maybe next time

Thursday's debate offered a chance to compare and contrast Senators Clinton and Obama on several key issues. The economy? Check. Immigration? Check. Health care? Double check. The wars? Check.
Education? Maybe next debate.
While the cameras noted several celebrities in the audience and entertainment got a mention, the debate was not a fluff fest. But education was mentioned mostly in passing. For those who missed it, the transcript, available here, is worth a look as much that was said regarding the economy and immigration touches peripherally on education. Sounds like CNN is hoping for another one-on-one Democratic candidate debate at the end of the month, so we can hope it will include more focus on education. Keep an ear out for sound bites after Feb. 4's USED press conference on the President's proposed education budget. There may be fresh attacks regarding inadequate funding for NCLB and IDEA, and cuts in myriad programs.

~ Cathy Grimes

Democratic Education Debate

Democratic candidates were asked only one direct question about education at Thursday night's debate.
Bill Richardson, who told the crowd he wanted to be the "education president," was one of four candidates asked if they supported merit pay for teachers.
Despite the chance to tell voters how he feels about the subject, one that is at the heart of education debates across the country, Richardson instead fell back on his worn-out and, depending on your point of view (see Jay Mathews' comments on a previous blog), not-so highly acclaimed ed platform.
He repeated his plan to pay teachers a minimum $40,000, start math and science academies, have universal preschool and exchange college tuition for national service. He also stuck with the one thing that really sets him apart from other candidates, getting rid of NCLB. But he failed to say anything about merit pay, too bad.
To find out what else Richardson and other candidates had to say, you can see the entire video at the NY Times Web site, along with a cool transcript analyzer that allows you to search for specific topics or key words.

TIMSS makes the debate "lightning round"

Education was the subject of the lightning round question in the seventh Democratic presidential candidates debate. After parrying jabs from her fellow candidates all night, Clinton took on the question – with a 30 second time limit – but didn’t offer much that was new. Here’s the question, as posed by NBC’s Brian Williams, and her response (both taken from the debate transcript posted on the New York Times Web site):

WILLIAMS: We're going to introduce the concept of a lightning round here. Take one question; go down the line. 30 seconds each -- a time we're going to enforce. … This is about something called Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study. It's called TIMSS. A number of overseas nations took part in it. It found that overseas students spend an average of 193 days annually in school. The deficit compared to the U.S., where it's 180 days -- over 12 years, that adds up to one-year gap between education in the U.S. and overseas. … Do you believe we in this country need to extend the school day and/or extend the school year? And will you commit to it?

CLINTON: Well, very quickly, I would start at the very beginning. We need to do more to help our families prepare their children. A family is a child's first school. The parents are a child's first teacher. This is something that I've worked on for many years.
We need to really support it through nurse visitation or social worker, child care. We need to do more with the pre-Kindergarten program that I have proposed.
In addition, though, this has to fit into an overall innovation agenda which I have also set forth because we can't just say go to school longer. We need to do what happened when I was in school and Sputnik went up and our teacher said, your president wants you study math and science. That's what I want kids today to feel, that it's part of making sure we maintain our quality of life and our standard of living.

~ Cathy Grimes

Dartmouth students to choose Democratic nominee ...

... at least in terms of tonight's debate on their campus (on MSNBC). According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, 16 students will declare themselves undecided voters and will make a decision on who they would vote for based on debate answers. Associate professor Ronald G. Shaiko, who teaches government, recruited them for a focus group. The students will use a self-created scorecard to rate the candidates. The Chron of Higher Ed promises to post the results tomorrow.

~ Cathy Grimes

Obama: Give teachers more and extra pay

A sharp-eyed reader at my education blog, Get on the Bus, pointed me to this clip in which Charlie Rose asks Barack Obama for his thoughts on education that is part of a mashup on all of the candidates' positions (see previous item) on a variety of issues.

In the clip, Obama calls No Child Left Behind "false advertising," saying the U.S. Education system does well for some but not for all.

Obama goes on to say he favors bonuses for those willing to teach math and science or in inner city and rural schools. He talks up an impending teacher shortage and the need to attact new people to the profession. To do that, he says we'll have to pay them more, offer them more professional deveopment and rely on their judgement to set standards. He also says he favors universal early childhood education.

Candidate mashup

The debates and the candidates might not be paying much attention to education, but that doesn't mean the public isn't. Slate magazine, Yahoo! News and the Huffington Post joined forces to put on the first online presidential candidate mashup -- involving the Democratic ones. And one of the top three topics was education (along with the Iraq War and health care, natch).

You can watch clips of what the candidates said at Yahoo! News. You can also read a Slate synopsis of the candidates' positions on education before the mashup.