An early education can make a profound difference in a child’s life. It gives them the chance to enter kindergarten ready to learn and succeed. Study after study has identified the benefits of an early education – boosting high school graduation rates and future career opportunities, while substantially reducing the risk that that child will commit a crime or need public assistance later in life. It is one of the most effective public investments we can make.
In the U.S. Senate, I’ll demand that we fund Head Start - the chief federal early education program – to allow every eligible 3- and 4-year old up to 100% of the federal poverty line to enroll in the program. Head Start provides grants to local public and private non-profit and for-profit agencies to provide a full range of services to disadvantaged children and their families. That would expand Head Start services to about 900,000 more children across America.
Beyond this targeted assistance, it is time to ensure that every American family has access to affordable child care. That is why it is time to reform the child care block grant system to create a federal-state partnership to ensure the necessary assistance for all working families with incomes below 200 percent of the federal poverty line to obtain affordable child care.
K-12
It is no secret that in the past six years, many educators, administrators, parents and politicians have complained long and loud about No Child Left Behind. What remains a mystery, to me at least, is why so few members of Congress had the courage and the sense to vote against this law when it was first proposed. For it is, and always should have been, fairly obvious that NCLB was, from the beginning, the domestic policy equivalent of the war in Iraq – a proposal sold on blatantly false pretenses, to fulfill an agenda that had little or nothing to do with the Administration’s stated rationale.
The basic idea of No Child Left Behind – that the federal government would increase its share of the nation’s education spending from something like 8 percent to 10 percent and that as a result every child in the country would be above average by 2014 – is ridiculous. I do not believe that ANY amount of funding could achieve NCLB’s impossible goals, and the Federal government never discussed providing anywhere near enough money to even make a good-faith effort.
So what was the real Bush administration rationale for passing No Child Left Behind? I’ll tell you what my mother, one of the nation’s first Head Start teachers, said at the time: “The purpose of this law is to discredit and then privatize public education. In 2014, they’ll say: ‘See? Public education has failed. They haven’t made every child above average. So it’s time for vouchers and privatization.’"
Repeal No Child Left Behind
In the U.S. Senate, I’ll push for repeal of No Child Left Behind’s provisions punishing schools for failing to make adequately year progress. I am a strong supporter of disaggregated tracking of students’ performance and increased assistance for Title I schools for teaching training, reducing class sizes, remedial education and tutoring and other programs to boost student performance, but labeling schools as failing and punishing them for students’ test scores is a recipe for failure. The federal government can play a critical role in fostering, studying and sharing the most promising education practices in America and around the world. Shifting the U.S. Department of Education from issuing sanctions to building cooperation and collaboration is sorely needed.
Fully Fund the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
When Congress originally passed the Act, it promised to provide for 40 percent of the cost of educating students with special needs. To date, it has never come close to living up to that promise. Instead, state and local governments are asked to pick up the extra cost – often pitting children and parents against school administrators and other parents in a destructive zero-sum game.
A New Green School Buildings Program.
There are billions of dollars in deferred maintenance and needed improvements to schools across America. In some cases, these facilities are decrepit and dangerous, putting our children at risk. The federal government should lead the way with new and fully-remodeled energy-efficient buildings to provide our children with a strong learning environment and provide a national kick start to energy efficient green building.
National Health Care Reform.
As surprising as it sounds, the single most effective step the federal government can take to improve school funding and put more money into the classroom is pass comprehensive national health care reform. Rising health costs are a huge drain on local budgets, as we have seen in Oregon in recent years where funding increases are largely consumed by the rising cost of benefits.
Post-Secondary Education
After World War Two, the GI Bill began a period where the federal government gave students the help they needed to get that additional education to start a career or pursue a dream. I don’t see any reason we can’t get back to that commitment again.
I was fortunate to enter college when I was 14 because it meant I finished in 1981 – before Reagan broke that compact and slashed federal aid programs. I graduated from college with no debt – a near impossible task for low- and middle-income families in America today.
I support a strong reinvestment in grant-based assistance through a couple primary means: expanding the Pell Grant program and a major expansion in national service.
In 1979-1980, the maximum Pell Grant covered 99 percent of the average cost of a community college, 77 percent of a public university and 36 percent of a private institution. Today, those numbers are 62 percent, 36 percent and 15 percent, respectively. To get back to a real federal investment in public education, I will fight to increase the maximum grant to 75-50-25 – meaning three-fourths of the average cost of community college, half of four-year public institutions and a quarter of private colleges and universities.
We also should look at substantially expanding AmeriCorps and federal national service programs to give students’ the opportunity to give back to their community.
