The Educational Platforms of Obama and Romney

With the presidential election coming up in just a matter of days, one issue that is close to the heart of parents, teachers, and students alike is that of education.  To bring some light upon the subject, our class has been asked to research some of the major platform differences, and it certainly is hard to tell which sources are legitimate, as the liberal and conservative sources hold an equal bias--so I will try my best to leave out all biases in my synopsis.

Obama has previously freed states of the requirements of the Bush-era No Child Left Behind law.  No Child Left Behind focused on standardized testing, and schools were punished if they failed to meet the improvement standards.  Obama replaced NCLB with "Race to the Top" which rewards states for meeting the requirements rather than punishing them.  According to an article in The Quad, many republicans have labeled his plan as "Race to Nowhere," as they believe he is throwing the money away unnecessarily that is being given to the schools as a reward for meeting the expectations and goals set by the state.  Obama also supports a set of common academic standards known as the Common Core, and has successfully increased Pell Grants available to college students as well as other forms of financial aid.

The ideals of Romney's platform were a little harder to find since he does not yet have experience in office, but the main focus of many articles on the matter is that he supports Bush's No Child Left Behind law and has said that he will push congress to reinstate the law if he is elected into office.  His education platform has been named "A Chance for Every Child."  He has said that the testing, charter-school incentives, and teacher evaluation standards of "Race to the Top" are good standards to have, but he believes there should be less government intervention as far as education is concerned.  Romney also wants to get rid of the increased federal student aid given by Obama, as he believes it causes the tuition to increase.

Both Obama and Romney do seem to have pretty clear cut ideas as far as their educational platforms are concerned.  Of course there are many other topics to be considered as well with the election coming to a close, but the topic of education is one of the large focuses of the election indeed.  It will be interesting to see what happens!