September 5, 2008

McCain Attacks Obama on Education at RNC

Posted by Aaron Tang at 5:22PM

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Give John McCain credit: he spent more than two whole minutes talking about public education in his nomination acceptance speech last night, and about his general vision for improving our schools if he's elected president elected president. Barack Obama, for what it's worth, only spent seventy seconds in his acceptance speech last week.

Senator McCain begins explaining his views on public education in the first minute of the above video, with a bold pronouncement that, "Education is the Civil Rights issue of this century." He continues to talk about the importance of giving every child access to a good school, and the role of the government in providing families with choices if their neighborhood public school is failing. It is all pretty standard rhetoric at this point for Republican candidates--and rather appealing rhetoric at that. This is especially the case since many of those who are against the controversial idea of vouchers can understand the sentiment of wanting to provide all children with the chance to get out of a chronically low-performing school.

But at two minutes and fifty-three seconds, Senator McCain fires a direct shot across the bow at his opponent, saying, "Sen. Obama wants our schools to answer to unions and entrenched bureaucracies. I want schools to answer to parents and students." A powerful charge, indeed, which the McCain campaign hopes to mount as part of a broader challenge against the idea that Senator Obama will bring change to Washington, DC. If Senator Obama only wants to make schools answer to unions and bereaucracies, after all, how will that put children in any better a position than they are today?

The problem is, the charge is patently false. Regardless of whether one has conservative or liberal leanings on public education issues, no objective observer could look at the Obama education plan without thinking that he is walking a fine line with regard to teachers unions, who have long been a friend to the Democratic party. Even a full year ago, Obama was making bold and risky statements to the face of the unions themselves. In July 2007 he appeared in front of the National Education Association to express his support for teacher merit pay, an idea that could not be more anathema to the unions.

In an election where both candidates have made unfair and at times inaccurate statements about each others' records and character, one would hope that an issue as important as the education of millions of children might be sacred ground. For the next two months, sadly, it doesn't seem that this will be the case.