SCHOOLING THE DEMOCRATS

Hillary Clinton wants to create a Public Service Academy providing a “paid education…just like the service academies.”

John Edwards proposes a “College for Everyone” program with the government picking up the tuition tab.

Barack Obama wants to “get the middle man out of the college loan process” to make college affordable.

All three Democratic presidential candidates got enthusiastic cheers for those campaign promises from hundreds attending the College Democrats of America convention on the campus of the University of South Carolina this week. They all passed Politics 101: Knowing Your Audience.

Education was not the central issue in any of the candidates’ speeches, but it was enough to be noted and more than we’ve been hearing in the televised debates or on the campaign trail to date. Granted, education is primarily a state and local province.

Federal funding makes up only a small part of what is spent on public education—about nine percent in South Carolina.

On the other hand, substantial funding for university level research comes from federal institutions—NIH, NSF, IMLS and others. Pell grants and Stafford loans come from the federal pot. No Child Left Behind is the 2002 Bush administration legislative mandate intended to raise the performance and accountability of public schools.

Democrats almost uniformly give No Child Left Behind failing grades. It has tended to increase the amount of teaching to the test that is already compacting school curricula. It has enticed individual states to game the system because it does not create uniform standards. But so far, the solutions of the Democrats running for president have not gotten much beyond “scrap it” and “start all over.”

The three putative front-runners for the Democratic Party nomination–Clinton, Obama and Edwards—were the only ones to appear at the Cge Democrats of America convention. The University of South Carolina’s only recently revived chapter attracted the convention, in good measure, because of the state’s pivotal date early on the 2008 primary calendar.

Senator Clinton spoke to a full house Saturday morning, former Senator Edwards to a thinner Friday evening audience at an outdoor rally, and Senator Obama to an overflow crowd at Thursday’s convention kickoff. For the record, Clinton did not meet local media on her visit. Edwards took a few minutes to answer questions, mostly mine about education. Obama, waylaid after posing for photos with student leaders, was asked if he’d answer just two questions about education. “How about one?” he suggested. “How about one two-part question?” I pushed my luck. He was gracious.

Obama had told the students how he and his wife had college loans payments that exceeded their first home mortgage. “We can save $8 billion,” he said by getting the middle man out of the college loan process. “We’re also going to have to work with colleges and universities to make sure they don’t have 10% inflation every year.” (Left out of that equation is the countervailing dilemma that public university tuition goes up as state contributions go down. It’s part economics, part physics.)

Edwards’ “College for Everyone” is modeled on a North Carolina pilot. It would provide students a year of college tuition, fees and books in return for 10 hours of weekly work. Edwards would fund the program by rolling back Bush tax breaks for higher incomes.

Clinton, in addition to the Public Service Academy, calls for universal pre-kindergarten with federal funding to help states launch programs available to all four-year-olds. “It’s tragic that kids start behind and never catch up,” Clinton told the college crowd.

There’s more about the candidates’ education proposals on their web sites. Check the “issues” sections, but be prepared to hunt to find education beneath long lists of issues that include health care, poverty, taxes, energy, immigration, America’s global image and, of course, Iraq.

=====

Charles Bierbauer draws his interests in media, politics and education together as Dean of the College of Mass Communications and Information Studies at the University of South Carolina. The views here are his own, not those of the university. He is a former CNN political correspondent and currently is a consultant and senior contributing editor for SCHotlline.