Candidates debate on education issues

With the election less than a month away, Texas Gov. George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore are firing shots in the battle for better education which have national and local ramifications. In last week's presidential debate, both candidates emphasized improving American schools and attacked many issues surrounding the improvement of education. They each agreed on the need for teacher accountability, better testing performance, localized control of schools and overall improved quality of schools. \nOne of the sharpest contrasts came between their stands on vouchers, government money provided to subsidize primary and secondary schooling. Bush said parents should be given an option to pull their kids out of "failing schools," while Gore said vouchers "take taxpayer money away from public schools and give them to private schools."\n"They would draw funds away from public schools and the vouchers aren't enough to pay for the cost of private schools," said retired Dean of the School of Education Donald Warren. "That's fine for middle-class and upper middle-class and wealthy people. It's not good at all for lower income people who are, in a way, being promised something they're not going to get. That's what the research tells us."\nBoth candidates want to enforce testing of public school teachers. Bush emphasizes the need for teacher tests in a mandatory capacity, while Gore proposed mandatory and voluntary teacher testing.\n"There's plenty of teachers out there that have no clue what they're doing and they're doing it for the wrong reasons," said junior Lauren Burkhart, president of the Dean's Advisory Council at the School of Education.\nLanny Beyer, associate dean for teacher education, said one reason accountability is highlighted in the election is because teachers often are blamed for many of society's problems. He said another idea is if teachers are trained well enough, then students will automatically produce high scores. Many other factors play a role, such as background and availability of resources, he said.\n"The assumption is that all students can learn at a high level," he said. "I wish that were true." \nWarren said he supports teacher testing, if it will guarantee having more knowledgeable, skilled and caring teachers in the classroom. He said prospective tests must themselves be tested for reliability and accuracy.\n"Probably (teacher tests) would be best at testing knowledge," Warren said. "I don't just mean to basic core disciplines, they could also test a prospective teacher's knowledge of pedagogy. We want them to be well prepared, we want them to be knowledgeable, and we want them to be caring." \nAn issue not touched on in the debate was whethert to provide universal preschool, or publicly available preschool for all. Gore has proposed universal pre-school, but the Bush camp discredits the idea as limited to too few children.\nAssociate professor of education at IU-Northwest Florence Sawicki said too many kids sit in front of the television before going to school and aren't exercising their minds enough. She also said some children, because they have no learning experience before they go to kindergarten, don't even know how to handle pencils or scissors.\n"We do know that early learning is incredibly powerful and consistent for students. Every state ought to have it," Warren said. "It's a personal conviction, but the conviction is buttressed by the evidence."\nEven with improvements in other areas, education can't go on without funding. According to the Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics, 6.8 percent of the $326 billion spent on public education during the 1997-1998 school year came from the federal government. \nBloomington High School North physical education teacher Jeff Scalf said that if teachers could receive anything from the government, it would be more teaching resources, rather than higher pay.\n"The greatest thing we can do for teachers in America is to give kids the opportunity for a well-rounded education," Scalf said. "Fewer young people have the opportunity to explore and reinforce positively through their academic areas. The quality of education is only reflected in the opportunities you present kids in terms of programs"