someone in her campaign) is paying attention to the implementation of NCLB. That's probably a good political move, given that the National Education Association's endorsement is still up for grabs.

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Yesterday's Washington Post explored the flip-flopping going on with Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The Post id'd its top five flip flops for each candidate.

And what was No. 2 for Clinton?

Her position on No Child Left Behind.

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If education voters were hoping that last night's Democratic debate on CNN might give Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois a chance to hash out their views on school choice, teacher pay, or any other hot button education issue ... they were sorely disappointed.

There wasn't a single question on education in the second-to-last scheduled debate between the two remaining Democratic contenders. Still, Obama did use one question as an opportunity to express his support for bilingual education - an issue that's likely to be important to the sizeable number of Hispanic voters who will be key to winning March 4 primary in Texas. And Obama managed to get in another dig on the No Child Left Behind Act, saying that the law's narrow focus on reading and math has edged out foriegn languages, and that he would "put more resources" into language study.

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If you could grade the presidential candidates on their education platforms, what would you give them?

Newsweek magazine did just that after getting the opinions of Education Sector's Thomas Toch and the Center for Education Reform's Jeanne Allen.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Republican, fares the worst, earning a D+ in part because Arkansas' academic benchmarks are "the pits," according to Toch.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, a Democrat, earns a B- despite "currying favor" with the teachers' unions (in Allen's words), although Toch predicts she may embrace the idea of merit pay for teachers if she becomes the nominee.

Sens. Barack Obama of Illinois and John McCain of Arizona tie for best grades, with each getting a B+. Obama, a Democrat, gets points for being "well intentioned" and talking about merit pay.

McCain, a Republican, gets high marks for his pro-charter school and pro-private school voucher stances. But Toch asks an important question regarding McCain's mention of improving high school graduation rates: "How exactly do you do that?"

Perhaps a more appropriate grade for McCain would be an "I" for incomplete. He's the candidate who has said the least, so far, about education.

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In the wake of the Super Tuesday results, which showed no clear favorite among Democrats, the 3.2-million member National Education Association wants to remind Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama that the union's endorsement is still up for grabs.

With that endorsement comes access to hundreds of thousands of NEA volunteers, who could prove crucial in the political ground game.

In a press release issued this morning, NEA President Reg Weaver said neither Obama nor Clinton has made the case that would earn them the association’s recommendation. “There have been dozens of debates but less than a handful of questions about the future role of the federal government in public education,” says Weaver.

He continued: "If they haven’t made education a central part of their campaigns, how can we feel confident that they will make education a central part of their administration?”

Perhaps the NEA should be doing more to support the efforts of ED in '08, whose goal is precisely that: to make education a central part of presidential campaigns.

The NEA has probably heard enough about the Democrats' education ideas, but is hedging its bets for fear of endorsing a losing candidate. Or maybe the NEA is as divided as the rest of the Democratic Party.

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Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton is perhaps the only presidential candidate who talks about special education on the campaign trail—and that's probably a wise move, since about 6.8 million children in the United States have disabilities. That represents about 12 percent of students nationwide—a not-to-be-overlooked proportion of American families.

Last night, during Clinton's national town hall meeting broadcast on the Hallmark Channel and online, the first question she fielded was on education.

She used this as an opportunity to bash the No Child Left Behind Act as an unfunded federal mandate that has resulted in schools full of "little test-takers" and "test givers."

But she also reiterated her support for fully funding the federal portion of special education. She correctly said that the federal government pays about 17 percent of special education costs, when the original funding goal was set at 40 percent back when the nation's special education law was passed in 1975.

Funding special education doesn't end there, either. Clinton should also take a look at looming Medicaid cuts from the Bush administration that threaten some of the services—such as speech therapy—for which schools currently are reimbursed.

Special education is one of the most complex, important parts of the K-12 system—and you can read more about it at edweek.org's new blog, On Special Education, by fellow reporter Christina Samuels.

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That's Bill Clinton, not Hillary.

In this story, the former president is blaming Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy, one of the architects of the No Child Left Behind Act, for the "train wreck" that he says the law has become.

Hmmmm. Could this be President Clinton's payback for Sen. Kennedy's endorsement of Hillary Clinton's chief opponent, Barack Obama?

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Did you catch last night's relatively tame debate between Democratic presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on CNN? Education got only a passing mention.

However, as I listened to the two candidates, it occurred to me that perhaps the single most important thing that the next president can do for schools has little to do with education, at least on its face.

And that's reforming health care.

I argue this for two reasons. First, there were 8.7 million uninsured children in the U.S. in 2006, according to the latest Census data. That's enough students to fill about 350,000 classrooms. And we all know that healthier kids make better students.

And second, and perhaps more important to schools as a whole, health care costs for teachers and retirees are eating up a tremendous part of school districts' budgets. In California alone, school districts spend more than $279 million a year just on health care for retirees—and that doesn't even count current teachers. What's more, that figure only covers 475 of the 1,036 districts surveyed by a California commission studying the issue.

Los Angeles Unified spends $211 million a year just on health care for its retired teachers, which is 4 percent of the payroll. That's enough money to give each of its 768 schools an additional $274,379 for programs. And imagine what LA Unified's health care tab is when you add in current teachers!

This isn't just a California issue.

A study by Kentucky's Prichard Committee, a citizen's advocacy group, found that school districts were expecting to spend $484.2 million on health care this year, up from $160 million in 1992 (and that figure is adjusted for inflation). What's more telling: 83 percent of the growth in state spending on education from 1992-2004 was eaten up by health care and retirement benefits.

School finance lawsuits have been waged across the country, including in Kentucky, to win more money for schools, and many of those lawsuits have been victorious. But these health care numbers tell me that the fight shouldn't just be about more money for schools. Because right now, that "more money" seems to be funneled into benefits payments, including health care.

For more on the candidates' health care proposals, read Obama's plan here, and Clinton's here. On the GOP side, check out John McCain's plan here, Mitt Romney's here, and Mike Huckabee's here.

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This is not good news for Democrat Hillary Clinton, who is in a Super Tuesday dogfight with Barack Obama.

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A whopping $40 million.

That's how much the National Education Association is prepared to spend in this crucial 2008 election year. Read more about that in EdWeek's latest political story, by my colleague David Hoff.

That money still isn't devoted to a specific candidate, and as Joe Williams of Democrats for Education Reform wisely notes in the story, the NEA is likely waiting to back a candidate who is sure to win the nomination. The American Federation of Teachers, meanwhile, has put its money on Hillary Clinton.

The $40 million committment from NEA is almost as much as Bill Gates and the Broad Foundation have pledged as part of their ED in '08 campaign to make education a top-tier issue in the presidential campaign.

The two groups—the NEA and the neutral ED in '08—have different strategies, to be sure. But it will interesting to see if all of these millions translate into more serious talk about education from the candidates.

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I was in South Carolina over the weekend, and got to experience life in a presidential primary state. Since I was visiting family, I was confined to watching the political developments as most voters do—through television and the newspapers. However, I attended part of a Martin Luther King Jr. Day rally at the South Carolina Statehouse on Monday, where ministers and activists with the NAACP addressed a crowd of thousands before the three Democratic presidential frontrunners spoke.

And it was here when it struck me: this is a state where education could be an issue that drives votes, especially African-American votes.

ED in '08 folks were there, spreading their message with stickers and signs that said "Education is a civil right" and some brief remarks by chairman and former Colorado Gov. Roy Romer, who emphasized to the crowd that there is no freedom without equality, and no equality without education.

It was an especially powerful message to the crowd made up mostly of African-Americans, who are still fighting to have the Confederate flag—which was taken down from atop the Statehouse dome but flies elsewhere on the capitol grounds—banished entirely from the grounds.

The ministers spoke of still-segregated public schools, with crumbling buildings and even water and sewage running down the halls of the mostly black schools.

The African-American vote is big bloc for Democrats, who have their primary on Saturday. Education was barely an issue in this past Saturday's Republican primary in South Carolina, which Sen. John McCain of Arizona won.

Although poverty was an issue in last night's CNN Democratic debate from Myrtle Beach, S.C., these substantive issues were often drowned out by heated, personal attacks traded by Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

But for the people at the Monday rally I attended, it's the substantive issues that matter. To them, education is the ticket out of poverty. To them, education is a civil right.

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During Tuesday's Democratic debate in Las Vegas, sponsored by MSNBC, the three front-runners were asked a very serious question about education.

To what do you attribute the high dropout rate among African-American students, and what would you do about it?

The question went to Illinois Sen. Barack Obama first, but eventually, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards answered it, too. Their proposed solutions were similar, and complementary: universal prekindergarten, after-school programs, "second-chance" schools for dropouts, promoting fatherhood, etc.

But did you notice something in common about their answers? In response to a question about kids who drop out of school, the candidates barely mentioned any thoughts they have on helping kids while they are actually in a school, during the traditional school day. After all, students are most at risk of dropping out during their freshman year of high school.

To be sure, the Democratic solutions can all be considered very important. In fact, I've blogged before about how fixing America's education crisis won't be accomplished just by fixing what goes on inside a school building.

But did Sen. Clinton forget that she's the only candidate who actually has a dropout plan that she maintains will cut the number of kids who leave school in half? She didn't even mention it.

Sen. Obama did mention paying teachers better and reforming No Child Left Behind (with little explanation), but he hung his answer on pre-k.

There's little doubt that high-quality prekindergarten is beneficial for students, particulary those at risk of failure in school. But there's also little doubt that prekindergarten programs need to be high quality. How would the next president ensure that funds are used on high-quality preschool programs, particularly for students who need help the most?

In addition, for the candidates who say pre-k will solve the dropout problem, I wonder how that helps the students who are in school now. Even if prekindergarten for every child was available this year, that does little to help the kindergarteners, and older students, who are in the system now, moving from grade to grade. Along the way, 1 million drop out each year. That's at least 12 million kids—the population of Ohio—dropping out over the next dozen years while the candidates pin their hopes on prekindergarten.

In the debate, when asked about the economic and mortgage crisis, Sen. Clinton said: "We need to move urgently. We have a lot of big agenda items ... universal health care, college affordability -- but we can't wait. We're going to lose another, you know, million Americans in home foreclosures."

What about the million students we lose every year from high schools? Does that require us to move urgently?

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When you're done reviewing Mitt Romney's victory last night in Michigan from the likes of The Washington Post, Google News, or your favorite blog, you should turn to one more authority on this presidential race: kids.

Education publishing company Scholastic has deployed its "Kid Reporters" to write, photograph, and blog about the 2008 presidential campaign. You can read what they have to say about the Michigan primary here.

You also can read 12-year-old Elizabeth Conway's review of Republican Mike Huckabee's "Huckaburger." (She notes that "a deep-fried pickle—a specialty of Arkansas—may have offset the nutritional value of the vegetables.")

Or, learn what really happens behind closed doors in a caucus, courtesy of three Iowa students. ("Trouble started right away," the story says.)

Also, read about Kid Reporter Mariam El Hasan's conversation with Republican Fred Thompson, on what it means to be a conservative. (Thompson notes that he, too, was once a "little person.")

You should even take note of the real-world experience these kid reporters are getting. And that experience includes getting the cold shoulder from their sources. Take Iowa 4th-grader Sydney Rieckhoff, who is famous enough that her reporting has made CNN, but who was brushed off by former first daughter Chelsea Clinton. Said Sen. Hillary Clinton's daughter, according to the press account: “I’m sorry, I don’t talk to the press and that applies to you, unfortunately. Even though I think you’re cute." Which, of course, catapulted Sydney to even greater fame, including an appearance in the New York Times.

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The Nevada affiliate of the National Education Association is obviously feeling some heat for its decision to file suit to protest new at-large precincts at casinos on the Las Vegas Strip that will make it easier for workers to vote during Saturday's caucus.

The Nevada State Teachers Association is defending itself on its Web site, maintaining that their suit isn't about drowning out the voice of the state's largest union, which represents culinary and other workers in the casinos (and happens to be endorsing Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.) Instead, the lawsuit complains of inequalities—that teachers are not afforded the same opportunities to vote in their workplace, their schools, according to the Web site. While the union hasn't endorsed in the race, many of its top officials support New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

And now, 15 teachers and members of the union have written a letter—distributed by the Obama campaign—complaining about the lawsuit. They maintain that the lawsuit, in effect, could squelch the votes of their students' parents.

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The teachers' unions are very busy in Nevada, which will host a presidential primary on Jan. 19. But the political strategies of the two powerful, rival unions — the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association — are very different.

To make sure their teachers are heard, one union has filed a lawsuit seeking to drown out another union's voice, while the other teachers' union is using the grassroots method.

The Nevada State Teachers Association, an affiliate of the NEA, is suing the state Democratic Party for making it easier for culinary workers in the Las Vegas casinos to vote. The state's largest union, which represents the casino and culinary workers, has endorsed Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois. Although the Nevada teachers' union hasn't endorsed in the race, some of its top officials are supporting Clinton. On Meet the Press on Sunday, Clinton was asked if she supports the lawsuit, filed on Friday. She said she hadn't even read the lawsuit, which she maintained was not coming from her camp.

Meanwhile, the AFT (which has endorsed Clinton), is taking the winning strategy from New Hampshire to Nevada, where today union leaders will help organize retired teachers and other union workers, according to an AFT press release announcing events. Though Nevada isn't an AFT state, the union is nonetheless going to work on drumming up support among teachers, retirees, women, and other union members who are seen as key to Clinton's success.

Below, listen to Sen. Clinton on Sunday's Meet the Press. Her response to the teachers' union lawsuit is near the end of the 50-minute interview.

Update: Read Mike Atonucci's post about the NEA's "acceptable" candidates.

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Boosting teacher pay is a hot education reform topic on the presidential campaign trail, especially for Democrats. Barack Obama even talked about it last night during his second-place-finish speech in the New Hampshire primary, saying, "We [need to] stop talking about how great teachers are and start rewarding them for their greatness."

It's a popular message with unions, whose members are a key voting bloc. Teacher pay is relatively easy for voters to understand in short sound bites. Plus, many voters find it hard to argue with the need to pay teachers more money for the vital, and difficult, public service job they perform.

But if the end game is, indeed, to recruit and retain new teachers, then EdWeek's new state-by-state "Quality Counts 2008" report suggests the solution is far more complicated than anything that can fit in a 15-second sound bite.

And this means the teacher-pay proposals of the candidates merit more scrutiny. For the most part, this scrutiny is limited to Democrats, who are the only ones seriously talking about teacher pay issues.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson's plan to make the average starting salary for teachers in America $40,000 could be seen as overly simplistic. And that's because, according to Quality Counts, teacher pay varies widely by state and is a bigger issue in some parts of the country than others. Montana and Rhode Island, for example, have median teacher salaries that are above those for comparable jobs. But teachers in North Carolina and Missouri make far less than peers in similar jobs. So the solutions may be different for different states.

Sen. Hillary Clinton, of New York, has been rather vague on teacher pay issues, except to make it perfectly clear she thinks merit pay for teachers is "demeaning." Though she may not like merit pay, it is clear, from what the Quality Counts researchers found, that good teachers now have little hope of making big salary gains, which could hurt efforts to retain the best educators.

And speaking of money, former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards' plan calls for giving teachers $15,000 bonuses for teaching in high-poverty schools. But money may not be enough, as explained in the Quality Counts story, "Working Conditions Trump Pay." Teachers also want good building leadership, support from their colleagues and bosses, and classroom resources.

Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois has one of the most comprehensive plans, which touches on everything from supporting mentoring programs and common planning time to recruiting teacher-candidates for high-needs schools. But even he overlooks a common problem for states: data quality. Quality Counts revealed that only 20 states have, and can verify, their ability to track the number of highly qualified teachers overall, and the number in high-poverty schools.

Without good data collection, it will be hard to gauge the effectiveness of any new teacher programs. But try getting the words "data quality" or "data collection" in a voter-friendly, 15-second sound bite.

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No matter which party they identified with, voters in yesterday's New Hampshire primary are worried about one thing: the economy.

New Hampshire featured big come-from-behind victories for Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a Republican written off months ago, and Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York, who was essentially written off in this state after Barack Obama's resounding victory in Iowa.

With the economy weighing heavily on voters' minds, what better time for the presidential candidates to start talking more earnestly about how the quality of public schools does — or does not — affect the national economy?

The producers of the 2 Million Minutes documentary recognize the global link between education and our economic survival.

Governors, too, recognize the vital nexus between schools and their state economies. And the presidential candidates are heading into states where residents have big reasons to worry: Michigan (the next primary for Republicans) is still trying to revive itself after the recession earlier in the decade, struggling with a big budget deficit that even forced the state to tamper with teacher retirement benefits. Nevada, another early primary state, is facing a budget deficit — in part because of sluggish tax revenue — which could threaten funding to K-12 education.

In exit polls from yesterday's primary, 81 percent of Republicans are worried about the economy, with 26 percent "very worried." Democrats are even more worried.

In addition, the exit polls also revealed an important point: women with children propelled Clinton to her surprise comeback victory over Obama. This gives Sen. Clinton, at least, even more reason to talk about social issues that women traditionally care about, such as education.

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The results from yesterday's Iowa caucuses make one thing very clear: these Midwestern voters are demanding change.

So they gave their votes to Republican Mike Huckabee, a likable, though sometimes gaffe-prone, bass-playing former Arkansas governor who has made arts education his big school initiative.

And to Democrat Barack Obama, an African-American candidate who has billed himself as a force for change, who has dared to broach the subject of merit pay for teachers and who hasn't been nearly as fierce in his opposition of No Child Left Behind as some of his opponents. (Democrat Hillary Clinton made a passing mention of the law in her speech last night after finishing a disappointing third.)

But this is what isn't clear: While voters wanted a change in this nation's leadership, will there be the same demand for change in the direction of education, especially when it comes to federal involvement?

The entrance and exit polling in Iowa sponsored by media outlets shed no light on how education may have influenced votes—because the issue probably didn't. The top issues for Democrats were the economy, Iraq, and health care, in that order. Republicans said illegal immigration, followed by Iraq, the economy, and terrorism were their top issues. Education didn't make either list.

Update: The education blogsphere is full of Iowa reactions. Read takes by Alexander Russo, the Education Writers Association Education Election bloggers, Joe Williams, and ED in '08's Roy Romer.

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While the topic of education may be taking a backseat to other important issues on the presidential campaign trail, it's getting some prominent attention in candidates' television ads. Here are a couple of the latest:

Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, who recently got the endorsement of the New Hampshire affiliate of the National Education Association in this early-voting state, talks of a "new beginning" and bashes the No Child Left Behind Act as an "unfunded mandate" that's been "difficult for so many." The ad started running yesterday in Iowa and New Hampshire.

And in this one, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Republican, who nabbed the Republican endorsement of the New Hampshire-NEA, talks about giving children a "better America." The ad features a screen-shot listing "better schools" and "higher test scores" (I'm guessing he's referring to results from his time as Arkansas governor). The ad started airing today in the early-voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.

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This was no Iowa caucus. Nor was it a New Hampshire primary. But if the votes of 710 social studies teachers counted, there would be no need for such politicking. The presidential finalists would be:

Republican Fred Thompson and Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Those are the results of a "presidential primary" sponsored by Pearson, an education publishing company, at the annual meeting late last week in San Deigo of the National Council on the Social Studies. The 710 voting teachers had to pick a party, then got to vote for one candidate. The results showed that if social studies teachers—who are partly responsible for teaching the values of democracy and citizenship to students—are any gauge, the Republican primary field is wide open. Thompson, a former U.S. senator from Tennessee, got 23.2 percent of the vote. Former New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani got 20.5 percent, and rising-star Mike Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas, edged out close rival Mitt Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, with 18.9 percent of the vote to Romney's 16.3 percent.

The Democratic vote showed more of a two-candidate race. Clinton, a U.S. senator from New York, got 41.9 percent of the vote to 34 percent for U.S. Rep. Barack Obama of Illinois. The next closest was former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, with 12.3 percent of the vote.

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Democrat Hillary Clinton outlined her plan to cut the dropout rate in half yesterday at a campaign stop in South Carolina, an early-voting state in the presidential primary race with one of the lowest graduation rates in the country.

Sen. Clinton, of New York, has some good ideas (which I'll get to in a minute) and is attacking a problem that is downright devastating in particular parts of the country. She announced her plan in South Carolina, which according to our latest installment of Diplomas Count (produced by the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, which is affiliated with Education Week), had the worst graduation rate in the nation at 53.8 percent. Overall, this nation's public schools failed to graduate 1.23 million students in the 2006-07 school year, according to Diplomas Count. The statistics are even more frightening in some of the country's urban centers, such as Detroit, which had an abysmal graduation rate of 24.9 percent.

Clearly, drastic measures are called for. While it's a lofty goal to reduce the dropout rate by half, my question for Sen. Clinton is whether she has any research to suggest that her ideas will indeed make such a dramatic dent in the problem. Are her ideas really bold enough? Can they not only improve graduation rates in the districts and states that are already doing fairly well, but also in the districts struggling the most, like Detroit, or in rural South Carolina, where many districts post graduation rates below 50 percent? She's already proposed spending $10 billion on pre-kindergarten, which she incorporates into her dropout plan. But here are her new ideas, which carry an additional $1 billion price tag (in terms of grants to states), so you be the judge:

Create more early-colllege high schools that help students obtain a high school diploma and an associate's degree at the same time, and more alternative high schools;

Support the graduation rate compact the nation's governors signed that call for every state to calculate graduation rates the same way;

Provide $500 million in financial incentives to school districts for recruiting and retaining high-quality teachers. (She also makes a mention of rewarding teachers for student achievement gains—which may sound a lot like the controversial merit pay—but she attempts to allay teachers' union fears by saying any plans would be crafted in conjunction with teachers and within existing contracts);

Provide $250 million in competitve grants to low-income communities to devise local strategies for curbing the dropout rate;

And, expand home visitation programs for mothers of newborns.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 7:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the few issues in education that divides Democratic front-runners Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in this presidential campaign is merit pay.

Yesterday, Sen. Clinton criticized the idea during a campaign stop at an Iowa elementary school. While the senator from New York said she supports the less controversial idea of incentives for teachers who work in high-need areas, Clinton, who won the endorsement of the American Federation of Teachers in October, denounced the idea of merit pay as "demeaning and discouraging." (However, she does like the idea of school uniforms for students.)

Teachers' unions usually fiercely oppose the idea of merit pay, although some states, such as Texas and Minnesota, and districts, such as Denver Public Schools, have tried it with mixed success. Both the AFT and the National Education Association are fighting off any merit-pay ideas that may crop up during the No Child Left Behind reauthorization.

It was a politically daring Sen. Obama of Illinois who told the NEA at its July national convention that merit pay was worth pursuing. However, he softened the idea a bit by pledging to work with teachers to craft such a system and to base merit pay not just on an "arbitrary test score."

Obama is talking about merit pay in the larger context of a very tough issue: closing the achievement gap among minority and non-minority students. But the issue of merit pay has a group of formidable foes, so Clinton can continue to harp on this difference between her and one of her chief opponents, and shore up her support among public school teachers and union backers.

Update: Read more about Obama's education plan, and his ideas on teacher compensation, in my newer blog item here.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 8: