NEA's Presidential Policy Comparison: Obama vs. McCain

ISSUE	Barack Obama (D)	John McCain (R)
Supports increasing the minimum wage	Supports	Opposes
Pay teachers a starting salary of $40,000 and education support professionals a living wage	Supports	No information available
Proposes universal health insurance coverage goal	Supports	Opposes
Overall approach to health care reform	Would establish new private/public health insurance programs based on the federal employees health plan and Medicare models and made available to every American	Would provide tax credits to encourage Americans to buy health insurance on their own
Supports health care reform built on current employer-based system	Supports	Opposes
Proposes that employers must cover employees' health insurance or pay a tax	Supports	Opposes
Privatize social security	Opposes	Partially supports
Private school vouchers	Opposes	Supports
No Child Left Behind (NCLB)	Reform	Tweak
Reduce class size	Supports	Opposes
Pay teachers based on student test scores, pay teachers based on other factors ("merit pay")	Opposes traditional pay for test scores, but supports some forms of enhanced compensation	Supports pay for test scores
Expand early childhood education	Supports	No information available
Increase student aid for college (Pell Grants)	Supports	Opposes
Increase federal education funding	Supports	Opposes

This is from an article from an issue of NEA Today from May 2008. They had created a chart comparing all the candidates, Hillary, Obama, and McCain (before the primaries were done). They also had a column for the NEA's position on most of these decisions. This information was apparently acquired by sending the candidates surveys about these issues so if there's a "No information available" then that means the candidate did not answer the NEA's questionnaire. This could be really biased coming from the NEA's publication but to be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if it were true that McCain is really this clueless about education.

Quick Comments:
* You have to be a complete moron to oppose the reduction of class sizes. It's a sign that McCain doesn't listen to the needs to teachers but only listens to his cronies, who have no meaningful classroom experience.
* It's scary that McCain would even consider merit pay based on student test scores, it demonstrates that this candidate has NO concept of variability from classroom to classroom and from year to year.
* How do you say no to increasing federal funding for education? Where's that money going? Oh wait, we're still fighting a war on "terror"... I guess fighting a war on "ignorance" is not as important.
* John McCain should try getting paid minimum wage for a year and tell me that it shouldn't be raised... I get the impression that he doesn't really oppose raising minimum wage but that he's not going to do it in the near future. But it's still pretty pompous to oppose this issue.
* NCLB: It needs reform and revision, not tweaking. Tweaking means that for the most part it is working when it has FAILED NYC miserably. It may have helped the proficient classrooms but it fucked over high-need classrooms (which there are an increasing number of now a days because of this legislation). TEST WELL OR PERISH DOES NOT WORK!