July 27, 2007
Big Day For the Dems In St. Louis? Or Same Old, Same Old
The Democratic canidates for president largely embarrassed themselves at Pander-Palooza a few weeks ago (save for a very weak merit pay proposal from Obama) but they have a chance to save face later this morning when several of them will speak at the Urban League's national convention.
The bar was raised pretty high the other day when Independent NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg hit the stage there and actually seemed to talk about the nature of the problem and offered some common-sense, yet seldom discussed proposals to bring meaningful change to our struggling systems of education. Whether Bloomberg's speech serves as an embarrassing reminder of the Democratic Party's intellectual bankruptcy on education issues will be determined by the candidates themselves later today, but there is an obvious hole that Bloomberg left that could be very easily filled.
If you read Bloomberg's speech, you see him outline the seriousness of the education problem, and the national shame it represents. You see a lot of ideas for correcting the problem, etc. but Bloomberg missed something HUGE.
Bloomberg correctly blames politicians for being part of the problem, pointing fingers and making excuses for persistent failure and giving folks the impression that the only thing needed is more money. But he didn't offer the largely black and Latino audience anything that could protect them from the same politicians who routinely screw their kids over.
Bloomberg delivered a largely supply-side prescription for our woes.
Why not speak directly to Americans as consumers of schools? If John Edwards can advocate giving out one million vouchers so families can move away from the worst public schools, can't Hillary or Obama come out in favor of something less controversial and more interesting? How about letting them be able to choose good schools for their kids, so that all kids can be publicly educated at a quality level they deserve.
Is this really that hard? It doesn't even have to be a voucher if you find that word too scary. How about calling it a public education guarantee? A chance for an equal starting point in the game of life? Surely all the high-priced consultants on the campaign trail can come up with the right phrase.
Something like: We guarantee your child a non-crappy school or we'll give you your money back.
