Education Overview

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 20:09:55 EST

Education is the silver bullet for so many of our nation's problems.Our efforts to build a "land of opportunity" can succeed only if ourpublic schools give every child the chance to realize his or herpotential. Furthermore, our country's status as an economic andmilitary power rests on our students' ability to keep pace withstudents from every other country. Therefore, our national governmentmust make it the highest priority to help states improve publiceducation.

Our national government should help improve our public schools in the following ways:

Congress should listen to professional educators' advice about howto improve the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. The NCLB goals areadmirable, but in practice the Act has major problems. Congress mustfully fund the Act for it to be effective, and our government shouldreform the Act according to input from our country's best educators.
Congress should use federal money to improve public schools, not tofinance vouchers for private schools. Most private schools arefantastic institutions where parents may certainly choose to sendchildren, but our government should not use public money to financethose choices. Public money should go to our under-funded publicschools.
Congress should focus on helping our best and brightest studentspush themselves as far as they can. For our country to remain aneconomic and military superpower, our country's top students must beamong the world's best minds leading all our endeavors.
Congress can and should increase public school funding in a fiscally responsible way.

My opponent, John Linder, does not understand the importance offully funding our public schools. He has repeatedly voted to divertfunding from public schools into voucher programs, which use publicfunds to send children to private schools. On his website, Mr. Lindersays our country has the "responsibility to educate every child," buthe clearly does not understand how removing money from public schoolsprevents our country from doing just that. In 2007, the NationalEducation Association gave Mr. Linder an "F" for his failure to"promote the cause of quality public education." John Linder simplydoes not understand how to help improve educational opportunities forour country's children and young adults.

More on Education: Supporting My Position

Our national government must help state governments fully fund ourpublic schools. In 2002, President Bush signed into law the stronglybipartisan No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, a landmark law designed tofacilitate the academic success of every student- regardless of anystudent's socioeconomic background. The law preserves states' autonomyby allowing each state to design and follow its own path to schoolimprovement. The law's goals are admirable, but it has some major flawsthat our national government can help address.

The NCLB Act has never been adequately funded. This year's federalbudget for NCLB is $24.5 billion-which sounds impressive until youconsider that the Gwinnett County Public Schools alone operate onnearly $2 billion each year. The law requires schools to set benchmarksfor improvement like never before, but schools are given no additionalfunds to help make this happen. Only the very poorest schools receiveany federal money at all through "Title I" funds. This situation failsstudents, hurts teachers' and administrators' morale, and makesunreasonably difficult each school's task of achieving its required"Adequate Yearly Progress" (AYP).

Many groups of professional educators have submitted plans toimprove the NCLB Act, including the American Federation of Teachers,the National Education Association, the Aspen Institute, and theNational Center for Fair and Open Testing. Congress needs to payattention to what large groups of experts say about educationlegislation. For instance, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT)says it "has long championed the principles underlying the No ChildLeft Behind Act" but criticizes the Act for sticking to a flawed AYPformula and failing to support educators. The AFT says that the $70.9billion "short-changed" to the Act since 2002 would help solve many ofthe Act's problems. Other organizations offer different criticisms andsolutions, but here is the bottom line: Congress must fully fundwhatever reforms it passes, or the promise of opportunity will remainun-kept for many students.

Some argue that instead of increasing funding for our country'spublic schools, we should privatize schools and let market competitiondrive our education system. Others believe we should partiallyprivatize education through student "voucher" programs. These would bepoor decisions: public money should be used to improve our publiceducation system, not support privatization programs. Like any productin the market, the best schools would cost the most money, and the"land of opportunity" we want to build should not make the best schoolscost-prohibitive for most families. Additionally, the U.S. Departmentof Education reports that 76% of our country's private schools arereligious institutions. We don't fund our churches with taxpayerdollars and we also shouldn't fund our religiously-based privateschools with those taxpayer dollars.

Others argue that money is not the problem because our countryalready spends as much money per student as any other country. It istrue that schools need to spend efficiently and that parenting andother factors play huge roles in students' success; however, ourfunding problem is not that simple. The United States is unique amongcountries with high-achieving students for several reasons. Many othercountries offer free education only through middle school, but we offerit through high school. Other countries do not offer the wealth of freespecial education programs our schools offer, and these programsrequire a lot of funding. American public schools try to offer studentsunique kinds of opportunity, but we need to adequately fund our publiceducation programs for those opportunities to be real.

Yet even a fully-funded No Child Left Behind program will not solveall our country's public education problems. NCLB focuses on achievingminimum passing standards for all students, but it does not focus onhelping our best students push themselves further. Our country's topstudents used to lead the world, but over the past two decades we havefallen behind. For America to remain an economic and militarysuperpower, our country's top students must be among the world's bestminds leading all our endeavors. We must do more than help studentsachieve at a minimum level: we must help all our students reach as faras they can.

Finally, while our national government must spend more money onpublic education, it must do so while keeping a fiscally disciplinedoverall budget. There are plenty of ways we can realisticallyaccomplish this goal. (Please read article the "Fiscal Discipline" )

Doug Heckman is candidate for U.S. Congress. I am asking for your vote to send me to the United States Congress. To find out more why you should vote for me, please visit www.dougheckman.com.

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Education Overview