Where do the frontrunners
stand on education?
Presidential
race head into the homestretch
Al Gore:As vice president and as a member of Congress, Gore supported measures to reduce class sizes, improve standards and accountability, and bring technology into classrooms. He worked to increase access to higher education and lifetime-learning opportunities, and he advocated proposals to make schools safer and drug-free.
Gore would make improved education a top national priority for national leadership and national investment.
Gore has a plan to invest $115 billion in public schools
over the next 10 years, while also demanding more from
them. Gore’s plan would raise standards and
accountability from all teachers, students and schools.
He would require states and school districts to identify
failing schools and develop and implement aggressive
plans to turn those schools around. Schools that do not
improve would be shut down and reopened under new
leadership with a rigorous peer evaluation of every
teacher.
The plan also increases public-school choice, with funds
to triple the number of charter schools, and requires
schools to issue performance-report cards to help parents
select the school best-suited to their child’s
needs.
He would tie some state funding to student achievement
with strong rewards for success and penalties for
failure.
He would require rigorous testing for all new teachers,
periodic peer reviews of licensed teachers and faster,
fair ways to identify, improve and, where necessary,
remove failing teachers.
He would encourage states to develop
high-school-completion exams to ensure that every student
leaves school with the skills necessary to succeed, and
voluntary national tests in 4th grade reading and 8th
grade math to make certain every student masters the
basics.
He would also increase efforts to keep kids in school and
close the gap between disadvantaged students and their
peers.
Gore’s plan aims to make high-quality, voluntary
preschool available to every 4-year-old and an increasing
number of 3-year-olds. It would expand funding for Head
Start and Early Head Start and help families pay for high
quality child-care.
He would also provide funding to help raise teacher
salaries in schools that commit to improve teacher
quality.
Gore would help parents and students save tax-free for
college and make up to $10,000 of tuition tax-deductible.
George Bush:Bush wants to reform the nation’s public schools, as he has those in Texas.
He would aim to close the achievement gap, set high standards, promote character education and ensure school safety.
He wants to free states from federal regulation, but hold them accountable for results. He would measure school performance annually, and parents would be provided with information and choices.
To achieve equality between disadvantaged students and their peers he would offer enhanced Pell grants (an additional $1,000) to low-income college students who take rigorous math and science courses in high school.
He would also establish a $1 billion math and science partnership fund for states, colleges and universities to strengthen K-12 math and science education. And he would establish a $3 billion Education Technology Fund to boost achievement.
He would require schools have clear, measurable goals focused on basic skills and essential knowledge. He would require regular testing to ensure the goals are met. These tests should be developed by the states.
He would establish a $500 million fund to reward states and schools that improve student performance, but would cut back federal funding to states that permit performance to decline.
Failing schools would be given a finite period to change; if they didn’t, low-income parents could transfer their children to another public school or use their share of federal funds to pay for another option, such as tutoring or a charter school.
He would invest $3 billion to double the number of charter schools.
He would restore local control by combining more than 60 federal programs into five flexible categories, and by having states establish accountability systems to test every student in reading and math. And he would publish school-by-school report cards on the Internet to arm parents with information.
He would ensure that every child can read by 3rd grade by investing $5 billion over five years in a “Reading First” program. And he would reform Head Start by making school readiness its top priority.
He would increase funding for special education.
He would improve enforcement of juvenile gun laws. Children in unsafe schools could transfer to safer ones.