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Joseph Lieberman on EducationDemocratic Jr Senator (CT), ran for V.P. with Gore, ran for president 2004 |
A: I support private school voucher experiments that do not take away money from public schools, include full evaluations, and are targeted to help low-income students trapped in bad schools. It's one way to help improve opportunities for low-income students immediately while we do the long, hard work of lifting up our public schools.
A: I'd say education. Let me give you a stunningly painful number, that the average African-American, Hispanic-American student graduating from high school is 4 years behind grade level of the other students. The priority is to fully fund special education; invest in the so-called No Child Left Behind; fully fund it. We need to have a pre-kindergarten program for all of America's children.
A: you've got to be realistic in dealing with these problems. Sure, abstinence is an important option, and it ought to be part of what's done in school-based sexual education programs. But
CHENEY: I think public education is the solution. There’s been no progress on reading scores in the last eight years. We’ve had a significant increase in spending for education, but it has produced almost no positive results. We’ve graduated 15 million kids from high school in the last 15 years who can’t read. They are permanently sentenced to a lifetime of failure. Governor Bush and I want to emphasize local controls so that people can decide what’s best for their kids. And we want to insist on high standards and accountability. We have to test every child every year to know whether or not we’re making progress. This is the most important issue in this campaign.
LIEBERMAN: You cannot reform education without spending money. We have committed $170 billion: to recruit 100,000 new teachers, to help local school districts build new buildings. We’re going to give the middle class the ability to deduct up to $10,000 a year in the cost of college tuition.
Many conservatives have linked their beliefs to specific policies like abortion, homosexuality, or school prayer. Lieberman instead advocates “civil religion,” spirituality without specific legislation.
The proposal would dramatically downsize the number of federal education programs, provide public schools with much more funding and flexibility in how to spend those dollars, and hold educators accountable for producing results.
Overall it would increase federal investment in public education by $25 billion over the next five years, targeting most of those new dollars to the poorest school districts in the nation. Local educators would have the freedom to allocate this money to meet their specific needs. And in return, they would have the responsibility to meet specific performance standards, and suffer real consequences for failing to do so.
In 1997 Lieberman declared: “There are some who dismiss suggestions of school choice programs and charter schools out of hand, direly predicting that these approaches will ‘ruin’ the public schools. The undeniable reality here is that this system is already in ruins, and to blindly reject new models and refuse to try new ideas is simply foolish. We can and must do better for these children, and to cling stubbornly to the failures of the past will just not get us there.”
Create World-Class Public Schools
Now more than ever, quality public education is the key to equal opportunity and upward mobility in America. Yet our neediest children often attend the worst schools. While lifting the performance of all schools, we must place special emphasis on strengthening those institutions serving, and too often failing, low-income students.
To close this achievement and opportunity gap, underperforming public schools need more resources, and above all, real accountability for results. Accountability means ending social promotion, measuring student performance with standards-based assessments, and testing teachers for subject-matter competency.
As we demand accountability, we should ensure that every school has the resources needed to achieve higher standards, including safe and modern physical facilities, well-paid teachers and staff, and opportunities for remedial help after school and during summers. Parents, too, must accept greater responsibility for supporting their children’s education.
We need greater choice, competition, and accountability within the public school system, not a diversion of public funds to private schools that are unaccountable to taxpayers. With research increasingly showing the critical nature of learning in the early years, we should move toward universal access to pre-kindergarten education.
Dear President-Elect Bush,
As members of the Senate New Democrat Coalition and the House New Democrat Coalition, our first and foremost [priority is] education reform. As you know, a bicameral group of New Democrats introduced the “3 Rs” legislation last year. The “3Rs” bill is an example of the kind of bold, innovative approach that can form the basis of a bipartisan agreement to reform our public schools and boost the opportunities of our public schools. We are also well aware that you have endorsed a similar plan. While we remain firmly opposed to the voucher portion of your proposal, we believe that there are many areas of similarity in both approaches, providing an excellent opportunity for bipartisan agreement and compromise. We intend to re-introduce the “3Rs” legislation at the earliest opportunity later this month, and we look forward to working with you.
The Public Education Reinvestment, Reinvention and Responsibility Act (Three R's) [is] the common ground from which bipartisan compromise on education reform will be successfully achieved. The Three R’s would provide public schools with significantly increased funding and flexibility, increasing federal investment in education by $35 billion over the next 5 years, and targeting most of those new dollars toward closing the persistent achievement gap between poor and more affluent students. State & local officials would be given broader latitude to decide how to allocate federal funding in order to meet the specific needs of their communities. In return, states would be required to set standards for raising academic achievement, and improve the quality of their teachers.
The National Education Association has a long, proud history as the nation's leading organization committed to advancing the cause of public education. Founded in 1857 "to elevate the character and advance the interests of the profession of teaching and to promote the cause of popular education in the United States," the NEA has remained constant in its commitment to its original mission as evidenced by the current mission statement:
To fulfill the promise of a democratic society, the National Education Association shall promote the cause of quality public education and advance the profession of education; expand the rights and further the interest of educational employees; and advocate human, civil, and economic rights for all.In pursuing its mission, the NEA has determined that it will focus the energy and resources of its 2.7 million members toward the "promotion of public confidence in public education." The ratings are based on the votes the organization considered most important; the numbers reflect the percentage of time the representative voted the organization's preferred position.