Women's Issues in the Debate
Vice Presidential Debate Excerpt: Education
The complete transcript of the Vice Presidential debate is available from the The Commission on Presidential Debates
Bernard Shaw:
You alluded to problems. There's no magic bullet -- Secretary Cheney,
in this question to you -- no magic bullets to solve the problems of
public education. What is the next best solution?
Our desire is to find ways to
reform our educational system,
to return it to its former glory.
|
Dick Cheney
I think public education is a solution. Our desire is to find ways to
reform our educational system, to return it to its former glory. I'm a
product of public schools, my family, wife and daughters all went to
public schools. We believe very much in the public school system. But
if you look at where we are from the standpoint of the nation, recent
exams. For example, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, an
independent testing service, shows there's no progress on reading scores
in the last eight years. Almost no progress on math. We've had a
significant increase in spending for education nationwide, but it has
produced almost no positive results. That's unacceptable from our
standpoint. If you look at it and think about it, we now have in our
most disadvantaged communities, 70% of our fourth graders can't read at
the basic level of understanding. We've graduated 15 million kids from
high school in the last few years who can't read at a significant level.
What we want to do is to change that. We think we know how to do it.
Governor Bush has done it in Texas. We want to emphasize local control.
We want to insist on high standards. One of the worst things we can do
is fail to establish high standards. To say we don't have the same kind
of expectations from you that we have from everybody else. We want
accountability. We have to test every child every year to know whether
or not we're making progress with respect to achieving those goals and
objectives. We think it's extraordinarily important. Probably the
single most important issue in this campaign. Governor Bush has made it
clear that when he's elected this will be his number one priority as a
legislative measure to submit to the Congress.
You cannot reform education
and improve it ... without
spending some money.
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Joe Leiberman
Al Gore and I are committed to making America's public schools the best
in the world. I disagree with what my opponent has said. A lot of
progress has been made in recent years. Average testing scores are up
and a lot of work is being done by tens of thousands of parents, teachers
and administrators all around America. There is more to be done. If
you'll allow me, I want to go back to your last question. It leads to
this question. I think both of us agree that leaving aside the Social
Security and Medicare surpluses, there's $1.8 trillion in surplus
available to spend over the next ten years. We're being fiscally
responsible about it. We're taking $300 billion off the top to put in
reserve fund. The rest we'll use for middle class tax cuts and invest in
programs like education. There's a big difference between these two
tickets. Our opponents with spend $1.6 trillion of the surplus projected
on a big tax cut that Al Gore talked about the other night so
effectively. We're saving money to invest in education. You cannot
reform education and improve it in this country without spending some
money. Al Gore and I have committed $170 billion for that purpose. To
recruit 100,000 new teachers to reduce the size of classrooms. To help
local school districts build new buildings so our children are not
learning in crumbling classrooms. And we're not just going to stop at
high school. We're going to go on and give the middle class the ability
to deduct up to $10,000 a year in the cost of college tuition. Now, that
is a tremendous life-saving change which will help people carry on their
education and allow them to develop the kinds of skills that will help
them succeed in the hi-tech economy of today.
More Vice Presidential Debate Excerpts
Abortion
Gay/Lesbian Issues
Social Security
Working Women
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