I found a website that gives some specific answers to what Hillary Clinton, Barack Obabma, and John McCain think about various issues in education.  It is made up of questions that have been put to each of them over the years and their responses, statements they have made, as well as how they have voted on specific issues during their time in public office.  There is by far too much information for me to easily sum it all up and I feel certain that some of you might not find interesting the items I do which is why I’ve provided links to the different candidates. What I am going to do is tell you what I thought was the most interesting from each of the pages.

Hilary Clinton says she would like to see formal education opportunities start even before pre-K but that more importantly education must start at home.  I’m totally behind this.  I think parents must take more responsibility for their children.  I keep reading about needing to help the disadvantaged and poor children but then I wonder why the poor children of the past didn’t need ‘extra’ help.  If you look back at the Great Depression or really anytime prior to the last forty years or so and you’ll see that when people were given the opportunity to get an education they made the best of it.  They did what they had to do and weren’t afraid of hard work.  I saw students who didn’t want to work no matter how great the technology was in our school or how many degrees the teachers had.  I think more student accountability is necessary.  More personal responsibility in general.  For fewer rants (on my part) you can check out her statements and voting record here.

According to a campaign booklet Barack Obama supports charter schools and wants to reform not replace No Child Left Behind.  He also wants to fund zero through five early education.  Not really a fan of any of these ideas.  I don’t want to pay for daycare (because really, that’s what it is when they are that young) for every child.  We aren’t funding the schools we do have well enough to make children successful and I can’t see how the government could afford to add daycare to our education budget.  In another instance he says parents need to be parents BUT it seems like he wants the government to take over the parenting…but maybe I’m reading it wrong?  It looks like he supports a lot of early education, after school, and summer programs.  Something he says that I like is that teachers shouldn’t just be judged on standardized tests….but he doesn’t really explain how to assess them instead of the test.   I tend to focus on the things I don’t like but you can read his record for yourself here.

There is one thing John McCain said that makes me just want to hug him. 

I don’t see why a good teacher should be paid less money than a bad senator. It’s important that we have merit pay for teachers, that we have teacher testing, that we do everything we can to motivate young men and women to enter this profession. There’s a whole generation that’s retiring. It is unconscionable that the average salary of a lawyer is $79,000 a year and the average salary of a teacher is $39,000 a year

How can you not just love that??  I mean I went to school for 6 years to get my MA and I know several high school teachers with PHds.  And none of us made more than fifty thousand a year (in my case a LOT less).  He actually has a lot of interesting things to say that you can check out here.  If you were wondering, there is a lot he says that irritates me too but I’ll focus on that later.

After reading their histories and comments what do you think of each candidate?  Do you have a favorite yet?  What do you like and what do you hate?

Hillary Clinton Photo Credit:   sskennel from Flickr, Creative Commons License

Barack Obama Photo Credit:   BohPhoto from Flickr, Creative Commons License

John McCain Photo Credit:   dbking from Flickr, Creative Commons License