ELL Advocates

Watching last night’s Democratic debate, after all the bickering died down, I was struck by the depth of policy knowledge and reform ideas articulated by all three candidates (transcript here) — at least when it came to combating poverty, overhauling health care, and promoting racial justice. All of them agreed that, as Senator Clinton put it, “you don’t hear the Republicans talking about any of this.”

Education, however, went largely unmentioned. A symptom, I’m afraid, that none of the Democrats have much depth in this area. They all have education “plans,” of course. They all favor a major increase in federal support for K-12 and pre-K schooling, just as you’d expect. They all say they oppose the obsession with standardized testing. What’s lacking, though, is a coherent vision of what should take the place of No Child Left Behind.

Susan Ohanian has compiled an interesting list of education-related statements by all the candidates, so voters can “choose which lies we want to believe.” Naturally, these statements should be viewed critically. Complaining that politicians tend to shade the truth, however, is about as useful as complaining that wolves are cold-blooded killers. It’s the nature of the species.

John Edwards offers the most detailed (and most progressive) blueprint on how to improve schools. But at this point, his best shot appears to be as the vice presidential candidate on an Obama ticket.

Pronouncements made in electoral campaigns are soon forgotten in any case. They do offer clues about what to expect later. But other indicators may be more important, such as the company politicians keep on issues like education. (Click here for a partial list of the candidates’ education advisers.)

Hillary Clinton has had a close relationship with the Center for American Progress, a liberal think-tank founded by John Podesta, Bill Clinton’s last chief of staff. Hillary’s campaign policy director, Neera Tanden, was formerly a senior official at CAP and a domestic policy adviser in the Clinton White House.

While truly progressive on many issues, on education CAP teamed up with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce last year to produce Leaders and Laggards, a report bemoaning the quality of U.S. schools. Announcing the report, Podesta claimed there is “not a single state in the country where a majority of 4th or 8th graders proficient in math and reading.” Gerald Bracey has eviscerated CAP’s methodology and bestowed a dreaded Rotten Apple Award for 2007.

In a similar vein, Senator Clinton has longstanding ties to Marc Tucker, a previous Rotten Apple awardee. As president of the National Center on Education and the Economy, In 2006, Tucker helped to produce a kind of 21st century edition of A Nation at Risk entitled Tough Choices or Tough Times. It warns that American schools are turning out future workers who are woefully underskilled — such a crisis that, without radical changes, American “competitiveness” will be sacrificed. Among other things, those changes would include universal high-school exit exams.

I first encountered Tucker at a 1986 conference he organized in Little Rock, where Bill and Hillary Clinton played major roles. Even then, it was clear they go way back.

Barack Obama has hired another CAP alumna, Cassandra Butts, as his campaign’s education adviser. Unofficially, though, he is getting a quite different perspective from Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford University. While Darling-Hammond lends support to the 21st-century-skills doomsayers, she’s clear on the damage that high-stakes testing has wrought in the area of critical thinking. Last September before a House subcommittee, she provided powerful testimony calling for a thorough overhaul of NCLB. Let’s hope Obama listens carefully.

None of this predicts how Clinton or Obama would handle education challenges as president. But it does offer useful clues that go beyond the campaign rhetoric.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008 at 5:32 pm and is filed under NCLB, 2008 elections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.