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By David Tibbles
George W. Bush says he has six main educational goals. He wants to help kids out of failing schools, strengthen early learning, raise local control, give parents control,
improve teacher quality, and raise school safety. He plans on achieving these goals by offering grants to low income students, reform Head Start, establish a fund for successful schools, create charter schools,
give money to private school vouchers, give loan forgiveness for new math teachers. This is just a sampling of his proposals. Al Gore, like Bush, wants to raise standards, create new teachers, create new early learning, create
more credible teachers, help school safety, and make higher education more affordable. However, his ways of achieving these goals are fundamentally different. He wants to give targeted tax cuts to parents
whose children are in college, give competency tests to seniors for graduation, raise teacher salaries, as well as establish universal day care.
Buchanan takes a whole new approach to the campaign. If elected president he would, "Abolish the Department of Education, repeal the school to work program, support tax free education savings
accounts, and opposes national testing and teacher standards." The other Reform Party candidate, John Haglin, wants to raise teacher salaries $10,000 and give some
block grants to the states. In theory, this would raise competition for teaching jobs and raise teacher standards. Green Party candidate Ralph Nader's goal to improve education is to have a focus on teacher standards
teacher pay, but, more importantly, to have a focus on the basic learning principles. Again, these are VERY brief outlines of plans and policies presented by each candidate. To get more
specific and in depth explanations visit their official main sites: George W. Bush (R)- 
Perhaps the biggest voting issue in the minds of the voters deals with education. Teacher shortage, teacher pay, structure problems, and safety of our kids are just a
small glimpse of what is on the voter's mind. Obviously each candidate has his own brilliant way to fix all of the problems with our education problems.
Al Gore (D)- http://www.algore.com/education/edu_agenda1.html
Pat Buchanan (Reform)-
http://www.buchananreform.com/library/default.asp?id=118
John Hagelin (Reform)- http://www.hagelin.org/message4.htm#3
Ralph Nader (Green)- http://www.votenader.com/issues/children.html
Political journalists have their opinions too. Be sure to also check out the recent news and editorials at the following online links: Time-
Newsweek- http://www.newsweek.com
US News and World Report- http://www.usnews.com
David Tibbles is a recent high school graduate from Council Bluffs, Iowa.
