-By Israel Teitelbaum
Today’s mid-day Republican Presidential Debate, finally addressed the one issue that will ultimately determine most issues – education. Obviously, those who control the educational system determine the future direction of our nation and its leadership. If we focus our attention on this one issue, we have the key to resolving most other issues.
Following is a transcript of the portion relating to education.
We have only one comment and plea to all candidates who recognize that school choice is the right way to go. Please use your considerable influence to sponsor The Civil Rights Act for Equal Educational Opportunity. This will require equitable funding for every child, including those attending private and religious schools, while respecting these schools’ rights in hiring and provision of services. The candidate who will accomplish this will have my vote!
All the best.
Israel
The full transcript of the debate is available at The New York Times
MS. WASHBURN: A new topic that some Iowans say hasn’t had enough debate during this campaign, and that’s education. American 15-year-olds ranked behind 16 other countries in a recent assessment of science literacy. What educational standards does the U.S. need to adopt or improve to compete in the global economy, and what will you do to move us toward those standards, and what’s your timetable?
SEN. MCCAIN: The answer to the problem in education in America is simple: We need more choice and more competition. Entrance by a good student into a college today, they have a number of choices and people are seeking them to be part of those educational institutions.
We don’t have a choice in competition. We need it in K through 12. We need more charter schools. We need vouchers where it’s approved by the local state and school boards. We need to have clearly home- schooling if people want that. We need to reward good teachers and find bad teachers another line of work. We need to have all of these compete.
In my home state of Arizona, we have charter schools, some have failed, but they’re competing with the public schools, and the level of education is increasing. In New York City today, there’s some remarkable things happening under Mayor Bloomberg and Joel Klein, who have done marvelous work with an educational system that was clearly broken. Those can be examples of a way to improve education in America, provide choice and competition and give every American family the same choice I and my family had, and that is to send our child to the school of our choice.
MS. WASHBURN: Thank you. Thank you.
MR. GIULIANI: I’m here because of the educational choices my parents made or I wouldn’t be here or have achieved anything that I’ve achieved, and that’s the place where the decision should be made. Instead of having these education standards done in Washington by the Education Department or some bureaucrats in a state capital or — or in a board, the choice should be made by parents.
Parents should choose the school that their child goes to, the same way people choose higher education.
Has it ever occurred to — to us that higher education is still the very, very best in the world? And it’s — you’re asking me about K through 12. Well, higher education is based on choice. It’s based on a large consumer market. It’s based on competition.
It’s the area of K through 12 where we have this government command sort of approach. And if we — if we give the choice to parents, where they can choose a private school, a parochial school, a public school, a charter school, home schooling —
MS. WASHBURN: Time.
MR. GIULIANI: — let them be the — be the decider, I think we’ll see a big revolution in education.
MS. WASHBURN: Congressman Hunter?
REP. HUNTER: Three words: Jaime Escalante and inspiration. Jaime Escalante was a great math teacher who in the barrio of Lose Angeles taught young kids calculus, and he taught them so well that the school district called up and said, “We got a problem. We think your kids are cheating on the tests.” And he said, “Test them again.” And he established this incredible system of calculus in the school district by inspiring young people.
How many of us have — have our careers — can — can point back to a teacher and say, “That teacher inspired me”? What we have to do is take away the bureaucratic credentialing of teachers and allow people who are aerospace engineers and — and pilots and scientists and retired folks to come in and inspire young people in third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grades. Let — let’s inspire them to reach for the stars and give them the incentive to work hard enough to get there — inspiration, changing the credentialing system, and school choice.
MS. WASHBURN: Hasn’t that teacher since left the public school system?
REP. HUNTER: And you know why? I read the — the — the post- mortem on Jaime Escalante is that the unions ran him out of the school district, and I think that goes right to one of the — one of the big problems that we have.
MS. WASHBURN: If we need to improve our educational system quickly to be more competitive in the world, does the federal government need to exercise different influence than it has historically over educational standards?
If so, in what ways? And if not, how do you encourage state to meet national goals to move us forward?
MR. ROMNEY: Carolyn, these are 60-second answers, right?
MS. WASHBURN: Yes.
MR. ROMNEY: Okay, let’s make sure, because time’s going pretty quick here.
Education’s an important topic. And the president was right to fight for No Child Left Behind, because we allow states now to test our kids and see how well they’re doing, particularly in math and English. We’ve made the same effort in our state, actually before No Child Left Behind was passed.
We test our kids; we have high standards. We teach them in English, English immersion. We say, to be successful in America, you’ve got to speak the language of America.
We also put in place incentives for kids to do well. For those that take the graduation exam, which you have to take to get out of high school, we say that you’re going to get, if you score in the top 25 percent on the test, a four-year tuition-free scholarship to a Massachusetts institution of higher learning.
MS. WASHBURN: But what about the role of the federal government?
MR. ROMNEY: And the federal government insists on those tests and those standards, and it’s key, and let me continue. I think we also have to have higher pay for better teachers. And people who are not good teachers ought to find a different career.
And finally we need more parental involvement. And we’ve tested our kids in Massachusetts, along with all the other kids in the nation. 50 states get tested every two years in English and math, in 4th and 8th grade. My 8th graders came out number one in English. They came out number one in math. My 4th graders: number one in English, number one in math.
First time in history: one state, number one in all four measures. School choice, better pay for better teachers, high standards, scholarships for the best kids, English immersion: These principles work.
MS. WASHBURN: Governor Huckabee.
MR. HUCKABEE: First of all, the whole role of education is a state issue. It’s not really a federal issue. And the worst thing that we can do is to shift more burden, more responsibility, more authority to the federal government when more of it needs to go to the states.
But I think the federal government can play a pivotal role in — primarily in helping to make sure that the best practices that are working in the states are shared with states who are struggling. Let me give you a couple of examples of what has to happen in all the states, and the federal government can at least share the data and the information.
One, personalize the learning for the student. We have 6,000 kids every day drop out in this country. They don’t drop out because they’re dumb; they drop out because they’re bored to death. They’re in a 19th-century education system in a 21st-century world. If we really are serious, then first of all we make sure that we build a curriculum around their interests rather than just push them into something they don’t care.
Second thing, unleash weapons of mass instruction. I’m a passionate, ardent supporter of having music and art in every school for every student at every grade level — (applause) —
MS. WASHBURN: Time.
MR. HUCKABEE: — because — let me just make sure you understand why — it’s not frivolous. It’s because if we don’t develop the right side of the brain with the same level of attention as we do the left, which is the logical side, we end up with an unbalanced, bored student, which is exactly what we’ve done, and we’re dropping students out of our system because of it.
MS. WASHBURN: Congressman Paul, what’s the biggest obstacle standing in the way of improving education?
MR. KEYES: (Off mike.) Do I have to raise my hand to get a question? I’d like to address that question.
MS. WASHBURN: I’m getting to you.
MR. KEYES: I would like — no, you’re not. You haven’t since several go-arounds so I have to make an issue out of it. I would like to address the question of education.
MS. WASHBURN: Go ahead.
MR. KEYES: I don’t wish it to —
MS. WASHBURN: Go ahead. You have 30 seconds.
MR. KEYES: They had a minute. Why do I get 30 seconds? (Laughter.) See your unfairness is now becoming so apparent that the voters in Iowa must understand there’s a reason for it, and the reason for it is what I’m about to say.
Governor Huckabee just addressed the question of education. He has stood before values voters and moral conservative claiming that he is their spokesman. You know the major problem in American education today? We allowed the judges to drive God out of our schools. We allowed the moral foundation of this republic, which is that we are created equal and endowed by our Creator, not by our Constitution or our leaders with our rights. If we don’t teach our children that heritage and the moral culture that goes along with it, we cannot remain free. They will not be disciplined to learn science, to learn math, to learn history, to learn anything, and they don’t want to talk about this except when they’re squabbling about their own personal faith and forgetting that we have a national creed. And that national creed needs to be taught to our children so that whether they are scientists or businessmen or lawyers, they will stand on the solid ground of a moral education that gives them the discipline they need to serve the right, to exercise their freedom with dignity, and to defend the justice because they understand it is our heritage.
MS. WASHBURN: Congressman Paul, what’s the biggest obstacle standing in the way of improving education in the United States, and how would you address it?
REP. PAUL: Probably the federal government. We’ve been involved at the federal level for our 50 years. We’ve had a Department of Education. It used to be the policy of the Republican Party to get rid of the Department of Education.
We finally get in charge and a chance to do something, so we doubled the size of the Department of Education and we have No Child Left Behind. The teachers don’t like it, the students don’t like it, and the quality of education hasn’t gone up; the cost of education has gone up.
So we need to look to our local resources, we need to release the creative energy of the teachers at the local level. But we can do immediately is to give tax credits — I have a bill that would give tax credits to the teachers to raise their salaries. At the same time, we should encourage homeschooling and private schooling and let the individuals write that off. The parents have to get control of the education. It used to be parents had control of education through local school boards. Today it’s the judicial system and the executive branch of government, the bureaucracy, that controls things, and it would be predictable that the quality would go down. The money goes to the bureaucrats and not to the educational system at home.
MS. WASHBURN: Thank you.
Senator Thompson, how would you answer that?
MR. THOMPSON: The question was what’s the biggest impediment to education?
MS. WASHBURN: What is the biggest obstacle standing in the way, and how would you address it?
MR. THOMPSON: The biggest obstacle, in my opinion, is the National Education Association, the NEA. I read time and time again — every time someone wants to inject a little choice into the equation for the benefit of the kids, inject a little freedom, inject a little competition because we’re not exactly doing that well because of the things that you pointed out earlier, the NEA is there to oppose it, and bring in millions and millions of dollars to go on television and work and scare people and misrepresent the situation on the ground.
I think that that just goes against everything that we know, that can make progress in this country.
We’re a nation of freedom and innovation and choice, and well-to- do people are out in the suburbs. They don’t seem to care that much. Inner city people need a chance to enjoy the choice that the mayor’s talking about for colleges and universities.
Other people have choice too. If they’re wealthy enough to move into a neighborhood because they want their kid to go to school there, that’s choice too. Let’s give it to everybody else and let’s stop people from standing in the way of that.
MS. WASHBURN: Thank you.
Congressman Tancredo, what’s your take on all that?
REP. TANCREDO: Yeah, the — I had the opportunity to serve under Ronald Reagan as the regional director for the U.S. Department of Education. Our task was to try to narrow it down, because we knew we couldn’t legislatively get rid of it although we wanted to. And so I went — in my region, we went from about 222 people. It took us about four or five years to get down to about 60 people.
I used to always say, we’ve gotten rid of 80 percent of the people in this department; has anybody been able to tell the difference? And you know what? Not a single soul said they had.
And something else: If we had gone to 0, you’d never know the difference. That’s because we don’t need the department. It’s an encumbrance on our attempt to actually teach children in this country, as is the federal government and its intervention and its rules.
But you can’t, I don’t think, Governor, with all due respect, you can’t say on one hand, you’re against having government intervention and on the other hand, tell us that you want music and art and everything else in the school. That’s not the job of a president. It is the job of a governor. That’s what you should run for if you want to dictate curriculum. (Applause.)
MS. WASHBURN: Governor Huckabee, would you like a rebuttal? You have 30 seconds.
MR. HUCKABEE: Well, I made very clear to the congressman that what I suggested was that the federal government become the clearinghouse. It chose the best ideas. I was a governor 10-and-a- half years.
I had executive experience longer than anyone on this stage running a government. And I had also the most, I think, impressive education record. And you know what? I looked for what other states were doing that worked. I was looking for all the ideas. We raised standards, we measured, and we held people accountable for the results.
Any time you give governors the opportunity to know what will work, they’ll use it, because it means jobs, it means economic development. That’s exactly the only role.
But if anyone doubts that the president ought not to use the bully pulpit to encourage the best practices, I would say the secondmost job of importance to the president, second to being commander in chief, is to be the communicator in chief.
And we’re losing a lot of kids in this country. A third don’t graduate. For a president to say, “That’s none of my business,” is recklessly irresponsible. A president needs to say it’s unacceptable that that many kids leave our schools every single day.
MS. WASHBURN: Okay. Governor Romney.
MR. ROMNEY: Just one small adjustment to what Governor Huckabee had to say. And I don’t believe you had the finest record of any governor in America on education. (Laughter.) And — because there’s another one on the stand who — who — whose kids outperform me. The — the kids in our state, as I indicated, scored number one in all four measures on the national exams, and they did that because of Republican principles, free market principles, applied — and there was a partnership.
You see, education is not just the teachers’ union. I agree with — with Senator Thompson on that. Boy, they’ve been the biggest obstacle to change in education and — and choice. It’s not just that the — one side of this; it’s teachers, it’s parents, it’s the state, it’s the federal government, it’s all levels coming together and working together for the benefit of our kids.
And we face right now an education challenge that’s really unusual. We’re behind. America’s behind in education. Our kids score in the bottom 10 or 25 percent in exams around the world among major industrial nations.
MS. WASHBURN: Thank you.
MR. ROMNEY: And we’ve got to have the kind of change that requires all of us working together, not just poking and saying it’s someone else’s job.
MS. WASHBURN: Thank you.
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Israel Teitelbaum is currently creating a new school choice organization to help further the efforts to improve our public schools. His blog will soon be up and running at SchoolChoiceVoter.org. Mr. Teitelbaum can be reached at israel@schoolchoicenj.org.