BlogHer - McCain's education plan: interesting ideas and tired rhetoric - Comments

www.statedemocracy.org

Nicholaskathy — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 05:54:58 -0500

"LobbyDelegtes.com is a great tool, I have contacted all my State Delegates for free through email, I have come accross another tool from the same company www.statedemocracy.org its also free and I can contact my lawmakers, apply for an absentee ballot & voter registration and on election day I can locate my polling places. Great tool.... use it"

Destroying public education

Liz Henry — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 23:18:40 -0500

Megan, I agree. I think the aim of Republicans has been exactly that - to destroy the public education system and privatize the whole thing. We'd end up with corporate sponsored charter schools everywhere.

-----------------
Liz Henry
lizzard@bookmaniac.net
Contributing Editor, World and Latin America

Susan, Low perfoming

Doris — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 16:01:13 -0500

Susan,

Low perfoming schools will be closed if they don't bring their rating up eventually. (and they have several chances) The problem with this is just as you said, instead of busing students, spend the money, fix the school.

We have to remember that when we give a "performance" test we should not expect all students to perform at the same level. If I test all third graders across the United States at the end of the school year, I should see that they all grew one year educationally, I could not expect them all to be at the same place because they don't start at the same place. If that is what we want our educational system to be then we should use cookie cutter education. "One size fits all" doesn't work.

Doris

The Leaky Cauldron
- a great stop for all things Harry Potter

Reading and Writing and Chocolate - my thoughts on education

Fit, Forty and Fabulous, the natural way! - My fitness blog for women nearing forties who want to stay fit naturally.

Questions

lilmommythatcould — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 15:21:12 -0500

I am led to believe that as students are being funneled into higher income schools, these schools will be compensated, leaving less money for those schools that are failing. Is this true?

Yes it is a nice idea to allow students to leave their home schools to go to a better school, but here is a novel idea why don't we start by fixing those "broken"schools.

Simple minded I guess.

~Susan

http://lilmomthatcould.com/

You mean he really is McSame?

Nordette — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 15:13:45 -0500

Leslie, thank you for analyzing the McCain plan for education. When I saw your title I focused on the word "tired" and recalled that some McCain opponents call him McSame.

It's not surprising that his education plan offers few fresh ideas. I get the impression that while it's possible that McCain is brighter than Bush, he's been pulled from both ends to conform and lacks the backbone and maybe knowledge as well to come up with his own course of action on the problems we face. I wonder if he's really passionate about leading this nation or was he pushed in because Republicans scrambled to find someone the public might support this election.

You know, the governor in my state, Louisiana, Gov. Bobby Jindal (whose name, btw, has ben tossed around as McCain's running mate) just signed off on school vouchers for private schools here in New Orleans, riding concern about how screwed up the schools are in Katrina's wake. I'm watching for the fall out. Will it harm the cause of improving public schools? Will we hear complaints that parochial schools are indoctrinating children into Christianity? I think it may be another case of a conservative politician pushing through something his party wants to do anyway under the cloak of "We're in a crisis!" and licensed to act on desperation.

Your post shows your concern for our educational system. Again thank you for making the information more accessible to the rest of us.

Nordette is a Contributing Editor with BlogHer.com whose personal blog is hosted on another site at this link.

Recent BlogHer post by Nordette: The Season of Our Discontent or Life with the "N" Word

Thank you for posting your

megamanXplosion — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 14:45:02 -0500

Thank you for posting your thoughts, Leslie. I agree with most of your post. I just want to point out that his plans concern not education but religion.

You rightly seen the connection with school vouchers. School choice allows the extremely religious to band together to drop public school enrollment, shifting the locale to religious education. Greater principal spending discretion allows the extremely religious to politically pressure them to reduce funding for certain sciences they dislike. His teacher certification idea would destroy the credibility of public schools, giving incentives to people to switch mostly-religious private schools.

Remember when McCain said he wanted the constitution changed to reflect his Christian beliefs? That is his plan for our schools and children. McCain is a very dangerous fellow...

sigh

Doris — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 11:08:00 -0500

Thanks for the excellent information.

I could discuss this topic all day, and it upsets me beyond belief that in a day when so many people see that there is something wrong with our education system, he's not considering more to change it.

I wish McCain had clarified a bit what he means by "ability" to teach.
I do believe that many teachers have a calling to teach--and have some
natural talent for it. That said, these talents are best honed through
the master teacher and mentoring programs in place in teacher
certification programs across the country. You can't throw a Nobel
Laureate into a high school context--where she might be teaching 180 or
200 students a day--and expert her to succeed just because she's
bright. There is a skill set that comes with teaching, and it needs to
be learned from experts--otherwise these new teachers will burn out,
and harm student learning in the process.

I've watched so many brilliant people try to teach. I also wish he'd have explained this comment more. I was sitting with some teacher friends watching his speech to the NAACP when he made a comment about letting people with PhD's teach in public schools. I think we've all sat in a class with a brilliant, wonderful person who just could not take the knowledge in their heads and put it in the minds of a child. Those certification classes teach us about learning styles and the importance of hitting all of them, about child physchology and making sure that a child's education is focused on Bloom's Taxonomy, we learn how to teach in those classes. Yes, some people naturally "get" that. Many don't. I pity the students in classes who have brilliant teachers who can't teach.

The National School Boards Association blog points out that McCain hasn't said much about higher education.

I wish he'd hit on this more. My oldest is about to go off to his Sophomore year at a large Univeristy here in Texas. The cost went up 15%, gas has gone up and we're not sure how to do all this without student loans. I want my son to go to the University he's dreamed of, worked hard in high school to make the grades to get there, but I still have two behind him to go and elderly parents needing our help my income did not go up at all to cover the costs. I want to hear ideas on how to solve some of these real world issues.

Hoo boy. I'm not even sure where to begin. Obviously, all presidential
candidates (and presidents!) have educational advisers who help them
construct their policies. But by McCain's own admission he is digitally "illiterate" and does not use the Internet himself.

Yeah, well sorry this just doesn't cut it as far as I'm concerned. First, he's relying on the ideas of people who have been out of a classroom for years (possibly decades) and the BEST thing to hit the classroom since the Whiteboard he knows nothing about. I admire his honesty to admit his ignorance, but you must educate yourself if you plan to run our country.

I could write on this subject all day long. I wish, one canidate would pull current teachers into a cabinet meeting and let us talk about what our kids need. We need more job training in high schools for students not on the university track, we need to allow the schools to have more control of how they spend the money they get because each school has it's own needs, and give schools more money now or spend it later on welfare and prisons, we need to allow kids to learn and explore the world, not learn to take a test and we need to remember that education is about exploration and finding one's way in the world, it is not about bubbling in a scantron.

Doris

The Leaky Cauldron
- greatest Harry Potter resource out there

Reading and Writing and Chocolate -my thoughts on education

Fit, Forty and Fabulous the natural way! - Practical fitness thoughts from a 40ish woman.

Principals

Leslie Madsen Brooks — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 10:46:33 -0500

Kalyn,

Agreed on the principals thing. I have heard some horrible stories about principals gaming the system to make their schools seem more high-achieving than they are. My feeling is that principals need to have spent significant time in the classroom--and at the same grade levels they'll be overseeing as a principal.

As I emphasize in my post and my response to Norma above, we need to find the best teachers and prepare the best teachers. Talented principals can help to weed out or mentor the best teachers, just as they can protect the most imaginative or outspoken teachers from the whims of the current school board members.

Leslie

Thanks for your close reading

Leslie Madsen Brooks — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 10:42:45 -0500

Norma,

Thanks so much for spending so much time reading my post and responding to it. I just wanted to address a few points and clarify (as I should have better in the post itself) what I was trying to say.

the body of your essay thoroughly trashed his suggestions.

I wouldn't say "trashed," and I wouldn't say "thoroughly." I spent my K-12 years under Republican administrations (presidential and gubernatorial), and my experience as a student--as well as my parents' experiences as teachers--have made me suspicious of Republican education plans. Now that I'm an adult--and one who tries to understand politics on both sides of the Congressional aisle--I wanted to find those points in McCain's plan that made some sense to me, that offered hope. There were some. I'll get to them in a minute.

The underlying theme of your work seem to suggest that the playing field must be leveled to the lowest common demoninator, that is, if one low income family can't take advantage of school vouchers, then it's a bad idea. If school choice only benefits some low income families and not all of them, then it's a bad idea.

No, that's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that we need to raise the floor on public education. Meaning: we need to find plans that benefit as many people as possible, and any plan that does this must focus on helping the lowest-achieving students (those who have thus far lacked the external resources to achieve at higher levels). It's a triage approach, really. Help those most in need. We wouldn't be ignoring the middle class students who also need these same kinds of resources--but they already have advantages (more parental support, better teachers in middle-class schools, more resources flowing to those schools, etc.).

You trash the "virtual plan" because McCain by his own admission doesn't know how to use the internet. This doesn't make sense. That is, I don't need to be an engineer to know we need more of them. McCain doesn't need to know how to use the internet to understand its potential value.

True enough. But you probably have some idea of what engineers do. The Internet is different--it's so very vast, and virtual learning in particular is difficult to do well because students learn in so many different ways--ways that a classroom teacher might recognize by observing students, but which a remote teacher might not.

You like the idea of principal autonomy, but not too much. More checks and balances would take care of run-away autonomy. I thought school boards exercised oversight.

They do. I think the problem is that we don't always have a clear idea as to the domains of each governing body. In my view, the federal government should be setting broad standards--e.g. by eighth grade, students should be able to do x, y, and z; by twelfth grade, students should understand a, b, and c. State boards of education then could provide further granularity--e.g. by the end of fourth grade students will understand r, s, and t about the science of weather. State boards also would put requirements in place to ensure teachers have the appropriate subject-matter expertise and the training necessary to actually teach children at a particular developmental stage. Principals would ensure the best teachers are hired for each grade level at their school. And teachers would have the most power--they might know they need to teach weather in fourth grade, for example, but how weather gets taught is up to the teacher--that is, there shouldn't be standardized tests to which the teachers are targeting all the students' learning. We need to leave room for imagination and creativity. Trained and educated principals can protect teachers from the sometimes odd whims of elected school board officials who have little experience in or understanding of public education and the needs of contemporary students.

Finally, you assert that teachers, whatever their knowledge or background, should be certified in the methodologies that have made our public schools such a success.

No--they need to be certified in the latest (but tested) best practices. I don't think our teachers are being familiarized with the latest research into psychology, sociology, learning, etc. Teachers' continuing education needs to emphasize new research and new (but again, proven) methods of reaching all children.

So, none of McCain's ideas have any "possibilities" as you suggest in your lead.

No, there are possibilities in the plan. I hesitate to embrace vouchers because I think that while in theory they offer promise to those who most need the help, in practice they are less equitable. I do think, however, that the other aspects of McCain's plan have promised--but he hasn't yet articulated details of his plans sufficiently, so they come across as the same tired rhetoric he seems to want to avoid.

As for your experiences with public school, that sucks. I don't blame the public schools for gangs, though--that's a neighborhood and parenting problem. My high school had a huge gang problem--my senior year, I was responsible for the compiling the obituary page in the yearbook, for example--but what really bothered me about the school was that my (mostly white and Asian-American) peers and I, who were bussed into the inner-city school, were receiving the lion's share of the resources, while the neighborhood kids didn't have sufficient books to go around. That's not right. I benefited tremendously from public schools because I had fabulous teachers, my parents and my peers parents were vocal about our educational needs, and the school system rewards students who are designated "gifted" based on a test that doesn't really, in my opinion, identify a large enough spectrum of giftedness.

Okay. I digress. On a broader level, what about the drop out rate? What about the huge deficiencies in science and math? What about the amount of resources colleges are expending for remediation? And, on the issue of money, public schools are getting thousands of dollars per student. I don't have the specific numbers in front of me, but I think Newark school systems are getting on the order of $19,000 per student and DC school get about $10,000 per student. Don't jump on me if these are off. My point is that huge amounts of money are directed at public schools. How much is enough?

The drop-out rate is, again, a matter of community and parental support for kids. The schools are to blame as well. But the places with the highest drop-out rates are those places where traditionally kids have been overlooked--urban schools and neighborhoods where social services (largely unsupported by Republicans) are most needed. If kids aren't eating healthfully, if they're not getting healthcare, if they never see their parents because their parents must work two jobs a piece because the minimum wage is not a liveable wage, then we need to look beyond the schools--and at a longer-term pattern of Republican administrations (local, state, and national) ignoring these children and their families. And that's another reason why I haven't traditionally trusted Republican oversight of schools--the people in power don't seem to understand how all of these social problems are linked; they're not thinking holistically--they blame the schools.

The gap between the haves and the have nots is a function of education. Believe it. And that gap will continue to grow while vested interests cling to the status quo, rejecting out of hand any and all suggestions that could possibly remediate the mediocre and worse character of public schools today.

We agree on this point. But the current oversight of the public schools is expanding the gap between the haves and have-nots, by tracking have-nots from pre-K into situations where they will have fewer opportunities to achieve. I'm not rejecting McCain's suggestions "out of hand"--I'm looking at research on and the track records of the kind of programs he's suggesting--and I'm not impressed.

Here's what I'd like to see: elementary school classes of 20 students or fewer. High school math classes of 20 students or fewer. Teachers who have proven themselves by earning degrees from some of the best colleges in their subject fields, as well as who have been mentored by teachers who have a demonstrated record of success in the classroom.

And, please don't take this as a slap at teachers. Many of the best and brightest are leaving public schools because they have to "teach to the test." Many of them are going to private schools for even lower salaries because those schools actually provide a chance for teachers to exercise their vocations.

Agreed. That's why I'm suspicious of McCain's support of NCLB, which is all about teaching to the test. We need to restore authority to teachers (and principals), to allow them to use their experience and creativity in teaching all students in the ways that best meet those students' needs. Federal and state bureaucrats can determine broad areas of subject matter focus, but they shouldn't be intruding at the local level with high-stakes tests that punish schools.

I believe your post demonstrates what many parents already know, that the public education is failing and that the problems are insurmountable. New suggestions are ignored or trashed. Change of any kind is resisted. Critics are demonized. And, the only solution is more money from home owners who can barely keep up with property taxes now.

I certainly don't believe that the problems are insurmountable. I just think we need to look at children's whole lives--and not just their lives between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m.--to see why they're not achieving. Parental and community support is just as important to kids' success as what happens in school. And yet in many places we have lost a sense of community, even at the neighborhood and block level.

My solution isn't higher property taxes--it's finding larger funding for education from higher-up sources (state and federal), and then convincing those sources to allow more autonomy at the local level. And that's tricky.

In the end, I think McCain's plan has promise, in that he is looking at digital solutions (but not thoughtfully enough, according to the scant evidence available), in that he's interested in federal as well as local solutions for education, and that he's thinking about serving low-income students and students of color.

When I criticize candidates (and I hope soon to take a closer look at Barack Obama's education proposals), it's because I want to see more details instead of "tired rhetoric."

Again, thanks for your response.

Best,

Leslie

BlogHer Contributing Editor, Research and Academia
Proprietor, The Clutter Museum
I also blog at Museum Blogging and The Multicultural Toybox.

Don't get me started

Kalyn Denny — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 09:51:21 -0500

on all the things that are wrong with McCain's plan. I don't have enough time to write that much.

This plan is nothing more than the type of anti-teacher, anti-public school, anti-teacher preparation rhetoric spewed by the Bush administration. I've been in the classroom for 29 years, and I can tell you that the complex problems that schools face are a reflection of the complex problems that exist in our society, and nothing in this simplistic plan is going to make one bit of difference.

(And after my experiences, I'm exercising great restraint in not addressing the idea of giving principals more control. What if your principal is not that competent? The fact that someone has achieved a certain position doesn't mean they are doing a good job in it.)

Kalyn Denny
Kalyn's Kitchen

Through a Different Lens

Norma156 — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 09:09:57 -0500

I read your post with interest. In fact, I read it twice. Your headline and first paragrah seemed to suggest that McCain's plan had some merit, but the body of your essay thoroughly trashed his suggestions.

You like the idea of principal autonomy, but not too much. More checks and balances would take care of run-away autonomy. I thought school boards exercised oversight.

Finally, you assert that teachers, whatever their knowledge or background, should be certified in the methodologies that have made our public schools such a success.

So, none of McCain's ideas have any "possibilities" as you suggest in your lead.

May I come at this from another perspective?

I'm a parent and a tax payer. In grade school, my twins went to a very upscale local public school where there were daily fights, gangs and memorized lessons geared toward our state testing system. There was no or little homework. And no teaching beyond what was required to pass the state test. This was in what was considered one of the best public school systems in our state-Texas.

I yanked them out. Believe me. Fast as I could. They went to a private Jesuit school for high school where they actually got an education and in the process were penalized for not graduating in the top ten percent of their class. (UT automatically accepts the top ten percent from any school, regardless of the type of school, SAT scores or courses. So, my boys who took AP calculus and history and scored well in the top ten percent in SAT scores couldn't compete with kids from less rigorous schools with far less rigorous classes and SAT scores that suggested the students could barely spell their names. The education they got was totally worth the penalty.)

McCain's education plan: interesting ideas and tired rhetoric

Leslie Madsen Brooks — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 00:27:48 -0500

Have you seen presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain's education plan? McCain presented his plan in a speech to the NAACP last week. What's most interesting to me about the plan is that it combines federal and very local oversight of schools--and in so doing presents a number of conundrums and possibilities.

As presented to the NAACP, McCain's plan centers on getting more kids into safe K-12 schools staffed with savvy principals and competent teachers. To achieve this goal, McCain proposes school vouchers, school choice, local oversight, and alternative methods of teacher certification.

School vouchers

School vouchers shift government funding to private schools--even religious schools. I find that problematic. If nonprofit organizations want to fund scholarships for students to attend private schools, that's fine with me. But I'm not convinced the government should be funding these nonprofits. The problem with every voucher program I've seen is that these programs don't provide enough money for parents to cover private school tuition and fees. For example, the Washington (D.C.) Scholarship Fund McCain held up as a model provides only $7,500 per student per year--and a family must be quite poor in order to qualify. Under this program, a family of four must have an adjusted gross income of $39,220 per year or less. (The federal poverty guidelines peg a D.C. family of four below the poverty line if the family brings in more than $21,200 per year--a ridiculously low number.) How can a family of four living in DC on less than $40,000 per year scrape together the additional money to pay for private school tuition--especially when the best private schools in the area (the ones that best meet the standards McCain champions) cost more than $25,000 per year? Financial aid from the schools themselves can only stretch so far.

In addition, there's only so much government money for education, and every bit of money funneled to private institutions means fewer dollars for the public schools. In most states, teachers are terribly underpaid (I was raised by schoolteacher parents in California, and I can tell you that keeping up with the neighbors was difficult) and pupils underfunded. I'm not saying the solution is to throw a bunch of money randomly at the public schools--but we need to infuse many of our schools with sufficient funds to, say, provide each student with her own book for each class. In the 1990s, I assisted in public high school classrooms where there weren't even class sets of literature books--which meant students had to spend class time reading instead of learning from their teachers and from one another. This remains the case in many public school classrooms today.

School choice

School choice is controversial, even when it means simply allowing parents to transfer their students from lower- to higher-performing public schools. EdWeek (free registration required) provides a nice round-up of the issues surrounding school choice. As EdWeek reports, school choice benefits some low-income and special-education students, but it does not necessarily benefit the majority of low- or lower-middle-income students, who are more likely to live in neighborhoods with failing schools. An excerpt from the EdWeek overview:

While promoters of school choice herald the autonomy it affords parents, and the potential it has to increase parents' involvement in their children's education, opponents question which families will be in the position to make informed decisions about their children’s educations. Some researchers are concerned that certain types of parents are more likely to exercise choice and leave their neighborhood schools, reinforcing social-class inequality (Fuller, Elmore, and Orfield, 1996).

While proponents tout increased school accountability as a byproduct of school choice reform, opponents find the economic-based free-market theory to be problematic in the public education realm (Henig, 1997). Essentially, they do not believe that allowing schools to fail will help the system overall.

As one critic of school choice argues, choice will cause the system to fail the children who are not lucky enough to remove themselves from a low-performing school and will therefore “pit student against student and family against family in the struggle for educational survival” (Cookson, 1992).

Local oversight

McCain supports the standards enforced by the high-stakes testing environment of No Child Left Behind, but wants to place more control in the hands of school principals. McCain told the NAACP,

Under my reforms, we will entrust both the funds and the responsibilities where they belong in the office of the school principal. One reason that charter schools are so successful, and so sought-after by parents, is that principals have spending discretion. And I intend to give that same discretion to public school principals. No longer will money be spent in service to rigid and often meaningless formulas. Relying on the good judgment and first-hand knowledge of school principals, education money will be spent in service to public school students.

In some aspects, this is terrific. I do think that principals need more autonomy in helping their schools to succeed. That said, not all principals are created equal, so I'd like to see a series of checks and balances put in place that keep principals responsible for student learning at their schools without letting principals completely rule the roost, constraining teachers' creativity and achievement. A colleague of mine wrote her Ed.D. dissertation on "star teachers" who achieved high levels of student learning without necessarily being "highly qualified" under NCLB regulations. These teachers, who had particular success with low-income students and students of color in urban Southern California, succeeded in large part because they had the support of principals who sometimes looked the other way when it came to NCLB rules and requirements. Principals must be thoughtful and flexible; they must be willing to let teachers cater to the students in each classroom, rather than succumbing to an all-encompassing bureaucratic standardization of education.

Teacher certification

McCain also proposes creating alternative methods of teacher certification:

We should also offer more choices to those who wish to become teachers. Many thousands of highly qualified men and women have great knowledge, wisdom, and experience to offer public school students. But a monopoly on teacher certification prevents them from getting that chance. You can be a Nobel Laureate and not qualify to teach in most public schools today. They don't have all the proper credits in educational "theory" or "methodology" -- all they have is learning and the desire and ability to share it. If we're putting the interests of students first, then those qualifications should be enough.

I wish McCain had clarified a bit what he means by "ability" to teach. I do believe that many teachers have a calling to teach--and have some natural talent for it. That said, these talents are best honed through the master teacher and mentoring programs in place in teacher certification programs across the country. You can't throw a Nobel Laureate into a high school context--where she might be teaching 180 or 200 students a day--and expert her to succeed just because she's bright. There is a skill set that comes with teaching, and it needs to be learned from experts--otherwise these new teachers will burn out, and harm student learning in the process.

Does this mean I think all current teacher certification programs are successful? No. Some of them need reforming. But that doesn't mean veering toward the other extreme and letting anyone who is has some body of knowledge and interest in teaching into the classroom. There is something to the "theory" and "methodology" that McCain seems to be dismissing by putting quotation marks around them. These aren't fictional constructions--they're real concepts that teachers need to understand in order to succeed in today's challenging public school contexts.

Obviously, higher teacher salaries would attract those with a commitment to education to K-12 teaching. I have known many college and university professors, for example, who would excel at middle school or high school teaching, but the starting salaries are too low for people with their years of educational training. A Ph.D. who has classroom experience shouldn't have to start at the average beginning teacher salary of $31,753. Double that amount and you might attract more highly educated people who have honed their classroom skills thanks to graduate school training or years spent as adjunct or assistant professors.

Virtual schools

McCain also proposed expanding federal funding of "virtual learning."

We can also help more children and young adults to study outside of school by expanding support for virtual learning. So I propose to direct 500 million dollars in current federal funds to build new virtual schools, and to support the development of online courses for students. Through competitive grants, we will allocate another 250 million dollars to support state programs expanding online education opportunities, including the creation of new public virtual charter schools. States can use these funds to build virtual math and science academies to help expand the availability of Advanced Placement math, science, and computer science courses, online tutoring, and foreign language courses.

Hoo boy. I'm not even sure where to begin. Obviously, all presidential candidates (and presidents!) have educational advisers who help them construct their policies. But by McCain's own admission he is digitally "illiterate" and does not use the Internet himself. It troubles me that someone who lacks experience online would be recommending virtual schools and tutors. I'm a huge champion of carefully crafted digital learning initiatives as a supplements to K-16 curricula, but I'm not sure virtual schools are the way to go. There's something to be said for face-to-face learning across the disciplines, and I worry that we'll be further diminishing teacher-student interaction if we don't implement virtual learning with extraordinary thoughtfulness. (For one view on virtual learning in high schools, check out this report from Education Sector. Also worth a look: the link round-ups at Virtual High School Meanderings.)

In the blogosphere

Bloggers, of course, have been weighing in on the educational plans of both Democratic and Republican campaigns.

Alyson Klein of the Education Week blog appreciates that advisers of both campaigns are talking about pre-K education. Her fellow Education Week blogger Michele McNeil also noted a particular focus on special education in both campaigns.

The National School Boards Association blog points out that McCain hasn't said much about higher education.

Dana Goldstein provides a brief overview of and response to McCain's NAACP speech, pointing out that

D.C. boasts some of the most successful public charter schools in the nation, and school choice here has generally been a good thing for parents and kids failed by the system. But I've said it before and I'll say it again: There is no evidence that low-income and minority students' academic performance is improved by sending them to urban parochial schools, which tend to be the schools that participate in private voucher programs. No evidence in Milwaukee. No evidence in D.C. Supporting school choice does not require support for this sort of privatization, especially when there has been so much innovation and growth in the public charter sector.

In a larger post on McCain's sexism against women, Kate Sheppard of AlterNet highlights McCain's policies on sex ed.

Mike Petrilli points out that despite McCain's focus on poor students in his NAACP speech, the campaigns are subtly shifting their focus toward what Petrilli terms "middle-class suburban" concerns.

For more coverage of the educational issues being raised (or not raised) in the 2008 presidential campaign, visit Ed in '08.

What are your thoughts?

Leslie Madsen-Brooks develops learning experiences for K-12, university, museum, and corporate clients. She blogs at The Clutter Museum, Museum Blogging, and The Multicultural Toy Box.