McCain on Education

Strolling through John McCain's policy proposals is a fascinating experience . . . lurking behind every link is a nearly-astounding level of vacuity. Take education where McCain promises that:

John McCain will place parents and children at the center of the education process, empowering parents by greatly expanding the ability of parents to choose among schools for their children. He believes all federal financial support must be predicated on providing parents the ability to move their children, and the dollars associated with them, from failing schools.

Now at first I thought this was McCain committing himself to the proposition that each and every state would need to choose between voucherizing its school system and losing all federal funding. But then I checked around and it turns out that on another reading, this is nothing more than what No Child Left Behind already requires. So basically on school choice McCain is either proposing the most extreme pro-vouchers proposal available to the federal government, or else he's proposing to continue the status quo absolutely. Or maybe something in between! You'd think that with 25 years in congress under his belt, McCain might have formed some kind of opinions about federal education policy, but it seems not.

Comments

I think his plan is to sit all the important people down and tell them he wants them to stop fooling around and fix education.

Voila! It's fixed!

Posted by riffle | March 6, 2008 5:39 PM

Yes, riffle, but only if there are television cameras involved. Otherwise, there's really no point in getting all those people together. He might as well just do an interview where he says the word education. Now that I mention it, maybe that's the better plan after all.

Posted by Ryno | March 6, 2008 5:44 PM

It's not about policy, it's about putting incompetent Republican party hacks behind every desk in Washington. Education-schmeducation!

Posted by Daddy Love | March 6, 2008 6:22 PM

Where is the link to Ms. Mead? Surely she could say John McCain sucks as well as you can.

At some point, she's going to notice that you link to Megan McArdle more than you do to her. Then the crockery-throwing will begin.

Posted by mq | March 6, 2008 6:29 PM

"You'd think that with 25 years in congress under his belt, McCain might have formed some kind of opinions about federal education policy, but it seems not."

Since us conservatives believe that there shouldn't be a "federal education policy" in the first place, this may be a big point in McCain's favor with some in the base. lol

If McCain were to propose abolishing the U.S. Department of Education (Which doesn't educate anyone and hasn't since its creation) and use the money that currently being spent on worthless programs, paperwork, salaries and pensions of bureaucrats in DC and instead gave it to poor parents, even up to 300% of poverty that the Dems want to apply for SCHIP, to sent their children to the school of their choice, would liberals approve or disapprove?

My guess is that liberals would disapprove since they value having the political power provided by the teachers' and government employees' unions over providing for the educational needs of the millions poor and mostly minority children, who are trapped in the hellholes that passes for schools in the urban areas that the Dems already run.

Posted by Chicounsel | March 6, 2008 6:57 PM

McCain is actually a blank slate. He's a loose cannon. How is he going to fill an administration? I can't guess, can anyone? Is he really a militarist? Could be, seems to be, who knows?

Provocatively he said he would leave the economy up to the Fed, which by the way isn't really part of the government. You know when Bernanke the other day rambled on his non answer to Ron Paul which amounted to putting inflation way way back in the worry department he was booed on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile exchange where the dollar is tanking and commodities are going to the moon.

The Fed deficit will be around a trillion by late 09, and I suppose by then it will occur to McCain that the war with Iran wasn't such a good idea. Insofar as Americans are weak and don't want to sacrifice.

Posted by rapier | March 6, 2008 7:02 PM

More school choice seems to be the stock Republican answer, which in McCain's case means he hasn't thought about it at all.
However, its not too hard to imagine what his plan will be once he does think about it: a huge government program to teach kids to be proud of America. And to kill foreigners.

Posted by Travis | March 6, 2008 7:29 PM

McCain has a plan to bring all American states' public schools down to the levels recently achieved in California (44th to 49th place on the various NAEP tests): the McCain-Kennedy Immigration Bill.

Posted by Steve Sailer | March 6, 2008 8:34 PM

Actually, I think McCain's decades of experience in the Senate have given him a unique and comprehensive understanding of America's education system.

He understands that there are no votes available from a clearly stated position, and therefore he is delivering the unwavering vacuity that we demand from our Presidential candidates. Next week he will promise to make us "Stronger at home, and respected abroad."

Yes, he can.

Posted by heedless | March 6, 2008 10:14 PM

heedless, above, is right.

I would add that the core constituency to which he'll be pandering are two and only two sorts: people who want nothing but lower taxes and people who will buy anything he's selling them, provided it's packaged in red-white-and-blue camo netting.

Pandering of that sort is guaranteed to generate dumb policy, but hey, ain't that America!

Posted by T.K. | March 6, 2008 10:35 PM

Once again, education is a proxy for larger, more complicated problems that people don't particularly want to think about.

The naivete required to believe that an impoverished, inner-city child in a crime-ridden neighborhood with a single parent is going to suddenly blossom into Doogie Howser because someone gave him a voucher to Madame McCardle's School for Precocious Youth... it really boggles the mind.

Posted by Freddie | March 6, 2008 11:03 PM

Look, it's clear that McCain doesn't know or care anything about education issues, and he isn't terribly bright either.

Basically, he just told his campaign policy people and pollster-consultants to sit down and put together some nice-sounding babble to represent his "education policy", since the media says that every presidential candidate has to have one.

Tomorrow's Posting: Matt spends a few paragraphs critiquing the philosophical roots of McCain's official position on eleven-dimensional Kaluza-Klein quantum field theory...

Posted by RKU | March 6, 2008 11:15 PM

What Freddie said; i know that's a blog comment cliche, but that is cut-to-the-chase truth.

Posted by Andruw | March 6, 2008 11:40 PM

Next week he will promise to make us "Stronger at home, and respected abroad."

Yes, he can.

Barack Obama's education policy. It's full of proposals. Click through for longer position papers.

If I could put a second link in the post, I'd give you a whole bunch of John Kerry's proposals for education policy in 2004. They're very easy to find.

It is simply not true that no candidate has policy specifics proposed. Most do. McCain is uniquely vacuous. Your implicit claim that McCain is no different from Kerry or Obama is incorrect.

Posted by DivGuy | March 6, 2008 11:51 PM

"If I could put a second link in the post, I'd give you a whole bunch of John Kerry's proposals for education policy in 2004. They're very easy to find."

Nah, it's much easier to shut your eyes, plug your ears and yell "NAHNAHNAH I'm not listening." You want to me to believe that somebody can be likable and smart?

Posted by JordanT | March 7, 2008 1:17 AM

Freddie,

"The naivete required to believe that an impoverished, inner-city child in a crime-ridden neighborhood with a single parent is going to suddenly blossom into Doogie Howser because someone gave him a voucher to Madame McCardle's School for Precocious Youth... it really boggles the mind."

You're being obtuse. First, let's dispense with the inaccurate euphemism "inner-city" -- Matt Yglesias grew up in an "inner-city" for heaven's sake. Second, let's acknowledge who we are talking about: mainly low-income black and Latino kids. Third, these kids tend not to be precocious, so there would be no point expecting them to thrive in a school for precocious youth. Fourth, just because they may not have the potential to be prodigies doesn't mean that we can't send some of them to schools which may do a better job of educating them than their current public schools. Fifth, such schools already exist, e.g., KIPP schools.

Posted by Fred | March 7, 2008 2:53 AM

"Tomorrow's Posting: Matt spends a few paragraphs critiquing the philosophical roots of McCain's official position on eleven-dimensional Kaluza-Klein quantum field theory..."

If Star Trek Drinking Game rules applied, this bit of Physics 903 would be cause for a drink. Maybe next, RKU will separate the saucer section and we can chug.

Posted by Juan | March 7, 2008 3:00 AM

I wonder how McCain will respond to this California Appeals Court ruling that homeschooling is illegal. Actually, I'm pretty sure he'll disagree with it.

The real question is, will either of the Democrats allow any space between themselves and the public education establishment? I won't be holding my breath, but it would be very refreshing to hear some suggestion that all this miraculous "Change" might have some bearing on the conduct of public education.

Posted by STS | March 7, 2008 3:34 AM

I spoke with the Dean for a Community College in Cleveland the other day. He said that 80% of the entering students required some sort of developmental educational. Nationally, only 2% of those entering developmental courses complete a two year degree. Sure, we've lots of problems with poor kids, and not just the black and hispanic ones. In the institution just north of Dallas where I teach we also have a huge problem with lazy middle class kids--the ones who don't want to have to read or write, who don't know how to propose and follow up on a research project, the ones who can't tell the difference between an apostrophe and a comma unless they think apostrophes make words plural. All across the country the systems designed to produce what's called accountability are already producing new and fancy ways to cook the books, only this time the problem is largely with the administrators not the teachers and faculty. Most of the above posts concerning the politics of education are thus pretty irrelevant to the scale and scope of the problem going forward. Any solution is going to take lots of time, many people, much smaller classes and a ton of money for salaries and resources.

Posted by djeri | March 7, 2008 7:57 AM

Chicounsel: Your idea is hilarious. There are about 50 million public school students in the U.S.--about 40% of them are economically disadvantaged.

The federal government currently spends about $25 million annually on K-12 education programs (not counting special ed, about another $10 billion, but focused on specific children).

So, I'm sure that $1.20 a kid is going to be hugely helpful to parents in buying their kids better schools.

Posted by flippantangel | March 7, 2008 9:52 AM

Shit, typo there. $1,200 a kid. Still not enough to pay for private school.

Posted by flippantangel | March 7, 2008 9:53 AM

Hang on. Forget the substance for a second. Just go to johnmccain.com and look at the background some flunky set up there. It looks like an anti-depressant ad. I half-expected to see the "Footprints" poem at the bottom of the screen, in script.

Posted by Lauren | March 7, 2008 9:55 AM

The real question is, will either of the Democrats allow any space between themselves and the public education establishment?

One of the Democrats already has.

Posted by Tractarian | March 7, 2008 9:57 AM

It seems that time and time again Obama proves to be the least partisan and most pragmatic candidate, but most people just don't know what to do with that so the lean back on the stupid right/left rhetoric we've had since the 60s.

McCain and Clinton both are trying to relive that time in their lives. Frankly, I don't want either of them, but it still ranks out:

1. Obama
2. McCain
3. Clinton

Posted by Chris | March 7, 2008 10:04 AM

McCain doesn't have 25 years of experience in the Senate; he has one year, which he has repeated 25 times. He doesn't have a single idea that he didn't have when he came in.

Posted by Hogan | March 7, 2008 10:17 AM

"My guess is that liberals would disapprove since they value having the political power provided by the teachers' and government employees' unions over providing for the educational needs of the millions poor and mostly minority children, who are trapped in the hellholes that passes for schools in the urban areas that the Dems already run.

Posted by Chicounsel | March 6, 2008 6:57 PM"

It is amazing how conservatives think that liberals only care about power and how our master plan involves using unions to achieve that goal. Tomorrow, we liberals plan to unionize Starbucks workers to get them to put mind-control devices in everybody's' bosses' morning lattes. Then we will rule the world and make bisexual orgies mandatory in high schools between watching Michel Gondry movies and listening to the Arcade Fire. !Viva la Revolucion!

At this point McCain has the entire conservative policy establishment at his disposal to write this stuff for him. It's amazing how the Republican race in McCain, Huckabee and Thompson has been marked by laziness while Romney played crazy con madlibs. If his plan is to demolish the DoE, can't he just say that?

Posted by Reality Man | March 7, 2008 10:18 AM

Tractarian:

Well, bully for Obama! (That's a rather obscure backhanded way of calling him a progressive Republican like Teddy Roosevelt).

Merit pay does qualify as some space between Obama and the teachers' unions. But I wonder if he thinks the parents of 166,000 homeschooled children in California who continue paying income, property and sales taxes without receiving a single dollar of public education "services" are all criminals?

It's amusing to note that Governor Schwarzenegger's latest budget proposal calls for a 10% reduction in K-12 education spending (a reduction of over $4.3B) to meet a fiscal crisis. Meanwhile, those 166,000 children would cost the system roughly $8500 each if they were enrolled. So good luck finding that extra $1.4B to serve these kids -- that is *after* you've prosecuted all their parents to force them to comply.

Obviously, the only result would be to reduce per child expenditures even further while making everyone's life miserable. I'm including the parents of public schooled children who suddenly lose their subsidy from the home schooling parents.

Why can't liberalism mean "live and let live" when it comes to public education? Why are Democrats so often the enforcers of a system we originally adopted from Prussia?

Posted by STS | March 7, 2008 10:52 AM