Domestic Policy
Domestic policy will be broken up into numerous sections as the candidates go in depth on plans for numerous topics. See also Part 1, Part 3, part 4, part 5 part 6 and part 7. Again, all of these policy statements are taken from the candidates' campaign websites.
| Hillary Clinton |
John Edwards |
Barack Obama |
| Education |
|---|
Link
Link
|
Link
Link
|
Link
|
| Early education through elementary |
|---|
- Create (expand?) Early Head Start
|
- Universal Pre-school
- Expand Smart Start
|
- Universal Pre-school
- Expand (Early) Smart Start funding fourfold
- Provide affordable childcare
|
| Middle and High School |
|---|
- Reform No Child Left Behind
|
-
Reform NCLB
- Improve testing methods
- Give states control over how to reform under performing schools
- Create a "Second Chance" program to address dropout issue
- Increase guidance councilor availability
|
-
Reform NCLB
- Increase funding
- Improve testing methods
- Support under performing schools; don't punish them
- Increase focus on math and science education and, for Limited English Proficient students, English education
- Fund schools to address dropout issue
- Expand after-school/summer learning programs
|
| College |
|---|
- Offer $3,500 tax credit to offset costs
- Increase Pell Grants to annually match against tuition costs
- $500 million in grants to improve community colleges
- Give colleges incentives to increase graduation rates
- Increase AmeriCorps education award to $10,000
- Allow FAFSA application through tax return
- To offset costs for above programs, eliminate the guaranteed student loan program.
|
- "College for Everyone" initiative
- Increase federal funding of state education programs to lower the cost of tuition
- Clarify, compared to current financial aid programs, requirements to get into his program
- Use information the government already has on applicants to remove 2/3 of the FAFSA form (no clarification on how, i.e. opt in on 1040, as part of the FAFSA form, etc.)
|
- $4,000 fully refundable, immediate (available at time of college enrollment) tax credit
- FAFSA application through tax form
|
| Teachers |
|---|
- Increase teacher and principal pay
|
- Increase teacher pay
- Form a national school focused on training teachers
- Reduce class sizes
|
- Teacher service scholarships (scholarship repaid by working in a high-need field/location)
- All schools for educators must be accredited
- Improve teacher incentives (incentives determined with input from teachers)
|
9 comments:
Interesting, great job. Looks like there's some differences to poke. Bossy will ponder.
Edwards looks better on college, but is also more vague. Hmm... I'm with Bossy on the pondering.
No program that gives money to students results in lower the cost of college.
If every student is GIVEN $1,000, every college will raise tuition by $1,000.
Meanwhile, private colleges can charge whatever they like. Harvard and Yale have huge endowments. They can afford to reduce tuition to ZERO because their endowment funds are so huge.
Cooper Union in NY City, one of the best engineering schools in the country, charges tuition of ZERO.
How can that be? Cooper Union owns the land under the Chrysler building. The rent paid to Cooper Union covers tuition for the students. As you might expect, Cooper is a tough school to get into.
As for pre-college education, well, the chief problem is ridiculous choke-hold the state bureaucrats have on the hiring process.
In most states, a person with a degree in engineering cannot get a license to teach math unless he's got foreign language credits on his college transcript.
Thus, potential math teachers -- where the country's greatest teachers shortage exists -- must have studied a subject that has no relevance to the job.
I faced this problem personally. The licensing exams for teaching in NY are relatively easy to pass. There are three in NY. Two general tests and one test in the field you intend to teach. I passed them all. But without college language credits, full certification is not possible.
In case you don't see it, this is a labor tactic to artificially reduce the supply of qualified workers. The usual remedy is to demand higher pay. But, because teachers are unionized, you can't offer higher pay to the guy with all the right skills to teach math. You have to raise the pay of every member covered by the union contract.
The result? Stalemate.
The core issue of teaching is classroom management. If you can't handle the kids, you're cooked. But there is no substitute for experience when it comes to this factor. Thus, teachers should all start as apprentices, as assistant teachers, getting their feet wet in stages. However, due to union rules, in NY City it works like this, the new teachers are hired to work in the worst schools because that's where teacher turnover is highest, and hence, demand for teachers is highest.
But teachers with some experience don't want to teach in those schools because it is unrewarding. Those who stay in teaching do their best to get themselves into decent schools and they stay there. Thus, the system is jammed due to union work rules.
Second, the certification process is silly. It's reasonable to expect teachers to pass some qualifying tests. For those who plan to teach a specific subject, like chemistry, math or foreign language, a test is an obvious necessity.
But when hiring requirements include ridiculous qualifications, the pool of applicants disappears. Hence, many career-changers find other careers than teaching to enter.
Most engineering programs omit language requirements. There's too much science and math to learn to sacrifice time to language studies. Thus, most people with engineering degrees cannot become teachers until they fulfill the language requirement.
There is no other employment situation I know of that requires someone to speak any language but English -- unless the language skill is needed to perform the job. Like translator, or working with non-English-speaking customers. YOu get the picture.
But that's not how teaching works in the US.
Anyway, the candidates look like clowns on the issue of education.
If real change is to occur, then it will take school vouchers to do it.
Parents with sufficient cash have sent their kids to private schools. Thus, parents have proved conclusively they know what's best for their kids.
But when the money spent on kids' education comes from revenue collected from taxpayers, parents are suddently too stupid to know where to send their kids to school.
Educrats fear competition in education, even though its success is proven.
Hence, instead of structuring public education to match the needs and abilities of each group of students, public education offers a generally poor product with occasional pockets of superior performance and many pockets of disastrous performance.
The ideas hatched by the candidates are meaningless. The strategy to improving schools must include vouchers and sane methods of hiring teachers.
Those two changes would solve about 90% of the problems plaguing schools.
Lastly, for some reason it has become offensive to state that some kids are not too bright. Self-esteem has become the chief goal of schooling. That's nice. But there's no shame in learning what you are good at, and what you are not good at. One's self-esteem is not in danger if one does not like math.
However, it is bad for people to think that feeling good about knowing nothing is a worthy goal.
Let me take this point by point slappz:
"If every student is GIVEN $1,000, every college will raise tuition by $1,000." - False, it may happen in some circumstances, but your idea of just giving the colleges the money counters your idea. Giving the colleges $1000 per student they currently have will raise thier income a flat amount. If you give every person access to that extra $1000, and colleges don't raise tuitions to match, colleges will increase enrollment and make significantly more than $1000 per student.
Teacher certification is something that should be looked into, but as you said, it is currently controlled on a state by state level. I do have to say though, although I don't know that language credits are relevant to teaching math, teaching is more than just knowing the subject. I know a lot about programming, but I couldn't teach a course on it. Language courses do teach you how to think about the words you use, which is an aid to communication, which is key to being able to teach a subject. But I don't believe this is the actual reason for this requirement. My guess is that in order to teach at a certain level, you generally need a teaching degree, which is usually classified as a liberal arts degree, which requires a couple credits in a language in most colleges.
"The core issue of teaching is classroom management. If you can't handle the kids, you're cooked. But there is no substitute for experience when it comes to this factor. Thus, teachers should all start as apprentices, as assistant teachers, getting their feet wet in stages." I agree, this is actually very similar to what Obama has proposed as a requirement to get a teacher service schollarship.
"Most engineering programs omit language requirements. There's too much science and math to learn to sacrifice time to language studies. Thus, most people with engineering degrees cannot become teachers until they fulfill the language requirement." This is because most engineering degrees are teaching students to work in the field, not teach it. Edwards addresses this, potentially, with his "West Point for teachers".
Your solution, school vouchers for private schools, has a number of holes. First, the vouchers cannot afford to pay for full tuition to all but the lowest quality private school. This means that those people who can't afford to pay that extra amount are going to be facing even greater education challenges. The reason the challenges will be even greater is that: 1) the funding for public schools will largely have disappeared to fund the voucher program and 2)quality teachers will have been swallowed up by private schools to handle the extra volume. But the vouchers do help the upper echelons of society because this will effectively count as extra money in their pocket since they were already sending their kids to these private schools.
Private schools do have better success rates than public schools, but this doesn't mean you should ignore the people who can't afford to go to them. You need to improve the public school system and the funding for it so it can meet a success level.
"Lastly, for some reason it has become offensive to state that some kids are not too bright. Self-esteem has become the chief goal of schooling. That's nice. But there's no shame in learning what you are good at, and what you are not good at. One's self-esteem is not in danger if one does not like math.
However, it is bad for people to think that feeling good about knowing nothing is a worthy goal."
I couldn't agree with you more, but this doesn't mean you should discriminate and not even try to help those who have a hard time with these subjects.
john j, you wrote:
"If you give every person access to that extra $1000, and colleges don't raise tuitions to match, colleges will increase enrollment and make significantly more than $1000 per student."
Not true. Here's how it plays in NY City and other cities in the state.
Here in NYC is a school called Interboro College. It offers programs in becoming court reporters, legal secretaries and several other similar areas.
The school and others like it aim to attract students who were terrible high school students, even droputs. By state authority Interboro and others can accept students who are "Able To Benefit." a subjective quality. That means these schools can accept high school drop-outs and put them in a program that gives them training as well as a high-school equivalency degree.
The tuition is set like this. There are two tuition programs available to NY students: Pell Grants and TAP -- the Tuition Assistance Program. Both give free money to students. No need for repayment.
Amazingly, the tuition is set at exactly the sum those two programs provide to students. In other words, students don't pay a dime of their own money for tuition.
The idea is okay. These schools attract kids and young adults who are ready to give school another shot. Graduation rates may be low, but they pick up where the high schools failed.
However, the risk of corruption is high. The student aid departments will approve everyone for the Pell and TAP money.
As for teaching, if you were interested in teaching programming, you would have no trouble adjusting to the requirements of the classroom. But this would happen only if you were truly interested, even if the interest were only temporary.
But knowledge of German, French or Spanish would add nothing to your ability to function in the classroom.
If you wre asked to teach a programming class to company employees, no organizer would ask if you had studied any foreign languages in college.
Hence, the requirement for public school math teachers to have foreign language college credits is an obvious ruse to restrict the supply of labor.
YOu wrote:
"This is because most engineering degrees are teaching students to work in the field, not teach it. Edwards addresses this, potentially, with his "West Point for teachers"."
Based on Edwards' statement, it is clear he is a fool. A vast pool of teaching talent exists. Career-changers. But this existing pool cannot be accessed due to the stupidity of arbitrary certification rules.
Hence, Edwards the dunce wants to spend more public money to do something that has already been done. However, suggesting a military sensibility is appropriate.
Most people who serve in the US military do so for enlistment periods lasting two to six years, depending on their choice of military occupational specialty.
The country would do well to acknowledge that about half of all teachers stay in the job less than five years. However, for some bizarre reason, turnover is considered some kind of failure on the part of either the employee or employer.
Public school systems should overcome their belief that once a teacher joins the union he's there for life. It's basically a five-year job. Like most work, people do their jobs for several years before moving to a new job.
The idea of teaching trigonometry for 25 years is horrifying.
You wrote:
"Your solution, school vouchers for private schools, has a number of holes. First, the vouchers cannot afford to pay for full tuition to all but the lowest quality private school."
Says who? Catholic schools in NY City get by on tuition of about $4,000 or less per student, and some get discounts.
Meanwhile, NY City spends over $15,000 per student. Hence, a voucher has a theoretical ceiling of $15,000. A private school can function with $15,000 per student.
However, the Charter Schools that have opened in NYC are succeeding with less.
Moreover, there are about 1.4 million students in NY City. About 1.1 million are in the public school system and about 300k attend private school.
The total number of students in school in NY City will not change if there are more private schools and fewer public schools.
However, due to the better financial management of private schools, it is a certainty that a better-run school system would hire MORE teachers in total. Currently, thousands of public-school teachers have sidestepped out of classrooms into positions that are not administrative, but still outside the regular classroom. It's a scam. But this scam does not exist in private schools where accountability exists.
You wrote:
"Private schools do have better success rates than public schools, but this doesn't mean you should ignore the people who can't afford to go to them. You need to improve the public school system and the funding for it so it can meet a success level."
YOu have misread my intentions and the results of competition in public schools.
No one is at risk of being ignored in my scneario. However, public schools today ignore vast percentages of students due to high teacher turnover and grouping students in counterproductive ways.
It is simply a disaster to allow disruptive kids to remain in classrooms with students who are at least willing to sit through class. But teaching rules keep disruptive kids in classrooms. It's bizarre.
Those kids need an effective setting as much, if not more, than more studious kids. But they can't be allowed to ruin the learning environment for others. Yet schools rules ensure they will.
Private schools can simply throw a kid out. Of course their parents actually care and will get involved, unlike huge numbers of faux-parents of many problematic kids.
The kids need the right setting. If it's not a classroom, then it's not.
Ok, your tuition argument had no negatives to the $1000 tax credit proposal. The school example you gave was a very specialized school, designed specifically to aid "Able to benefit" students - in my opinion a worthwhile task. They set tuition to the level of Pell grants they are able to receive for the students, no more. It isn't a problem that they don't set tuition to less because these grants are designed specifically to pay for college, not to pay you to go to college. Even if this school does raise tuition, which it may not since, except in Sen. Clinton's plan, Pell grants aren't being raised, the effective cost to the student remains at $0, an entire 0% increase. Meanwhile the quality of the school may increase with the increased revenue, leading to a net gain for all involved.
This isn't guaranteed to be the case everywhere, but most schools would rather have increased enrollment (with a slight increase in tuition, but that happens every year) than risk losing enrollment by raising tuition too much. I don't expect to see college costs for students drop by exactly the tax credit offered, but I would expect them to drop. Because colleges are already so competitive for students, this is one place free market economics will work.
"The country would do well to acknowledge that about half of all teachers stay in the job less than five years." Can you back that figure up? I don't know about in public schools, but in my personal experience in private school (the cheapest Catholic school in the mid-west), the same teachers that I knew in kindergarten were still teaching when I graduated (granted, some did move on to other schools or higher positions).
I'm willing to accept that that figure could be true in teachers fresh out of college (standard winnowing) or in difficult school districts (where it is in part a failure, more often than not, usually here in the city school district on the part of the district).
"Catholic schools in NY City get by on tuition of about $4,000 or less per student, and some get discounts" Plus tax exempt status, plus money from the Archdiocese, and if they have one, plus money from a local congregation and other fund raising. Not to mention that this figure is significantly deflated from the median of NY private schools: "Schools operating under the auspices of the archdioceses can cost anywhere from $3,000 to $10,000 annually, while order-sponsored schools are generally more expensive, Mr. Lyness said. Loyola, affiliated with the Jesuits, costs about $21,000 a year.."
"Meanwhile, NY City spends over $15,000 per student. Hence, a voucher has a theoretical ceiling of $15,000. A private school can function with $15,000 per student." Just going on 2000 figures (see spreadsheet linked in references)(the most recent I could find online) you are off by double. Per pupil spending in NYC, total was $10.6 billion for 1.6 million students, or roughly $6,500. Roughly equal to what the Catholic school gets, when you include everything.
"certainty that a better-run school system would hire MORE teachers in total" pending desire by the schools. Most of the private schools limit the number of students they will accept in any given year so they can limit the class size. Like I said before, this will take the money away from the public school system and give it, largely, to people who don't need it.
As far as accountability goes, yes, public schools need to be better audited. This is a major issue in the large city school district here. But at least the government does have oversight of these schools, it just needs to use it. There is no such oversight of private school funds.
Let me correct this quote for you "public schools today ignore vast percentages of students due to [severe underfunding and large class sizes leading to] high teacher turnover, and grouping students in counterproductive ways." Yet you want to cut the funding for these schools and send the money to people who already, for the most part, can afford to send their kids somewhere else.
What your last few paragraphs are saying is we should just throw disruptive students out on the street and hope they fend for themselves? A large part of the disruption problem is caused by having class sizes too large for a teacher to control. If you more effectively use money, and add more to the system, you can afford to hire more teachers to can make class sizes smaller.
This is an awesome chart - thanks so much for doing this. (And thanks to your wife for nudging me on over here.)
PS having just read your exchange with slappz, I think you're absolutely brilliant.
Vouchers scare the bejeezus out of me.
Post a Comment