In typical Republican fashion, rather than fixing problems, they break them further. Diverting funds from public schools in the form of vouchers, dismantles a system that we should be striving to make the best in the world.

I don’t agree that we have to test kids more to improve schools. Too much testing has killed curricula and forced teachers looking for federal funding to teach to the test. All sorts of important pieces of curricula have been cut so that more time can be spent getting ready for tests.

I have a niece who spent an hour a week doing “bubbling in” exercises in Texas (spending class time learning how to color in a choice on a multiple choice test).

High stakes testing is not the answer.

Excellent program topic.

What about college undergraduates?

How much will the student loan market be effected by an Obama presidency or by a McCain presidency?

Federal loans and (especially) private student loans?

What is the future of the private student industry? Lehman Bros has passed its private student loan company (CampusDoor) off to AES and they will be making their credit criteria stricter. Bank Of America altogether stopped making private student loans. Wachovia no longer makes undergraduate loans – only graduate loans.

Is Andrew Cuomo helping students or making it harder to get a private student loan and through school?

I have no idea if I’m going to get a loan for the spring semester and be able to stay in school full-time.

Is the premise valid? Do we want the entire population to be better educated, and is there evidence of anyone’s interest being harmed by a better educational system?

Could the guests address the skill set and education level of young Americans across the population versus the jobs available now and at a few time-points in their lives.

I think that the possible election of Obama would bring more funding to education. My underlying assumption is that the playing field is not level. I believe what some call the lack of “personal responsibility,” can be understood in terms of Maslow’s hierarch of needs. Thank you

Both candidates are making a big deal about US schools being improved so that they can compete with schools in other countries and their graduates can compete better in a global job market.

What about preparing students to be active members of our society with a sense of history and civic duty with enough literacy to make educated votes in national elections.

I’d rather put money into basic literacy and civics than job training for jobs that will be gone by the time they graduate.

Please let us know where both candidates stand on homeschooling. I’m a liberal democrat and a homeschooler. I’m opposed to more regulation of homeschooling — homeschooling is not broken and doesn’t need to be fixed. The time, money, and energy should be spent on the public schools.

Unfortunately, my own experience, as a parent, of No Child Left Behind is that it is really “No Child Left Behind Unless That Child Doesn’t Already Fit the Mold.” My children both went through the West Des Moines, IA school system, touted to be one of the best in the country. My second child didn’t fit the mold, so her needs were not met appropriately, and the help I sought from the schools was not forthcoming. Even a member of the administration admitted they had failed her. So sad, too bad. I hope this concept is improved upon.

I maintain that what we do with schools is only part of the answer. The bigger failing in recent times is failure of parents and community to fully support their school systems. By attending school meetings, knowing their children’s teachers, by pressing learning at home and in school, parents can show that they value education and expect respect and proper behavior in school. As long as society expects all from the school with no participation as parents and caretakers, our schools will continue to fall short of national desire. And this is nowhere more true than in lower economic communities, communities where there are racial or ethnic tensions. Schools could be a place for our society to come together for a worthy common goal. Divisive arguments about vouchers and school choice leave few choices for those who most need them.

Senator McCain has been clear he wants to/must run from his party and their history by calling himself and Gov. Palin mavericks and agents of change. His/their Education plans look like so much more of the same…talking tough in speeches but in the classroom his plans fall flat and change nothing as they pull valuable resources out of schools with vouchers.

Where do vouchers leave disabled kids? Segregated, that’s where. Private schools are not required by law to accept anyone. Therefore, inclusion of special needs kids would not exist except in the public schools, which would be the last resort. Didn’t Sarah Palin promise parents of special needs kids that she would now be their “advocate?” Is she advocating for segregation?

What about size of classrooms? You may have a VERY skilled and gifted teacher who is without resources and overwhelmed by a room of 30 children. How will this be addressed so that skilled teachers can succeed in reaching their students?

Wow Tom, hit her with Arizona. She did not answer the question. Ask it again.

I have heard nothing regarding the parents’ responsibility. My daughter is in college to become an early education teacher. Our community school (Redcliffe Elementary, Beech Island, SC) has a 70% poverty rate. I am on the PTO for this school as I have two young children who attend the elementary school. My son (5th grade) came home with test papers. He accidentally got someone else’s along with his. My son made a 100 on his Social Studies test because he listens in class and I help him in the evenings. The other child’s paper was a 60 something. It was obvious this child’s parent did nothing to prepare this child for this test. Most of the questions were common sense questions that had answers that just made sense to the question.

I see at the PTO meetings and parent workshops the participation by the parents. The children that are doing well have parents there. The others don’t We will remain a 70% poverty area because they will continually repeat the cycle because the parents won’t participate in their education in order for them to rise above poverty.

The government can dump all of the money it wants into the system but until parents are made to participate and value education no amount of money will change anything in our education system.

There was a time when the Federal goverment was supporting research and development of innovative educational approaches. Sesame Street and the Children’s Television Workshop was one result. Various forms of distance learning was another. Computer-based curriculum was a third.

Other federal priorities such as defense have also used these and other innovations (simulation, particularly) to reconceive the very nature of educational activity.

It is a shame that neither candidate has any apparent interest in reinvigorating the federal role in research and development that could, and probably would, lead to truly 21st-century approaches. Both candidates, with one tiny exception, want to do little more than tinker with the present approaches — a little more of this, a little less of that.

The exception is that John McCain spoke, once, of investing in development of “virtual schools.” This is one promising phenomenon that is currently working on a small scale and might turn out to be important. There are others.

Palin in her own state cut funding for special needs education. How are we to believe that this admin. would actually be invested in education?

As a teacher, I feel that one issue not being addressed is the parent-child-teacher relationship. It may be old-fashioned, but teachers are an authority figure just like doctors, police officers, and others entrusted with a public service job. When parents mistrust their children’s teachers and have too much influence over the classroom, teachers end up spending more time trying to keep the parents happy and less time doing what they are trained to do.

It worries me that both candidates, but especially McCain would like to give parents and students more choices about where to attend school. I’d rather spend my time creating a dynamic educational environment that speaks to the learning needs of all my students, than worrying about whether or not a parent thinks I’m doing a good job.

Parents and teachers should be working together to do what’s best for the child, and instead too often are at odds with each other, with the student losing out. A parent may be the expert on their child, but a teacher is the expert on education.

Why do we not hear anything about improving the administrators in education? It seems to me that, particularly in listening to Senator McCain’s surrogate and his supporters, the administrators in education are very much like the hands-off attitude given to management in the economic world. We have just seen the result of this policy.

Choice: who wouldn’t want it? The question is by itself ridiculous… The question should be choice, what does it mean? What is the choice offered?

This topic of McCain or Republicans caring about education makes me so damn MAD!! It’s this Republican group that has made every effort to CUT education funding over and over and over again. Parents of elementary school-age kids are receiving longer and longer lists of supplies that they have to purchase because the school has nothing to spend. Schools can’t afford TEXTBOOKS for goodness sakes!

I worked with high school kids in LA whose schools didn’t even have the money to pay for repairing non-functional bathrooms. These kids had to go home or to a local MacDonald’s if they needed to go to the bathroom! Can you begin to imagine what the teachers have at their disposal for teaching, or even what their paychecks are like in these situations?

The whole idea of teachers being the root cause of poor education is wrong, and is a way to find a convenient scapegoat that makes everyone look in the other direction. The fact is that LOCAL TAXES pay for public schooling, and there are PLENTY of poor towns and cities that are struggling to make ends meet, while well-to-do towns and cities thrive with the best of everything. Kids that are coming from low-income households are also dealing with other significant issues such as health care, parental presence and more.

What parent that has to work 2 or more jobs has the time and energy to work with their kids on homework?

They are not advocating anything except punishment and exclusionary tactics.

McCain/Palin’s support for school vouchers is alarming on civic grounds because public schooling is the bedrock of democracy. It’s also alarming because every school voucher experiment shows that vouchers don’t improve student achievement or school quality. Clearly, what McCain/Palin support is defunding and privatizing public education. Like the tax cuts for the wealthy they support, this may be good for highly advantaged families, but it leaves middle-class and other children — and the public’s interest in education — in the lurch. McCain/Palin care more about failed ideology than about making sure all our kids are well educated. Let’s not follow them down that dangerous path.

In evaluating candidates, I would argue that their behaviors and attitudes are at least as important as their stated policies. While there may be some merit in John McCain’s policies, I wonder whether a candidate who claims that Alaska’s proximity to Russia automatically imparts foreign policy expertise to Alaska’s governor can really value education. Surely, it requires a disdain for the intellect of the electorate to even make such a claim!

Further, I had the misfortune to hear Phyllis Schafly, apparently one of the principal architects of the Republican platform, dismiss Mr. Obama as “elitist” because he attended expensive schools. Is this really a party that values education?

I always find it interesting to hear discussions on talk shows about how to solve the K-12 education woes in the US. We hear the expert opinions (informed or not) of politicians, administrators, journalists, parents, college professors, but rarely do we ever hear from the real experts–teachers.

In the US, teachers are ridiculed by politicians and pundits (ever hear of the phrase, “those who can, do; those who cannot do, teach”?), parents demand that their children be coddled in the classroom (parents actually contacting teachers to request extra credit for their child and providing every conceivable excuse for bad behavior in the classroom and laziness), and administrators do not support teachers by enforcing discipline of students.

Why are we so surprised that US students are so far behind students in other industrialized countries, when we do not value self-discipline and education? Why are we so surprised that kids do not understand the concept that education is an active process, not a passive process, when our society places such a high value on the passive act of being entertained? Why are we shocked by the lack of civic awareness and responsibility of teenagers when their parents don’t even know who their congressional reps are and feel entitled to something for nothing just because they are American?

We must re-examine our values in this country if we can ever have success in remaking our education system.

Are we gonna end up in a better place?

Not under the guise of democracy unless we teach subjects framed by civic participation. There is an eerie connection between filling out a test and filling out a ballot, and thinking the latter is sufficient civic participation will not lead to a good place.

Also, everyone wants better education and to be able to fund it. Which candidate is willing to talk about cutting the military budget and corporate welfare in order to get there?

As stated above (and I am a so-called middle class white Republican) I fault the parents for most of the cost. We live in a 70% poverty area and our PTO has to supply the school toilet paper. We have a lower class school in one sense but because of that we are entitled to special things as well. We have smart boards in many classes and other new technical items. However, the teacher can only do so much in a day.

The schools are now requiring special needs children in the mainstream classes and the teachers are being made to adapt to teaching these children (no matter how much extra time is required) as well as teach the other 30 students and make sure they all get it. Many of our parents at Redcliffe are nonworking parents and can sit outside the school for an hour or two congregating with other parents in the parking lot while they could spend that time in the school volunteering to work with the students or assist the teachers.

I work a full time job, volunteer on the PTO as much as possible, take my children to sports activities and still find time to work with them on their studies. It is not the job of the schools to raise our children. If a parent is unemployed then they should be required while unemployed to work at a school a minimum of hours during the week in order to receive benefits. Especially free lunch and other things their children get while I am at work paying for these benefits.

I am tired of sinking tax dollars into a sinking school system where the parents don’t give a darn. We live in a poverty area, but because of that we get special things and the parents still don’t give a darn. You can’t use poverty as an excuse when the resources are there, programs provided by the school for the parents are there, and the parents just won’t participate. Is that the government’s fault?

I am for the McCain Vouchers which I never thought I would be because I want my children in a learning environment where the parents will participate and the kids are willing to listen and learn.

You missed a very important point on the show. Public schools are not run by aliens from another planet or foreigners who secretly push a bureaucratic agenda to stall all education processes in the US. This is a view point that is being pushed by conservatives. They are trying to set up “public” schools as ineffective and cumbersome. This is the same smoke and mirror strategy that has been applied to government and the evils of big government. Under the conservative agenda more choice will be offered much the same idea that is the foundation of the Medicare choice program that has created so much confusion among the elderly.

Public schools are run by people who are part of our communities. The principals and teachers live with us and their kids attend the same schools. The government should encourage and fund community input and participation in the development of public schools. Folks just can’t pick and and take their kids 10-20 miles further just because their local schools are not performing.

If charter schools work better then apply the same strategies to public schools. If a school is not performing, then let’s get parents and teachers together and empower them to make changes. Demonizing principals and teachers and setting up public schools as an icon of underperformance somehow separately from the communities they serve is moronic. It plays well into the strategy of Republican education policy of divide and conquer.

I want my public school to be better and I want my government which I have elected to represent me and collect my taxes to use that money to make the school in my community work better — not fund entrepreneurs that provide choice at more cost and distance.

A student can’t pass a test to show the shools are performing if the parents won’t work with the students or schools. When you have a high rate of parents who don’t care then obviously the schools will not perform as adequately proficient. How can a school make a child learn when the parents take no interest in being involved in that process. A teacher can go to the child’s house to make sure they study their spelling words to take the test by Friday, or understand an memorize the Social Studies terms for that test or other such tests. Teachers can’t go to the students houses to do their science projects and make sure the reason they do them is to understand the content of the subject matter. How can a child pass a test if they don’t understand the content because they didn’t do their homework or projects that would have aided them in learning the material. Teachers have so much material to cover and little time to do it in. They can’t go home with your children. Maybe if some of these lazy free riders would get off of their lazy butts and go into the schools and volunteer to work with some of the struggling students then that would help some. Instead they want to complain that their kids aren’t getting a the education they deserve. Well you get out of it what you put into it. If you put nothing into it then you will get nothing out of it. Pretty simple math. Our culture does not value education, they would rather be worried about what $100 sneakers their parents are going to buy that they can’t afford instead of valuing and getting an education so they can buy their own $100 sneakers. My child should not have to sit in a class of kids who don’t study or parents don’t hold them accountable and work with them which in turns holds my child back because the teacher is constantly having to go over the same work. Get off of your welfare butts and go volunteer in the schools and then you will have reason to complain after to know and see what is exactly going on in the school.

So much talk about testing and evaluating the students and teachers, when are they going to start testing and evaluating the administrators?

Why is it that someone is not called to explain when they claim that the schools are being “dumbed down”? Does anyone have any proof?

In today’s broadcast, someone mentioned that there was a serious loss of $$$ between the tax payer and the school. Why whs this not questioned for clarification?

These things keep me awake at night… (-:

Gary

This is in response to Cheryl Champy’s comment above; You mention how your son got 100% on a test with ‘common sense’ answers and another child got 60%. Your assumption is that the parent’s failed to MAKE their child learn this information or to study. Perhaps you might consider that the child who made 60% has a learning disability you know nothing about. Perhaps you might consider this child has a developmental disability and that 60% represents a great deal of effort by his parents and himself. Perhaps you can consider that not every child is blessed with a high intellect or parents with a high intellect. Perhaps you could keep your condescending judgements to a minimum and allow for gratitude that you and your child will never know the challenges the other student and his family face.

If we want to fix the public school system and offer every child an equal education then we need to reform the way schools are funded. Instead of property tax dollars funding the local public school, which leads to unequal education based on regional incomes, all property tax dollars should go into a single education fund and get distributed evenly throughout the state. Then, if parents are still disatisfied with their local public school, they can send their child to a private school at their own expense. As long as public schools are funded by the tax base of their local neighborhood, schools will be uneven in their resources and their education. Many people in upper middle class, and wealthy neighborhoods will balk at this suggestion. Why should THEY pay for poor kids’ education? Because these poor kids grow into poor adults who are more likely to need welfare due to poor education. In the long run, it costs the American public more to support poorly educated children. These children grow up needing more public services than children with a fully funded, well rounded education.

Isn’t it ironic that we all agree on the importance of an education but when it comes time to elect a president much of this country sees someone who is well educated as an elitist rather than someone who valued getting a good education.

Why can’t we, the greatest nation on earth for nearly a century now, make PUBLIC education for all children equal to the fabulous education available to children in Alaska because of taxes from oil revenues there. (Alaska is wealthy in public services like a nation unto itself , from oil revenues, as is Saudi Arabia, and also some of the small tribal areas in the lower 48 from casino revenues.) [Let’s compare the quality of education in a public school from inner city Chicago with the quality of the same equivalent graduation class from Alaska.
Mary A. Pierce
670 W. Dowling Rd.
Dowling Michigan
269-721-8976
WVGR- Grand Rapids, Michigan

I was just curious to Know how the candidates would lower the cost of text books which our schools change every semester for a book that is just the same as the last one used the previous semester; all in the name of a new edition. Also how do we benefit from the privatization of the school loans?

As regards Charter Schools, I maintain a healthy skepticism when it comes to applying the free market model to schools. Choosing a school is hardly akin to choosing where to buy milk or gasoline. Further, one need only look at the health care system and the financial markets to see this model is highly flawed.

In response to Nancy Clardy’s last comment. I think your comments are amazing but I doubt if that would actually happen due to our selfishness and pride as humans.

School choice is a joke. Many studetns who attend “failing” schools do so because surrounding schools who are “on the bubble” with their test scores do not want to risk falling into the same “failing” category! What will the politicians suggest when a majority of schools are failing to reach 100% come 2014?

It’s good to hear an hour in which a lot of the silliness of the election was left behind unfortunately it wasn’t in this comment section but I guess that would be asking for too much.

As for the topic at hand three things stick out

1. Most importantly both candidates realize that education is very crucial to our national economy and well being and that No Child Left Behind needs to be restructured. They take different ways to get there Obama’s plan is more top down and McCain’s is more bottom up but in the end I think they want to and would accomplish the same thing.

2. The $4000 towards college for community service is a great idea; unfortunately it’s nowhere near enough though to really make a difference for someone who couldn’t afford or would have trouble affording college to begin with as Obama seems to be claiming.

3. I don’t know whether or not I like the idea of vouchers but they do seem to be going in the right direction in terms of addressing the importance of leveling the playing field. They may or may not be the key but somehow we need to make private schools available to more than just the rich.

Numerous studies have shown that performance in school is not primarily dependent on testing, teacher salaries, class size, funding per pupil, etc. The most important factors are the socio-economic status of the parents and the presence of two parents in the home of the student. These two factors are interrelated: the socio-economic class is largely dependent on the presence of two parents.
The solution to the problem then is to have two parent families. How can this be accomplished? What if the fathers of illegitimate children were forced to financially support their children. This would have two effects: The children would be better off financially and perhaps the fathers would participate in the family since they would be supporting them. Exactly what is required for better students. Problem solved!
Otherwise, the same problem is going to occur in future generations and will get worse geometrically. Today 20% of all children are born out of wedlock and 70% of minority children. This is where the problem lies.

I work at a unique charter school which has a focus in the Medical Sciences. We are unique in that we are innovative and offer choice, yet we have a good working relationship with our district. We choose to not compete in areas like teacher pay and book adoption for our academic classes. Innovation is great for education; it seems that the real problems come with the resistance that can come from within when we try to change the culture and/or infrastructure of a school in order to try to improve what we do. I agree with both, that those who are not fit to teach should find another job… but by which standard do we measure “good teaching?” We cannot offer a merit pay model until we can fairly assess what is and is not acceptable. Find a fair and standardized assessment and I will be on board.