John Edwards on Education 2004 Democratic Nominee for Vice President; Former Jr Senator (NC)

Sub-sections under Education:
• Voting Record
• Other issues under Education

Provide work-study programs for students to afford college

Need universal pre-K, child care, and second chance schools

Provide continual education for those in the work force

A comprehensive plan to improve education

Should have universal pre-Kindergarten for all 4-year-olds

Make community colleges & public universities free

A: What I proposed is something called College For Everyone. The idea is for any young person who commits to work while they’re in college, a minimum of 10 hours a week, we pay for their tuition and books. We’ve actually put a similar model in place, in Green County, a relatively poor county in eastern North Carolina. About 70% of the kids were signed up.

Q: You’re proposing free college for everybody for four years for a four-year program, not just community college for two years and not just the first year?

A: The other requirement is since private colleges and universities cost so much, this is what I propose requires either a public community college or public university.

Q: But it’s four years?

A: Yes, sir. But I wanted to be clear that what we’ve done in Green County is not just the first year.

Think of education as a birth-to-death experience in America

A: Yes, I believe we do. I think that we tend to think of education as K through 12, maybe college and in some rare cases, graduate school. We should think of education as a birth-to-death experience in America. That means we get the kids as early as we possibly can. [Then, for college], we know if you graduate from college this year that the information you learned, a huge amount will be outdated in 5 or 10 years. So we need an infrastructure for continuing education after high school, college, or graduate school, whichever is the last part of your formal education. So we continue to learn. Now, we have an ad hoc system, where we leave it to individuals or their employers the enormous responsibility of ensuring that 50-year-old workers in America are up-to-date and best trained, best educated they can possibly be. I think we have to develop a national infrastructure for making sure people continue to learn as they age.

Teach in public school that we embrace same-sex parents

A: Oh, sure, it should. I mean, the kids who go to public schools need to understand why same-sex couples are the parents of some of the children. They need to understand that these are American families, just like every American families. It’s important for the kids that their peers understand what’s happening. Because otherwise, you know, children are children. And they can be mean and cruel. We as adults have a responsibility to make sure that they’re educated, that they understand this is a good thing and it’s something that we as Americans believe in and embrace.

Q: At what grade or what age would you introduce, for instance, that kind of education into the schools?

A: I’ve not thought about it enough to answer it.

Q: Well, think about it and come back later, and tell us what you come up with.

A: Yeah. There is a place, though, that I believe it’s appropriate.

Sent all four kids to public schools

A: I’ve had four children, and all of them have gone to public school.

College for Everyone: tuition paid, for 10 hrs/week work

Elizabeth and I started a College for Everyone program for the first year of college in eastern North Carolina in a low-income area. It’s been incredibly successful. The reason? Because we don’t give it to them. They have to work for it. But the result is, they don’t graduate from college with all this crushing burden of debt that so many of our kids are faced with every single day.

Invest in rural community colleges as practical job training

College for Everyone pilot: $300,000 to 80 N.C. students

Create “Second Chance” schools to get dropouts back on track

We need to transform education at every level, from expanding preschool opportunities to paying teachers more to teach where we need them most, from reforming our underperforming high schools to creating 2nd -Chance schools to help former dropouts get back on track

Supports individual school prayer, not teacher-led prayer

A: What I’m not in favor of is for a teacher to go to the front of the classroom and lead the class in prayer. Because I think that by definition means that that teacher’s faith is being imposed on children who will almost certainly come from different faith beliefs. Allowing time for children to pray for themselves, to themselves, I think is not only okay, I think it’s a good thing.

FactCheck: NCLB might be under-funded, but it grew 58%

No Child Left Behind is much underfunded

EDWARDS: They didn’t fund the mandates that they put on the schools all over this country. That’s one of the reasons 800 teachers have been laid off in Cleveland. 1/3 of our public schools are failing under the Bush administration. Half of African-Americans are dropping out of high school. Half of Hispanic-American are dropping out of high school. We have a clear plan to improve our public schools that starts with getting our best teachers into the schools where we need them the most by creating incentives for them to go there.

CHENEY: We are making significant progress there. We are closing the achievement gap. The results coming in from a number of studies show, without question, that on math and reading, that in fact our minority students, our Hispanic and African-American students are doing better, and that gap between them and the majority population is, in fact, closing.

Give public schools the resources that they need

Higher teacher pay in low-income schools

Two public school systems: one for rich, one for others

SHARPTON: I do not think that it is fair to say that there are two Americas. There are many Americas. Our only problem in America is not just class. Many of us have problems that have succumbed to class barriers but still have the race barriers, or the barriers of language if you are Latino, or the barriers of sexual discrimination if you are, one, a woman or gay and lesbian. So I think it’s very simplistic to just say that it’s two Americas, one for the wealthy, one for the poor. Wealthy [minority] men still face discrimination. Gays and lesbians, they may make a lot of money, they still face discrimination.

When schools fail, bring in expertise and resources

EDWARDS: I did vote for it. As did [Kerry & Kucinich]. The most serious problem with No Child Left Behind, is not just the accountability provisions. We need accountability in order to improve our public schools. But the problem is when they find the school that is struggling, instead of doing the things like bring expertise and resources to the school, to improve the quality of the school that’s struggling, that’s not what’s happening with No Child Left Behind.

Q: When a school is struggling, they give the parents the option to transfer their kids to another public school. They give them afterschool tutoring. How are parents worse off if you identify this school as struggling?

EDWARDS: What about the other kids in the school? The answer is to give incentive pay to our best teachers to get them to teach in schools in less affluent areas, to expand our earlier childhood programs, and doing the same thing with making afterschool available.

Private school vouchers drain resources from public schools

A: Today, America has two school systems-one for the affluent & one for everyone else. I am committed to giving every child a great education-by investing in excellent teachers for public schools, and by taking a range of other steps. Private school vouchers won’t help our public schools, but will instead drain limited resources from those schools. I oppose vouchers.

Two school systems: one for the have’s, one for have-not’s

Pay for college tuition in exchange for part-time work

New Deal for Teachers: more pay & scholarships

Free first year of college for all willing to work for it

A: I’ve put forward an agenda that stands up for all Americans. My agenda includes a plan to make the first year of college free for any young person willing to work for it. My agenda for America includes a plan to protect older workers from losing their pensions, a plan to pass a prescription drug benefit and to stop drug companies from keeping less- expensive drugs off the market, and a $2500 family leave tax credit for new parents.

Appoint judges with backbone to desegregate schools

A: When I was growing up, I grew up in South Carolina, Georgia & North Carolina. I saw how important it was to have judges who had some backbone & courage. I saw how important it was to have judges who would stand up to desegregate our public schools. I saw a judge in North Carolina who, when he desegregated the public schools in Charlotte, literally had to have armed guards to take him from home to work and back home. Those are the kind of men and women we need on the federal bench. But I think it goes beyond that. We have to get quality teachers into all of our public schools, which means poor rural areas, it means big urban areas, it means low income areas in the inner city.

Voted YES on funding smaller classes instead of private tutors.

Voted YES on funding student testing instead of private tutors.

Voted YES on spending $448B of tax cut on education & debt reduction.

Voted NO on Educational Savings Accounts.

Voted YES on declaring memorial prayers and religious symbols OK at schools.

Voted NO on allowing more flexibility in federal school rules.

Offer every parent Charter Schools and public school choice.

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.

Goals for 2010
• Turn around every failing public school.
• Make charter schools an option in every state and community.
• Offer every parent a choice of public schools to which to send his or her child.
• Make sure every classroom has well-qualified teachers who know the subjects they teach, and pay teachers more for performance.
• Create a safe, clean, healthy, disciplined learning environment for every student.
• Make pre-kindergarten education universally available.

Rated 83% by the NEA, indicating pro-public education votes.

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.