AUDIO: McCain Virtual Town Hall With Democratic And Independent Voters
June 14, 2008 | Permalink
Today, John McCain held a virtual town hall with Democratic and Independent voters. I’ll excerpt some of the more interesting exchanges and post them shortly, but in the meantime you can listen to the full audio:
McCain laid on the bipartisanship pretty heavy and was clearly targeting disenfranchised Hillary supporters.
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I was one of the callers waiting on the phone for this virtual town hall meeting, but never got to ask Senator Mccain my question. I had posted it to the event organizers earlier. I asked two education=related questions, regarding funding of NCLB (No Child Left Behind) and IDEA ( Individuals with Disabilities Education Act).
For those of you who don’t know, these are unfunded federal mandates; we (educators) are mandated to end the achievement gap between minorities and white students, we are mandated to raise standardized test scores, we are mandated to provide appropriate educational opportunities for disabled students.
However, these laws were never fully funded. Currently, states must pick up more than $14 billion in NCLB costs, mostly because of increased testing requirements. The Federal government has never covered more than 18% of the costs associated with complying with IDEA. http://www.nea.org/lac/idea/images/mandatory2006.pdf
It follows that disabled students most often do not get the services they need, and are federally ordered to receive. An interesting statistic:
73% of men in prison have a diagnosed learning disability.
Senator McCain never spoke with me, but he did commit to funding NCLB. It’s in your audio, about five minutes before the end of the town hall. Senator Obama, on the other hand, is very pragmatic in his approach. In his May 29 education speech in my home state, Colorado, Obama advocated for a nonpartisan approach to testing, special education, and bilingual education. Regarding NCLB, he said that he would take out the “high stakes” aspect of the law, where schools are being shut down, for not meeting testing achievement, even though the promised federal dollars have never materialized to support these schools. For other education issues, he said that he would emphasize “what works” what is documented by educational research to work with high-poverty, underachieving students. Details of Obama’s pragmatic education policies can be found at http://www.barackobama.com/issues/education/
So here’s my summary of the two presidential candidates on education policy:
McCain: fund NCLB, provide federal dollars for charter schools, underwrite college loans
Obama: reform or repeal NCLB, no federal $ for charter schools, underwrite college loans and grants, fund IDEA for special education students, look in a nonpartisan, research -oriented way at bilingual education.
So as an urban educator, it seems to me that Obama is light years ahead of McCain in addressing the needs of urban schools, teachers, and students.
Another comment on Mccain’s town hall meeting:
I heard antiwar protesters over the phone line during the meeting, and again on your audio. Who protested? Why didn’t McCain respond to the protests? What happened to the protesters?