Education
Abraham Lincoln
Principles
Maintaining America’s preeminence requires a world-class system of education, with high standards, in which all students can reach their potential. That requires considerable improvement over our current 70 percent high school graduation rate and six-year graduation rate of only 57 percent for colleges.
- Local Control: Local teachers, administrators, school boards and parents should be making decisions about how to run their school.
- Kids First: The interests of students and parents should come before the teachers union.
- Curriculum: Our children should spend the maximum amount of time in instruction and be distracted less with sex education and other social engineering.
- The Department of Education: Too many of our school funds are going to Washington DC bureaucrats instead of the classroom.
Dan's Record
No Child Left Behind
The intent of the landmark “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) Federal education law was to reinvent education in America in search of stronger accountability for results, more freedom for States and communities, proven education methods, and more choices for parents. I believe that the governance of education is best done at the local level, where the parents, teachers, administrators, and students are intimately more aware of the needs of their schools. We need to take into account that students and schools are very unique with very different needs that require very different approaches. Toward that end, I support allowing the States to assume greater autonomy over education and returning accountability to parents and communities rather than nameless Washington bureaucrats
As we approach the reauthorization of NCLB a number of initiatives to reform NCLB will be debated in Congress. I believe that there is wide spread agreement that all schools should have high expectations for all students and that educators should be accountable for their progress in helping all children learn. The House Committee on Education and the Workforce has the primary jurisdiction for reauthorizing NCLB. Although I am not a member of that committee, I will be watching their deliberations on this issue as closely as possible. While I am cautious about the Federal government’s role in education, I firmly believe that as long as the Federal government is involved in education, it is important for Congress to ensure that tax dollars spent on education get channeled to those programs which are most effective for all students, including adult learners.
Home Schooling
From 1965 until enactment of the NCLB in 2002, the Federal government spent more than $227 billion on elementary and secondary education. Despite that considerable investment, academic achievement essentially flat lined during that time period. While NCLB, for the first time ever, coupled Federal funding to improvements in academic achievement, those reforms have been generally resisted by an education establishment that seems to want to put preservation of the system above elevation of the student. As a result we still have children trapped in chronically under-performing schools; parents with little or no ability to send them elsewhere; and quality teachers leaving the profession because they are frustrated with a system that fails to recognize and reward success.
I believe we can still turn this situation around by giving parents greater control over their children's education. That is why I wholeheartedly support home schooling; it empowers parents and gives them the ability to create and tailor a flexible program that is best suited for their child. Homeschooling has been a major part of this Nation's history since its founding. In fact, from 1620 until the mid-1800s, most parents in America taught their children to read at home. Notable Americans such as Benjamin Franklin, John Quincy Adams, Patrick Henry, Ansel Adams, Charles Dickens, and General Douglas MacArthur all received a high-quality education at home. Today more than 2.1 million children are homeschooled and studies have confirmed that children who are educated at home consistently score higher on achievement tests and college entrance exams than non-homeschooled children.
Higher Education
One of the biggest financial challenges facing many American families today is how to pay for college. Decades of dramatically increasing costs, in both good economic times and bad, are threatening to push the dream of a college education out of reach for millions of students and families. The Department of Education will provide more than $83 billion this year, about 60 percent of all student aid, to help millions of students and families pay for postsecondary education. While the intent of this level of spending is admirable, it does nothing to actually hold down the cost of a higher education. According to recent College Board statistics, the average 2007-2008 costs at four-year public and private colleges increased 6.6 and 6.3 percent respectively from the previous year. For a public two-year college, the costs increased 4.2 percent.
I believe that students and parents would benefit from greater financial transparency from colleges, and I hope that colleges take the first step by making their entire financial report public, so students and their parents can better understand and decipher the true costs of the education they are choosing. In addition to giving parents and students more information, I believe we should give people more control over their own money; because in my opinion Hoosiers know far better than the bureaucrats in Washington how their own money should be spent.
That’s why I am a strong advocate for bills that will truly help families to alleviate the burden of a college education. For instance, I support making permanent the tax deduction for qualified tuition and related expenses. I also support increasing the annual contribution limit to Coverdell education savings accounts. I believe we need to make permanent the tax deduction for qualified tuition and related expenses; increase the maximum amount of such deduction to $5,000 and repeal provisions requiring a phase-out of the deduction based on adjusted gross income; and allow grandparents to claim a deduction for the tuition and related expenses of their grandchildren.
Resources
