Hillary Clinton

Yesterday, Hillary Clinton said good bye to her presidential nomination.  At the same time she endorsed Senator Barack Obama unequivocally.  What does this mean for education?  It means that Barack Obama can stop trying to show how he is different from Hillary Clinton and can begin to focus on issues such as education. 

Say what you will about Hillary Clinton and her politics, I think she proved that she truly is more interested in what she believes is best for the United States and not what is best for her.  (Not saying I think her ideas are what is best, because I haven’t decided yet.) In addition I think she proved herself a lady.  She could have been obstinate and refused to give up.  That would have certainly ended in the Democratic party being split and not a viable contender in the election later this year.  Again, I’m not saying I agree with her party but I do think we need a multi party system if we are going to affect change.  Change is one thing I am certain the educational system in the United States needs and with Hillary Clinton giving up her bid at the presidential nomination she ensures that her party will be able to force a dialogue about the issues facing our nation.

Subscribe to this blog's RSS feed

I’m going to do an update on Clinton and Obama this week.  Starting the week off with some speeches from each of them.  I found one that focused on education for Obama which you’ll get to hear tomorrow but I couldn’t find a new one that focused just on education for Hillary Clinton.  But here is the good news campers, I did find a recent video where she does briefly touch on education.  I went with the newest for her because it wouldn’t really be fair for me to leave her out completely

We’re coming up on having a democratic candidate (theoretically at least) and then we can focus on Republican V. Democrat instead of watching the democrats duke it out.  Do you have a favorite democratic candidate? Who is he or she (isn’t it cool that there is a she this time?)?

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

I really like a lot of what Hillary Clinton has to say about education reforms but I’m not sure how she plans to accomplish all of her goals.  However, that isn’t the point at the moment.  I’m sure once the democrats have settled who is going to be their candidate more program specifics will be forthcoming.  Here are a few of her ideas for how to reform education.

Early Childhood Education

• Programs to help develop the parenting skills of new parents.
  • I’ve said for the longest time I thought children should come with manuals so this might be a good thing.  At the same time I’m not sure how I feel about the government telling me how to raise my children.  I suppose it will depend on the details.
• Pre-Kindergarten for all four year olds.
  • This is nice, especially for parents who are either having trouble affording daycare or who can’t afford a nice preschool.

K-12

• She wants to end No Child Left Behind
  • Love that, but again I wonder what it will be replaced with.  You know the old saying the devil you know…
• Create "green schools"
  • I think it would be great for all new schools to be built with green technology.  I have visions of solar power, gardens on the roof, and compost piles.  Will be interesting to see if my imagination and reality are similar.
• She has a variety of ways to help students who aren’t successful in a traditional setting.  For example - early college high schools, multiple ways to graduate, internships, and job programs.
  • Love this.  Part of my problem with NCLB is that it doesn’t really help students who just don’t do well in school.  I’d love for those students to have alternative ways to be successful.

College

• $3500 tax credit
  • Sounds helpful
• Increase the maximum Pell Grant
  • I used this grant when I was in college and it was very helpful.  However, I lived in an area that had relatively inexpensive college classes and I’m not sure it would have been enough if I’d been at a larger university.
• Increase money for AmeriCorps participants
  • We’ve had AmeriCorps volunteers at most of the schools I’ve been at and they are great.  I think this would be a wonderful way to recruit more people to the program.

If you are interested in more of Hillary Clinton’s policies on education you can read about them here.

What do you think about the proposed education changes?  What do you think about Hillary Clinton?  I’m still trying to decide who to vote for and welcome any information or opinions you have that might help me make my decision!

In this speech she Hillary Clinton talks about No Child Left Behind and early education.  I particularly like the bit about little test takers!  I haven’t had to think about the price of college lately but I really like what she has to say about how to pay for college.

I have several teacher friends who are still paying off their college loans five and ten years after they graduated.  It will be interesting to see what kinds of changes are made in the next four years.

What do you think about the government taking a more active part in helping students go to college?