Welcome to our Educational Politics Blog, brought to you by Shea Bogart, Stephanie Grossi, and Kiersten Lawler! We are all Salem State Junior Block Students writing about educational and political current events.
Todays blog will be discussing last nights Presidential debate. More specifically- we will be focusing on the issues in Education surrounding this election. There are 5 key issues within the topic of education; K-12 spending, No Child Left Behind Act/accountability, school choice, teachers and unions, and higher education.
1. K-12 Spending
Obama says: $100 billion for education saving 300,000 jobs. Central theme for his 2013 budjet proposal granting $69.8 billion for spending for the Department of Education (2.5 increase).
Romney says: "A chance for every child" 34 page educational plan- immediate cut of 5 percent of all nonsecurity discretionary spending, and an eventual reduction of federal spending to below 20 percent of gross domestic product. No exact cuts for education are specified but a believed $115 billion will be cut over the next ten years in result.
2. No Child Left Behind/accountability
Obama: Obama plans to revise the No Child Left Behind act to make sure there are more resources for low performing school to improve and emphasize standards to prepare students for their careers in the future. He plans to waiver 33 states from this act and allow them to make their own accountability plans granted they meet the criteria.
Romney: Romney wants to make it more about the information mandate rather than the school intervention. He wants to offer tutoring for the low performing schools and replace their teachers. He wants states to provide more transparency about their school results by the report cards showing scores from the state tests and the National Assessment of Education Process. To monitor the spending each school does Romney would require a detailed list of the school and district spending.
3. School Choice
Obama: Obama wants to support for charters in his budget. He plans to have no funding for the DC program.
Romney: He wants to enable low income students to use their federal funding at any school of their choice; this includes schools out of their district and private schools. He would also alter charter school rules to allow waived fees. He proposed the DC program "Opportunity Scholarship Program" which would allow 1,600 students to attend private schools of their choice free of tuition.
4. Unions
Obama- His plans are uniformly praised by unions. He uses competitive funding to encourage states and school districts to reward teachers based on student achievement. $1 billion plan to specialize in science, technology, engineering and math.
Romney: He wants to consolidate current federal "teacher-quality" programs and create an evaluation system to measure the relationship between student achievement and effective teachers. He wants to dismiss the policy of "First in Last out".
5. Higher Education
Obama: Created a tax credit for college students up to $10,000 over a four year period. He also pushed to cap payments of loans at 10% of the overall payment each month and pushed for forgiveness of the remaining balance after 10+ years of faithful payments. Obama moved to make all federal loans through the federal government and not through private banks anymore, which will save us all $60 billion over the next ten years.
Romney: Romney believes the government writes universities blank checks and he wants to end that. He embraces private sector roles on information, financing, and education itself. Romney will reverse the policy that Obama put into effect that gives more aid to the schools that have higher rates of graduates with successful jobs.
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This is Stephanie and I'm definitely leaning towards Obama. I don't think it's fair that Romney would give 1,600 random students money to go to a school where they may not even succeed in because it's not a setting they're used to! He had a good idea there but it would fall apart easily. Instead, give that money to students working hard who deserve it. Obama also hopes to put forth a "loan forgiveness" which would pay the remainder of a student loan after 10 years or so of loyal, on time payments. That's amazing for students who had to take out thousands just to attend four years of college. I also like the Obama supports the project that grants colleges more money based on the number of their graduates that hold successful jobs. It helps the college strive for higher success rates and it helps put the graduating students in a career setting MUCH quicker! I do want to read more and watch more on TV to gain a full, unbiased knowledge of the rest of the facts. However, based on these five (major) components, I'm siding with Obama.
I am Shea Bogart, and much like my fellow authors of this blog, I find myself leaning towards the views held by Obama. For this particular blog, there is not necessarily a "solution" to the problem. We have to potential candidates to run our country for the next four years, who have significantly different views upon the different and controversial ideas in our present society. In terms of education, Obamas stance is much more appealing to me as a student, and as a future teacher. He is very supportive of unions, which is important to me because within the next four years I plan on joining the teachers union and start my career. For this reason, many teachers across America are in support of Obama. In terms of the NO Child Left Behind Act, Romney wants to replace teachers jobs with providing tutors for low performace students and school districts while Obama wants to provide more recourses for these struggling students to improve. I side with Obama on this issue because as a future educator, not only do I want to focus on my students improvement, but I do not want more jobs being taken away from teachers. In general, I think Obama is a better candidate for me.
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