I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
The economy has taken center stage in this presidential election, but more than a few people, including teachers, school administrators and other educators, are looking at candidates’ education platforms.
“If you watched the last debate, you saw how far apart John McCain and Barack Obama are when it comes to education reform,” Ellen Bernstein, president of the Albuquerque Teachers Federation, told NMI.
While Bernstein and the teachers unions are firmly in Obama’s corner, she said there’s still room for improvement in the Democratic candidate’s education platform. For one, she would like to see No Child Left Behind dumped altogether.
“Sen. Obama believes that NCLB can be fixed,” she told NMI. “He wants to fund it to fix it, and I don’t think that will do it. It needs to be scrapped. Prominent educators have said it needs to be scrapped. He should come out stronger against NCLB.”
But other than the federal NCLB, Obama is seen as a more favorable candidate from the union’s perspective. She said that McCain has vowed to stick by NCLB.
“I think many educators see NCLB as a destructive, bad policy, another one of many created by the Bush administration,” Bernstein said.
The candidates have other distinct differences, according to Bernstein.
McCain is for school vouchers, a key difference, she said.
Using public money for private school tuition will endanger the foundation of public schools. NCLB has already done a lot to shake that, which is the foundation of our democracy. …There are a lot of examples where the free market and private business principles do not work for public institutions, and this is one of those principles.
Obama doesn’t favor vouchers, though he has firmly supported the creation of more charter schools. Bernstein said his stance can be problematic in some states.
“In New Mexico, charters are public schools. However, in other states, charter schools are used as one piece of the road towards vouchers,” she said. “And there’s no evidence that charterizing is better than investing in our public school system as it exists now.”
