Getting Questions Answered by the US Candidates

My teacher leader colleague posted questions in the San Francisco Chronicle and  both Senators Clinton and Obama responded. I think these are worth a quick read and while not technology/learning community focused-- worth highlighting here.

So how about you? Have you posed your questions to the candidates yet?

Chronicle readers question the candidates: Sen. Hillary Clinton

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/03/MN6KUR81L.DTL&type=politics

Is anything worth saving in No Child Left Behind? How much of a monetary role do you see the federal government having in education, particularly K-12, as opposed to a bully pulpit role?

- Carol Strand, 65, Berkeley
Sen Clinton: Well, Carol, one of the reasons I'm running for President is to ensure a better America for our children. Ensuring educational opportunities for all children and raising education standards in our nation's schools has been a cause of mine for over thirty five years now, ever since I joined the Children's Defense Fund out of law school. I believe that every child should be taught by a qualified teacher in a school that is held accountable for educating every child - that is why I supported the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) back in 2001. Then, the law represented a historic promise - more funding for more accountability. But quickly thereafter, it became clear that the promise had been broken. I have been an outspoken advocate for reforming No Child Left Behind since 2002, and now I believe it's time to get rid of the law. I believe we should reward schools that make progress instead of punishing schools that struggle. I oppose the one-size-fits-all approach to addressing the challenges facing schools, and am pushing for more flexibility in the law. I have also called for less teaching to the test, a more well-rounded curriculum, and a system that demands that our children take fewer tests and that those tests be of higher quality. Every year since the law was enacted, I have co-sponsored legislation, written to the appropriations committee and spoken out aggressively about the need to fully fund NCLB.


I'm fighting to improve the quality of every child's education from preschool through college, to make sure that every child has an equal chance to succeed because each is taught by a qualified teacher in a modern classroom - especially in K-12 education. This means providing funding and oversight at the federal level with comprehensive plans that will provide quality universal pre-kindergarten education, a youth opportunity agenda to bridge the achievement gap and a college affordability plan that will ensure a quality and equal start for our children from start to finish.

Since standardized tests offer such a limited measurement of student learning, and have undesirable consequences, are there other means you could envision schools and teachers using to measure student learning?

- Anthony Cody, 49, Oakland
Sen. Clinton: This is an important issue, Anthony, because with No Child Left Behind (NCLB) school curricula rely too heavily on standardized tests at the expense of student creativity. Instead of focusing on standardized testing as a measure to reform schools, our focus should be on starting with proven remedies, such as smaller class sizes and enhanced parent involvement and ensuring our children are being taught by qualified teachers. We need a president that will prioritize learning more than memorizing. Currently, standardized tests determine the curriculum but it needs to be the other way around. It's time for us to rethink student assessments so that they measure students' problem solving and creative thinking abilities. And we need to reduce the influence of standardized tests in our schools.

Our public education system is becoming less globally competitive and more separate and unequal from the weight of No Child Left Behind and economically driven district gerrymandering --thus widening the education gap between the affluent (haves) and the poor (have-nots). What solutions do you offer to have a more rigorous, relevant, equal, and global competitive public school system?

- Cory Haynes, 33, Napa
Chronicle readers question the candidates: Sen. Barack Obamahttp://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/03/MNC0URFOC.DTL&type=politics

Sen. Obama: The goal of NCLB is the right one - ensuring that all children can meet high standards. But unfulfilled funding promises, inadequate implementation by the Department of Education, and shortcomings in the design of the law itself have limited its effectiveness and undercut its support among many people who care deeply about our schools and our students.

One of the greatest troubles of NCLB is that we have spent too much time preparing students for tests that do not provide any valuable, timely feedback on how to improve a student's learning. We need assessments that are useful to improve student learning. As president, I will work with the nation's governors and educators to create assessment models that will: provide educators and students with timely feedback about how to improve student performance; measure readiness for college and success in an information-age workplace by testing reading comprehension, writing skills, scientific reasoning, and other critical thinking skills; and indicate whether individual students are actually making progress toward reaching high standards.

We also need to work together to ensure that a qualified and successful teacher is in every classroom in America. While the current "highly qualified" standards for teacher quality are important, it is not clear that they are the only criteria on which we should assess the quality of our teachers. Particularly at a time when our nation is facing a shortage in teachers due to retirement and retention problems, it is important to ensure that we can attract, support, and retain high-quality teachers. Many states and local governments have seen successful results from experimenting with alternative preparation programs, innovative incentives to subsidize teacher training and interest in serving in high-need schools, and increased teacher support through mentoring, effective professional development, and the support of professional learning communities within schools, so that teachers can work together to improve their practice.

In the Senate, I've introduced legislation to create Teacher Residency Programs to provide incentives for talented individuals to enter profession by teaching as apprentices in the classrooms of expert veteran teachers while completing coursework for certification and pledging at least three years of service in the sponsoring district. As president, I will expand the number of Teacher Residency Programs by providing funding for 200 new programs that would each serve an average of 150 candidates each year. Each year, my plan will supply 30,000 exceptionally well-prepared recruits to high-need schools to provide long-term commitment and leadership in these districts.

In addition, I have proposed a substantial program of service scholarships to underwrite the preparation of teachers who will teach in high-need locations and fields and the provision of mentors to beginning teachers so they will stay in the profession.

But fixing NCLB is not an education policy. It's just a starting point. That's why I introduced a comprehensive plan to give every American child the chance to receive the best education America has to offer - from the moment they're born to the day they graduate college.

Since standardized tests offer such a limited measurement of student learning, and have undesirable consequences, are there other means you could envision schools and teachers using to measure student learning?

- Anthony Cody, 49, Oakland
Sen. Obama: I've set forth an education plan that describes in detail robust measures of student learning. And I've made clear that I do not support traditional "merit pay" if that simply means paying teachers more on the basis of student test scores. Linking teacher pay to a single standardized test does not accurately reflect teacher performance or student learning, and I believe we need develop more innovative and robust systems.

I support systems such as those being used in Denver right now, and my Career Ladder initiative will encourage the adoption of such educational reforms throughout the country. Measures of student learning in specific subject areas may include scored writing samples or reading samples, mathematics assessments, assessments of science or history knowledge, or even musical performances. In some schools, teachers use their own fall and spring classroom assessments as a way of gauging student progress. These measures can also be tailored for the learning goals of specific students (for example, special education students or English language learners.)

So if you're a Language Arts teacher, a Career Ladder might look to your students' papers, or how many books they've read, in addition to their performance on classroom exams. If you are a science teacher, it would collect evidence about the quality of students' science investigations as juried by evaluators at a science fair or about the number of students passing the AP test in their field.

Student success can also include other outcomes, such as improved behavior, attendance, work completion, and course passage.

In Denver's system, teachers set two goals annually in collaboration with the principal, and document student progress toward these goals using district, school, or teacher-made assessments to show growth. So the teachers themselves are involved in selecting the criteria upon which they are evaluated.