Campaign 2008

Mac is Back?

David Gray — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 18:12:00 -0500

Watching John McCain's concession speech last Tuesday was both inspiring and maddening. It was a gracious, powerful and inspiring statement under very difficult circumstances. Yet where was this kind of "above the fray" leader during the campaign? McCain wasn't swayed in his speech by the partisan roars of the crowd the way he was during the campaign. If I had a nickel for everyone who has told me over the past week that they might well have voted for the man they saw give that concession speech, I'd be a rich man. But alas......

It's Obama

Sara Mead — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 13:49:00 -0500

Last night Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama won the presidential election to become 44th president of the United States. During the campaign, Obama made early education a cornerstone of his education policy agenda, and even highlighted early education as an important investment in our country's economic future. Let's take a closer look at the early education proposals Obama put forward during the campaign.

Obama has proposed $10 billion in new federal spending to support a comprehensive "Zero to Five" early education plan, which would include support for pregnant women and families with young children, quality improvements in child care for infants and toddlers, support for states to expand high-quality pre-k, and other services for children from birth through age five. The centerpiece of this agenda would be a new program of Early Learning Challenge Grants, modeled off of the of the Illinois Early Learning Council, which Obama helped create as a state legislator.

In order to receive Early Learning Challenge Grants, states would be required to: match new federal funds, meet quality and accountability standards, develop public/private partnerships, ensure that parents receive valid information, and provide support for both early learning and family support services (such as nurse home visiting). Although Senator Obama’s plan refers to high-quality early childhood care and pre-k, it does not describe the quality standards states would be expected to meet.

Obama would also establish a Presidential Early Learning Council, modeled after the Illinois Early Learning Council, to promote collaboration among various federal agencies that support programs for young children, and to encourage states to better coordinate services across multiple federal early childhood funding streams.

Obama’s plan includes several other steps to expand quality early education, including:

Quadruple Early Head Start: The Early Head Start program provides services to low-income children ages 0-3, and evaluations of the program have produced very positive findings. Early Head Start currently serves about 61,000 children.
Increase Head Start Funding, which has stagnated under the Bush administration. The plan does not include specific targets for funding increases or numbers of additional youngsters served.
Improve Head Start Quality: Provide $250 million to create or expand regional training centers to help Head Start centers implement successful models.
Increase funding for the Child Care and Development Block Grant, which has stagnated under the Bush administration, resulting in the loss of services for 150,000 children. Obama would double quality funding within CCDBG, and would encourage states to use their quality set-aside funding to develop strategic plans that better coordinate all birth-to-five services.
Make the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit refundable, so that low-income families can receive up to a 50 percent tax credit for their child care expenses. Currently, the tax credit is non-refundable and covers only 35 percent of the first $3,000 in child care expenses ($6,000 if a family has two or more children).
Support Nurse-Family Partnerships: Provide Nurse-Home Visitation for 570,000 new mothers annually. This model, in which nurses visit at-risk mothers during pregnancy and for the first 18 months of their children's lives to provide support, health services, and education, has been shown to be effective in improving children's and mothers' outcomes.

What's the likely outlook for these proposals in the Obama administration? Given the current fiscal situation, it's unlikely that we'll actually see a $10 billion increase in federal suport for early education any time soon. But Obama has made clear that he views early education as an important investment to prioritize even in tough financial times, and the outlook is good for some type of early education legislation to advance this agenda. A bill to create a new federal role in supporting high-quality state pre-k programs already passed the House Education Committee and has strong Congressional and interest group support. Democratic gains in the House and Senate should make the prospects for early education funding brighter next year. Moreover, expanding federal support for quality early education is less controversial than K-12 reform issues involved in NCLB reauthorization, and moving a stand-alone early education bill could be a good way for the new administration and Congress to score an early victory on education prior to tackling the tougher NCLB reauthorization. The Child Care and Development Block Grant is also due for reauthorization, providing an additional vehicle to advance early education reforms in exchange for increased investment.

Early education has been largely ignored at the federal level in the past eight years, as funding for federal early childhood programs has stagnated and states have taken the lead in advancing early education quality and access. That seems likely to change in the next Congress and administration. Early Ed Watch will be keeping a close eye on federal policy developments that affect early education in the next Congress and administration.

Don't Forget to Vote!

Sara Mead — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 15:38:00 -0500

Whichever way you're voting today, I think we can all agree that these political babies are adorable. Since they can't vote, please remember them when you do.

Photos courtesy of flickr users Ladd, dwyeropolis, stirnaman.photo, and Brian Finifter, used under a Creative Commons license.

Campaign 2008: Early Education Roundup

Sara Mead — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 19:33:00 -0500

Tomorrow, millions of Americans will go to the polls to vote for the next president, as well as a host of down-ticket races. As the 2008 campaign draws to a close, Early Ed Watch takes a look back at the role of early education issues in the 2008 campaign. The economic situation, Iraq war, and national security issues consumed most of voters' attention this year, so educational issues in general didn't get a great deal of attention. But in many ways this was a breakthrough year for early education. For the first time ever, presidential candidates for both major political parties--Democratic candidate Barack Obama and Republican candidate John McCain--put forward early education policy agendas that recognized the importance of high-quality early education, demonstrating that support for quality early education is a bipartisan issue. Early education also got a high-profile shoutout in the presidential debates.

Throughout the 2008 campaign season, Early Ed Watch has been keeping tabs on the candidates' positions on early education, as well as how early education issues are being covered (or too often ignored) in the media coverage of the campaign. Along the way, we didn't get very many answers to the questions we posed about the candidates' early education agendas, but we did learn we're not very good at predicting vice presidential picks. As you prepare to vote tomorrow, we're pleased to provide this roundup of our coverage of early education issues in the 2008 campaign:

New America Debate with McCain Education Policy Adviser Lisa Graham Keegan and Obama Education Adviser Jon Schnur

Candidates' Early Education Positions

John McCain Unveils Education Agenda at NAACP Conference

Barack Obama's Early Education Agenda

And Then There Were Two

Barack Obama Links Early Ed to America's Economic Well-Being

An Early Education Agenda John McCain Could Love?

Party Platforms

Early Education in the Republican Party Platform

Early Education in the Democratic Party Platform

Debate Coverage

Is Education Worth Just 11 Minutes?

5 Early Education Questions for Tonight's Debate (and, no, we never did get answers to them!)

Shoutout for Early Education in Presidential Debate

Debate Watch: Early Education Questions for the Candidates (didn't get answers then, either)

Primary Coverage

Ignoring Early Education

Assessing the Presidential Candidates on Early Education

Vice Presidential Candidates

What's Missing from Sarah Palin's Special Education Speech?

Veepstakes Watch: Republicans and Early Ed (and, yes, we missed eventual nominee Sarah Palin)

Veepstakes Watch: Democrats and Early Ed (again, we missed eventual nominee Joe Biden here as well)

And The Award for Best Voiceover of The Political Season Goes to...

Joe Mathews — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 19:18:00 -0400

It may be just that your blogger has a weakness for films such as Jackie Brown and Pulp Fiction, and has long suggested that the entire South Bay region of Los Angeles be known widely as "Tarantino-land." But I've not heard a better, more striking voiceover than the one to this No on Prop 8 ad. The voice belongs to actor Samuel L. Jackson, and no one else could quite deliver the following line in the same way: "That was a sorry time in our history."

One caveat: the message -- linking the fight for gay marriage to previous fights against racial and ethnic discrimination -- is a risky one. In interviews I did for pieces in the Washington Post, I was struck by the anger about churchgoers about this particular sort of argument. To them, it sounds as though their faith is being called racist.

What's Missing from Sarah Palin's Special Education Speech? Early Education

Sara Mead — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 15:59:00 -0400

Today Governor Sarah Palin, the Republican candidate for Vice President, gave her first major policy address, offering a set of policy proposals to improve the education of children with special needs. As Palin noted in her speech, quality early education programs are particularly important for children with special needs. So federal policy proposals to change or improve special education are relevant to early education.

Palin offered three proposals: Change federal regulations to allow/encourage more states to adopt special education vouchers modeled off of Florida's McKay Scholarship voucher program for students with disabilities; fully fund the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA); and reform special education programs.

Providing vouchers with students who have disabilities, to enable their parents of children with special needs to move to another school when the current public school fails to provide the services they need, sounds like a good idea. But, as Andrew Rotherham and I have written elsewhere, there are a number of problems with such proposals: First, it's simply not true that vouchers are the only way for children with disabilities to access private school services if they need them. Children with disabilities already have a right to a "Free Appropriate Public Education" (or FAPE)--including publicly funded education at a private school that can provide FAPE if the public schools are unable to do so. And thousands of children with special needs currently attend private schools at public expense. Second, by offering vouchers only to students with special needs, programs like the McKay scholarship create an incentive for parents to seek out disability diagnoses for their children--something that demographic data from the McKay program suggests may be happening. When parents seek out a diagnosis for learning disabilities, or ADHD, or other health impairments for children who don't actually need the additional services, in order to get a voucher, that places a label on the child, increases the public costs of special education, and reduces resources available for children with more substantial needs. Finally, we have very little information on outcomes for students participating in these programs, so there's no evidence that they "work" in terms of improving achievement for students with disabilities. Parental choice is important for all children, but particularly so for children with disabilities, and that's why IDEA gives parents a critical role in the IEP process. Expanding choice for chidlren with disabilities is a valid goal, but in the long run policies like expanding access to charter schools, and building the capacity of charter schools to serve students with special needs, will have a greater impact on increasing meaningful choices for these students.

Palin also suggests that McKay-like proposals would help more children with special needs gain access to appropriate early education services, something we agree is termendously important. But she's wrong. Under Florida law, children cannot obtain a McKay voucher unless they've been enrolled in a Florida public school for at least a year. In contrast, children who have been identified with disabilities and have Individual Family Service Plans under IDEA could enroll directly in a private program if that's what's needed to provide them FAPE and what their families want for them.

In contrast to the voucher proposals, there's nothing inherently wrong with Palin's proposal to fully fund IDEA. It's just terribly expensive. IDEA "full funding" is determined by a formula that multiplies the number of children with special needs, by the average per pupil expenditure in the United States, by 40 percent. For fiscal year 2008, fully funding IDEA would cost more than $25 billion dollars--more than double the roughly $11 billion the federal government spent on IDEA Part B grants this year. "Fully funding" IDEA next year would require roughly $15 billion in additional federal education spending--hardly consistent with Sen. McCain's proposals to freeze domestic spending, and nearly as much as the $18 billion cost of Sen. Barack Obama's entire early education and K-12 school reform proposals.

We have the most questions, though about Palin's proposals to reform IDEA. Palin states that "Just as the federal government expects proven results in the progress of other students, we must require results as well in the achievements of students with disabilities." But NCLB already requires school districts to include students with disabilities in assessments, to report separately on their performance, and to meet performance goals for the achievement of students with disabilities. For children with severe disabilities who can't take the regular state standards assessment, the law requires alternative or modified assessments.

Palin also mentions that IDEA needs to do more to support children with special needs before school age. We couldn't agree more. But the federal government already spends $436 million on IDEA programs for infants and toddlers, and another $380 million on IDEA pre-kindergarten programs for children with special needs. These programs are among the major sources of publicly funded pre-k in many states. Do we need to do more to improve the quality of special education programs for children birth through 5? Probably, and that's one of the reasons we need to rethink what it means to fully fund special education. It's also one reason why both the federal government and the states should invest more in early education programs for all children--not just those with special eneds.

There are many children, like Trig Palin, who are born with special needs and to whom we have an obligation to provide high-quality special education services that will help them achieve their full potential. But we also know that the majority of children identified with disabilities have less intense needs, such as learning disabilities or ADHD. And in many cases, these children are in special education simply because they did not benefit from high-quality reading instruction, or appropriate support for social-emotional development and self-regulation, in the preschool and early elementary years. High-quality pre-k programs have been demonstrated to reduce rates of special education placement--and in doing so to produce substantial savings for the public education system. Similarly, programs that support scientifically-based reading instructional and appropriate interventions for struggling readers in the early grades, can reduce the need for special education later. Increasing federal investment in high-quality pre-k--not just for children with disabilities, but for all children at risk for poor school performance--must be an important part of any strategy to improve special education, along with implementation of effective reading programs in the early grades.

Is Education Worth Just 11 Minutes?

Christina Satkowski — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 20:22:00 -0400

This year it was Joe the Plumber. In 2000, the average-American stand-in in the presidential debates was Kailey, a student at Sarasota High School in Florida who had to stand in the back of her science classroom because the class was severely overcrowded and there wasn't enough space to give her a desk. Vice President Gore pointed to Kailey's experience repeatedly in the 2000 debates to illustrate the need for smaller class sizes and federal funding for school construction.

"I want the federal government, consistent with local control and new accountability, to make improvement of our schools the number one priority," the Vice President said in the first debate, "so Kailey will have a desk and can sit down in a classroom where she can learn."

Of course, that was before September 11, the Iraq War, and the current financial crisis -- issues that have consumed most of the attention in the current presidential campaign cycle, leaving relatively little space for substantive discussions of education policy. In contrast to the 2000 campaign, when voters rated education as their #1 issue, and each debate featured at least one exchange on education, education slipped into the 2008 presidential debates just minutes before the final buzzer sounded. This year, the candidates spent just eleven minutes talking about education in one debate, in a rushed conversation that barely touched on their actual policy differences between them. Gov. Palin also made a brief statement on education in response to a question about working class Americans. Those 11 minutes seem paltry compared to the 28 minutes that then-Governor George W. Bush and then-Vice President Al Gore devoted to education in 2000. But it's better than the 2004 debates, when moderators didn't ask a single question about education, and the candidates spent only 2.5 minutes talking about it.

Early Ed Watch did the math*:

2000: Bush-Gore

First Debate: 9 mins (question and answer)

Second Debate: 4 mins (2 mins each in Bush and Gore statements)

Third Debate: 10 mins (question and answer)

Vice Presidential Debate: 5 mins (question and answer)

Total: 28 mins

2004: Bush-Kerry

First Debate: Nothing

Second Debate: Nothing, again

Third Debate: 1.5 mins (in statement by Sen. Kerry)

Vice Presidential Debate: 1 min (in statement by Vice President Cheney)

Total: 2.5 mins

2008: McCain-Obama

First Debate: Nothing

Second Debate: Nothing, again

Third Debate: 11 mins (question and answer)

Vice Presidential Debate: 2 mins (in statement by Gov. Palin)

Total: 13 mins

It is unfortunate that education gets such uneven attention in the debates and the presidential campaigns in general. Of course, a lot of things change from debate to debate, and campaign to campaign, including formats, moderators, and the priority of issues in voters' minds. This year, surveys show that economic and national security concerns have nudged out education from voters' priority lists. At this rate, we may not hear much more about the candidates' education plans until one of them is elected president. As final debate moderator Bob Schieffer noted, however, our failure to adequately educate all American children is an issue with serious long-term economic and national security implications, so how we're going to improve our children's education needs to be included in conversations about those issues.

Of course, some things never change: Like Joe the Plumber of 2008, the plight of Kailey the Student in 2000 was exaggerated in the debates. While her school was very crowded, it turns out she stood in class for only one day.

* These times include both questions and answers about education, as well as occasions when the candidates initiated a substantive discussion on education in statements or responses to questions on other topics. It does not include passing references to education - for example, "I will focus on X, Y, Z, and education ..." - which were in fact quite frequent in the 2004 debates. Nor does it include conversations about University of Illinois-Chicago Professor of Education Bill Ayers.

Al Franken

David Gray — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 20:57:00 -0400

If Al Franken wins the Senate seat in MN, I think the Dems likely win the all important 60 seats. Saturday Night Live needs to have a statement that this will be the best political achievement for SNL since "Senator and Mrs. Blutowski" from Animal House.

Campaign Watch: 5 Early Education Questions for Tonight's Debate

Sara Mead — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 12:48:00 -0400

The second debate between presidential candidates Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) takes place tonight at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn. Early education has already emerged as a topic in the first presidential debate. Here are some questions Early Ed Watch would like to see the candidates answer tonight or in the final debate later this month:

1. A generation ago the United State led the world in levels of educational attainment, but rates of high school and college graduation have stagnated, and we are now at risk of losing our leadership position on education. Columnist David Brooks has identified this "skills slowdown" as "the biggest issue facing the country," and has proposed increased early education investment as one response. As president, what will you do to reverse the skills slowdown and restore our nation's position as first in the world in educational attainment?

2. One in four American students who enter high school as ninth graders fails to graduate within four years, as do half of Latino and African American students. Research shows that failure to read and do math at grade level by the end of third grade is a strong predictor of later school failure and dropout. As president, what will you do to ensure that all American students achieve grade level proficiency by third grade?

3. For Sen. McCain: You have proposed freezing domestic spending at current levels. Federal funding for the Child Care and Development Block Grant has been virtually frozen since 2002, and 150,000 children have lost child care assistance as a result. At a time when American families are under greater economic pressure than ever, how can you be sure that this policy won't undermine our recovery by making it more difficult for parents to work and support their families?

4. For Sen. Obama: You have proposed investing an additional $10 billion annually in early education programs. Given the current economic situation, do you see a need to scale back this investment? If you must scale back your plan in order to get it through Congress, which investments will you prioritize, and which will you postpone?

5. In your view, what is the appropriate division of responsibility to pay for an ensure the quality of early education for young children, between parents, states, and the federal government?

Financial - political thoughts

David Gray — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 13:11:00 -0400

Oh why did this have to happen in the fall in an even/election year of the 8th year of a presidency. any other time the vote passes yesterday.

Thursday Congress returns to debate the financial crisis. Do you wonder if McCain wishes he had Romney now heading into the debate with Biden that night instead of Palin?