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Over recent weeks, women working to elect John McCain as our next president have been guest-posting here at BlogHer. Today, I wanted to join them in doing so, for the specific purpose of talking about education in America and what John McCain plans to do to improve it.
Clearly, this is a topic of interest to many BlogHers, ranging from the parents among you to those concerned about worker retraining. It’s also an area of policy that John McCain takes very seriously. Unless Americans are able to benefit from an A+ education, we are damaging our ability to compete in the global marketplace. John McCain will ensure that our citizens are able to find and keep good, stable, well-paying jobs. Those are his top priorities, just as I am sure they are yours. However, they will be difficult to achieve without bringing our education system into the 21st century.
Let’s start by talking about education at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. John McCain believes that in order to deliver meaningful K-12 reform, above all else, we need to eliminate wasteful bureaucracy and empower parents and teachers.
In practice, that means a number of changes:
• First, we need to keep the emphasis on standards and accountability established under No Child Left Behind, but shift our focus from group averages to ensuring that each child is able to reach his or her own potential. In other words, we need to make sure individual achievement is the primary goal by measuring student growth year to year.
• Second, while maintaining strong public schools, we need to give parents more choices where their children’s education is concerned. This is especially important for less well-off parents and students, such as those benefiting from Opportunity Scholarships in Washington, D.C. John McCain believes this is an education success story and wants more funding for the program (an increase to $20 million per year from $13 million per year). His bottom line is that parents across the country must have more choices and control of the money needed to make them.
• Third, we need to do more to place quality teachers in struggling schools. That means doing more to recruit highly motivated and highly qualified teachers into the field, for example by devoting 5 percent of Title II funding to states to recruit teachers who graduate in the top quarter of their class or who participate in programs like Teach for America. It also means directly providing bonuses to top-performing teachers who choose to work in underperforming schools, have students who have demonstrated improvement, or teach subjects like math and science.
In addition to the above, John McCain is focused on leveraging technological developments to improve education across America. He will allocate $500 million of existing federal funds to build new virtual schools and develop online course curriculums. He will direct $250 million of this to a competitive grant program that will allow states to expand virtual math and science academies. Through this program, states will be able to offer greater opportunities in AP Math, Science and Computer Sciences courses, as well as provide access to online tutoring in areas like foreign language learning. The other $250 million will go to students in need: low-income students will be eligible for up to $4,000 for online courses that give them access to SAT/ACT preparation, as will as virtual tutoring or credit recovery.
These initiatives will offer the highest-quality education possible for America’s youngest generations and prepare them to compete in a global economy. It is also important that our current workforce meet the demands of the 21st century. John McCain’s worker retraining program will push our economy forward and ensure that workers develop much-needed skills suited to fast-growing industries.
Why is that important, you may ask? Simply put, as a strong supporter of free trade, John McCain clearly sees the merits of eliminating tariffs and other barriers to exports and imports. He is also well aware that free trade can dislocate American jobs in certain industries and calls for short-term worker assistance and training. We have seen older, more traditional jobs disappear in places like Youngstown, Ohio, and new jobs appear in industries like software and tech. The bottom line is that workers need new skills to prepare them for growing sectors in the economy. John McCain believes that by prioritizing and funding adult education,
