Presidential campaigns discuss where education fits in

The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) is meeting in Washington, D.C. this week for their 2008 Legislative Conference. They held an education policy discussion this morning with the presidential campaigns. Catherine Brown from Sen. Clinton’s campaign, Phil Handy from Sen. McCain’s campaign, and Steve Robinson from Sen. Obama’s campaign each spoke on their candidate’s top issues for education.

Brown said Clinton has five key priorities for education: strengthening human capital, starting education earlier, raising expectations and standards, improving school infrastructure, and helping at-risk students. She said Clinton is critical of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), and would like to partner with states and the local level of education to provide flexibility while still sticking to the standards.

Handy said McCain believes in the principals that drove NCLB, and believes in assessment, but that assessment numbers should tell the truth and that usable data should be made available for parents and teachers. He said McCain is committed to collaboration with states and local education, and that he is a promoter of home schooling and charter schools.

Robinson said Obama also believes in the goals of NCLB for desegregating data on student achievement and identifying schools for improvement, but prefers a program to make every child a skilled graduate. He said Obama is focused on early learning, increasing research and development, expanding programs that work and using the data from them, revising standards and assessments, and that his number one priority is how to attract, prepare, develop, retain, and reward teachers.

The CCSSO also held a discussion called “Presidential Politics: Where Does Education Fit In?” with Gov. Roy Romer, Chairman of ED in ’08. Romer suggested that the future president of the United States should create a new partnership with the governors and chief school officers from all 50 states to find a way to have correct expectations and measurements for education throughout the country. He said key issues are the quality of teaching and finding a way to assess standards.

Romer said the measurements should be against the top ten nations in the world, since students will be competing with students from those nations for jobs. He said education is important to the solution of the nation’s economic problems, and is at the base of what he said are the four critical issues to the presidential campaign: national security, the economy, health care, and global warming.

Romer said that in this partnership, the state officers will be responsible for going back to their states and implementing the plans while the president will be responsible for funding the design and the administration of the programs.