Stances on Education

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-24-2008
Stances on Education
12
Tue, 10-14-2008 - 5:40pm

As far as I've seen, the campaigns have not talked much about their education plans (at least not in a whole lot of depth). I thought I would share that Obama and McCain's advisers are going to debate education on October 21st 4 to 6 p.m. PDT, on a live webcast by Education Week:
https://event.on24.com/eventRegistration/EventLobbyServlet?target=registration.jsp&eventid=122206&sessionid=1&key=F133A5219746027376C0662466473BDD&sourcepage=register.

In the meantime, here is a bit on the candidates viewpoints on education.

http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Issues/19ce50b5-daa8-4795-b92d-92bd0d985bca.htm
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/education/

Thoughts?

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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-16-2004
Tue, 10-14-2008 - 10:58pm

Thanks for the info on the web debate.

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-30-2005
Tue, 10-14-2008 - 11:54pm
I've never posted on this board before but I just had to say that everything you said made a ton of sense and is very well reasoned and well expressed, juliana3.

Elizabeth
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Elizabeth
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Avatar for loudlady
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-29-2003
Wed, 10-15-2008 - 1:26am

Thank you for posting the links. I thought I understood Sen. McCain's position on school vouchers from bills he had supported in the Senate and speeches he made in the past. Even the introductory page of his education plan, the one you linked, seems to indicate that he supports the widespread use of vouchers.

However, looking further into his plan for schools, the voucher program he supports is quite limited:

"John McCain Will Make Real The Promise Of NCLB By Giving Parents Greater Choice. Choice is the best way to protect children against a failing bureaucracy. But parents must have more control over the money.

John McCain Will Expand The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. In our nation's capital, we have seen the dramatic benefits of giving parents control of money and choices. The Opportunity Scholarship program serves more than 1,900 students from families with an average income of $23,000 a year. More than 7,000 more families have applied for that program. The budget for the Opportunity Scholarships is currently $13 million. John McCain believes that this extremely successful program should expand to at least $20 million benefiting nearly a thousand more families."

http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/News/PressReleases/read.aspx?guid=2ca6f926-4564-4301-87cd-a5f35e68c0d4

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-19-2003
Wed, 10-15-2008 - 7:15am
Welcome!
iVillage Member
Registered: 05-06-2007
Wed, 10-15-2008 - 9:25am

Here's a good comparison chart on where McCain and Obama stand on education.


http://www-personal.umich.edu/~lindsecy/September26.html


Btw, I love that site for comparing

Chrissy
mom to Aidan 8/21/03
Grayson Blaine 12/30/07

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-16-2004
Sat, 10-18-2008 - 9:55am

bump


iVillage Member
Registered: 09-08-2006
Sat, 10-18-2008 - 10:51am

I don't agree with the notion of vouchers which was the brain child of Milton Friedman the

 

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-23-2008
Sat, 10-18-2008 - 1:49pm

As a former high school teacher - I TOTALLY agree with what you are saying. Assignment by choice (what we call it in NC) has just about wrecked the Charlotte-Mecklenberg school system. The voucher system is also dead wrong IMO because it takes money out of the public schools which is the last thing we should be doing if we want to make them better. Also, I totally agree that it's wrong for tax money to go toward parochial schools, etc. On the point of merit pay for teachers - I think there are definitely flaws. The "base" population of my school was about 50%-50% really wealthy kids and really poor kids. The rest of the student population came from the "magnet" program which draws kids from the suburbs to inner city schools because of special programs (we were an IB school).

Anyway - there were two distinct populations of students and based on which courses I taught, my scores would be sky high (= I am a great teacher) or super low (=I am a bad teacher). The scores from the honors and AP/IB courses I taught were often very high. Although I do think that I was a very good teacher, I can't take all the credit for that. These kids were more motivated, had better parent involvement, and (THE BIGGIE) actually came to school and were prepared almost every day. Not to mention that they actually did their homework! On the flip side, my standard level classes had issues I can't even begin to enumerate. I'll give you a few examples, but there are MANY more. For one, I had to teach high school junior and seniors who can't multiply and divide how to balance chemical equations and solve Newton's equations of motion. Do you have any idea how daunting of a task that is. They can't even solve F=m*a for a. The just had to memorize all three iterations of this equation F=m*a, m=F/a, and a=F/m. I wish I were kidding. These are JUNIORS AND SENIORS in high school for heaven's sake. Not only were they woefully ill prepared mathematically, they also had staggering absentee issues. I had some students miss 10+ days and we were on block scheduling! How can you learn anything if you're not in school? These kids NEVER did their homework - usually they would copy it from someone - which was obvious, but often hard to "prove" and were rarely prepared for class. I had kids walk in the door with nothing but the clothes on their back and sit down for class. No paper, no pencil, no book, nothing. Oh, they probably had their cell phone. Anyway, the teachers I worked with in designing this class actually had some brilliant ideas and I think we did a lot for these kids by the end of the year, but their test grades were still awful. The kids at our school in our "special program" for this course did better than most other schools teaching this course, but that is not what we were "assessed" on. Luckily I had my honors grades so I didn't look like a complete failure as a teacher!

Paying teachers based on student performance is just nutty! I poured WAY more time, effort, and emotion into teaching the low performing kids than the honors kids but got very little return on my investment in terms of test scores. Merit based pay give teachers NO incentive to teach underperforming student. That is the huge flaw.





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iVillage Member
Registered: 10-08-2008
Sat, 10-18-2008 - 1:54pm

Paying teachers based on student performance is just nutty! I poured WAY more time, effort, and emotion into teaching the low performing kids than the honors kids but got very little return on my investment in terms of test scores. Merit based pay give teachers NO incentive to teach underperforming student. That is the huge flaw.


Excellent point and one I agree with.

 

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-25-2008
Sat, 10-18-2008 - 3:29pm

>>I always chose to teach in low socioeconomic schools because I felt I could be of more service there.

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