On Education, Bush and Kerry Have Much in Common
Wednesday, October 27, 2004
By David Salisbury
When it comes to education policy, President Bush and Sen. Kerry share a lot in common.
Both espouse federal fixes to America’s schools. Both believe that schools should be more reliant on federal dollars instead of state and local monies. And both believe in a large role for the federal government in education.
Traditionally, education has been viewed as the responsibility of local school systems, teachers, parents and state governments. Certainly, the founders of this nation, who proclaimed that the powers of the federal government should be few and enumerated, never envisioned that local school policy would come under the control of Congress, the White House or any federal agency.
Today, however, state and national politicians compete to show who cares more about education. In Congress, that has mainly become a battle of one-upmanship between Democrats and Republicans over who is willing to throw more money at the schools.
President Bush has increased federal spending on education by more than 70 percent since taking office. Kerry’s only criticism of Bush is that those increases have not been large enough. Kerry says he would spend $27 billion more to “fully fund” President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act, in spite of the fact that two national reports indicate that federal funding for the act sufficiently covers the costs that states spend to implement it.
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