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The Great Presidential Mashup The Democrats on education.


Updated Friday, Sept. 7, 2007, at 10:24 AM ET

(Continued from page 1)

But I also believe we cannot separate the education part from the economic part. There is still discrimination in the workplace. There are still people who are turned down and turned away who have qualifications and skills that should make them employable. So this is a broader issue that we have to address.

CNN/YouTube Debate, July 23, 2007

Chelsea went to public schools, kindergarten through eighth grade, until we moved to Washington. And then I was advised, and it was, unfortunately, good advice, that if she were to go to a public school, the press would never leave her alone, because it's a public school. So I had to make a very difficult decision.

Sen. Chris Dodd

Sen. Chris Dodd

Washington, D.C., Debate, June 28, 2007

This evening there'll be many subjects that'll be raised, and important ones. None is more important, in my view, than the issue of education. Whether or not from the earliest education opportunity to the highest level of education opportunity, this is the key to equal access to our society. It is something that can never be taken away from you if you get it. To say today that you're going to exclude race as a means of allowing for the diversity in our communities is a major step backwards. And as president of the United States, I would use whatever tool is available to me to see to it that we reverse this decision today, get back on the track to see to it that our country once again will identify with the identity of unity as a nation, blind, if you will, to the racial distinctions in our society. That's the only way we're going to deal with the new frontiers of the 21st century. The barrios, the ghettos, and the reservations of our society. That's what I stand for, that's what we'll achieve as a Democratic administration.

As I said at the outset on the first question, I don't believe there's any other issue as important as this one we'll discuss this evening, as education. There's a lot of good talk here, and I admire the fact that my colleagues here and candidates all care deeply about this issue. I stand before you as a candidate. We have to make a decision about, who is our best candidate to win the presidency in 2008?

For 26 years, through five terms in the United States Senate, I have dedicated myself to this issue. I'm very proud of the fact that Marian Wright Edelman of the Children's Defense Fund has come to me over and over again, and proud to have authored the legislation to deal with the whole child, that authored the first child-care legislation in this country, to begin in the earliest days to make sure that parents have the assurance that there will be a quality place for their child to be, and an affordable place, an available place, and then to begin with early childhood education, to see to it that we'd have a good Head Start program.

I'm proud of the fact that I was called the Senator of the Decade by National Head Start Association. I have walked the walk on these issues; I am committed to these issues. There's nothing that will be a higher priority to me as president of the United States than to see to it that America's children, from the earliest days of their arrival, certainly through the upper education branches of our educational system, have the equal opportunity.

None of us here can guarantee success—but we have an obligation to guarantee an opportunity to that success. The key to that door is the education of the American child.

CNN/YouTube Debate, July 23, 2007

My daughter goes to the public school as a preschool—kindergarten. But I want to come back to the No Child Left Behind.

Because I think remedying this—and I understand the applause here—accountability is very important. This is one country—we've got to have the best-prepared generation of Americans that we've ever produced in our educational system. No other issue, in my view, is as important as this one here.

And getting the No Child Left Behind law right is where we ought to focus our attention here so that we have resources coming back to our states. You measure growth in a child. You invest in failing schools. But I would not scrap it entirely. Accountability is very important in this country. We ought not to abandon that idea.

Sen. John Edwards

Sen. John Edwards

Washington, D.C., Debate, June 28, 2007

I think it's true that we need to pay teachers better. I think we ought to actually provide incentive pay to get our best teachers in the inner-city schools and into poor rural areas where they're needed the most. But it goes beyond that. We also have to make work pay for young men who are graduating from high school, the very group that you're describing, which means we're going to have to do a whole group of things. We need to significantly raise the minimum wage. We need to strengthen the right to organize. And we need to help low-income families save so they're not prey to predatory lenders that are taking advantage of them today.

CNN/YouTube Debate, July 23, 2007

I've had four children, and all of them have gone to public school. I've got two kids ... who are actually here with me in Charleston tonight, two kids, Emma Claire and Jack, just finished the third grade in public school in North Carolina, and Jack just finished the first grade in public school in North Carolina.

Sen. Mike Gravel

Sen. Mike Gravel

Washington, D.C., Debate, June 28, 2007

[Asked about the link between education and poverty and the inequities that keep many black families from prospering] I think we can cut a little more than 15 percent, very much so. Stop and think what the opportunity costs—now, you have heard these nostrums before. I've been watching your heads. You're nodding on all the programs. You've heard it 10 years ago, you've heard 20 years ago—why doesn't it change? The Democratic Party hasn't done appreciably better than the Republican Party in solving these problems. It has to be solved by the people, not by your leaders.

Stop and think. When he's talking about the money we're squandering—21 million Americans could have a four-year college scholarship for the money we've squandered in Iraq, 7.6 million teachers could have been hired last year if we weren't squandering this money. Now, how do you think we got into this problem? The people on this stage, like the rest of us, are all guilty and very guilty, and we should recognize that, because there is linkage!

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