Platforms for McCain and the GOP

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

McCain Platform

GOP Platform

Not exactly alike, these two documents... anyway, what do you think? And a challenge: for those of you who are NOT leaning towards McCain or the GOP, find one plank of either platform that you really, genuinely, without sarcasm, like and tell us why

[JonSmith]

Those seem to be the same link.

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

whoops! fixed

[drmomentum[$]]

I haven't read McCain's platform, but I have to say (without sarcasm) that I like the idea of a windfall profits tax on the oil companies like Palin engineered for Alaska.

McCain has come out against it before, (Obama was for it). Since we could end up with a McCain/Palin presidency, maybe she can change his mind on that. So that plank in the platform may be headed for adjustment.

See, I can say something nice about Palin's policies!

-JP

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

THANK YOU JP!!! You win a prize.

[theworm[$]]

I'm sure I could find things I like in there, but I don't have the brain power to read the right now.

[brian_igo]

When Wormie described this thread I thought she said to find something McCain liked that I could support.

It's not in the platform, but I did have an immediate answer.

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

Bad Brian. Not in the spirit of the challenge whatsoever. No prize for you!

[drmomentum[$]]

I feel like I got in there on a technicality. Kinda.

[eris esoteric]

I think MJ was adjusting for your inability to post without some sort of absurdist sarcasm twist. It's what we all love (or, resignedly accept) about you.

[lynnzop[$]]

MJ, thank you for the link. This is just the kind of information I'm looking for.

I read through the education policies and plans, here are a few points that caught my eye. I'd love to have some of the teachers weigh in on them.

McCain believes that we can no longer accept low standards for some students and high standards for others.

If a school will not change, the students should be able to change schools.

devote five percent of Title II funding to states to recruit teachers who graduate in the top 25 percent of their class or who participate in an alternative teacher recruitment program such as Teach for America, the New York City Teaching Fellowship Program, the New Teacher Project, or excellent university initiatives.

devote 60 percent of Title II funding for incentive bonuses for high performing teachers to locate in the most challenging educational settings, for teachers to teach subjects like math and science, and for teachers who demonstrate student improvement.

[theworm[$]]

I didn't read everything, but I picked a few to look at and find the things I liked. I thought education might be it. I certainly agree that we need higher standards, better teachers and we need to pay teachers better. My problem is that the wording says that parents can send their kids to a school of their choice. That makes me worry that education will become just for the rich. What I want is for all public schools to improve and to perform up to standards. I don't think parents should have to say that the school up the street is weak, so we're paying to send Junior to private school. I'm not opposed to families having options, but I think the real need is to fix and improve the public school system in general. Perhaps I didn't read it carefully enough, but that's not what I got out of the links above.

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

devote five percent of Title II funding to states to recruit teachers who graduate in the top 25 percent of their class or who participate in an alternative teacher recruitment program such as Teach for America, the New York City Teaching Fellowship Program, the New Teacher Project, or excellent university initiatives.

devote 60 percent of Title II funding for incentive bonuses for high performing teachers to locate in the most challenging educational settings, for teachers to teach subjects like math and science, and for teachers who demonstrate student improvement.

First note that this is NOT new funding - it's changing the allocation of funding (unless somewhere else there's a call to increase the money).

NYC Teaching Fellowship Program - I'm not sure of the latest stats on this, but it's a program that encourages people from other careers to become teachers by giving them jobs before they have any Education education and gives them some money to go for their M.Ed. It does not guarantee that these teachers will graduate, nor does it guarantee that these teachers will ever pass NYS certification (many, many, many do not).

Hubby would probably like the bonuses, but how do you determine who is a "high performing teacher" - how the students do on a test? This goes back to the teaching-to-the-test complaints and the unfortunate reality that a lot of how students perform is outside of a teacher's control (parental support, book-rich environment, poverty, etc.).

Wormie - "school of their choice" almost always is code for "school vouchers", which means those who can't afford to send their kids to private school can, diverting money from the public schoolsystem. It also can imply giving parents the ability to move their children to schools that match their religious beliefs.

[lynnzop[$]]

What I want is for all public schools to improve and to perform up to standards. I don't think parents should have to say that the school up the street is weak, so we're paying to send Junior to private school.

Yeah.

"school of their choice" almost always is code for "school vouchers", which means those who can't afford to send their kids to private school can, diverting money from the public schoolsystem.

Double yeah. It boiled to the nth degree to get my property tax statement this year. 60% of my taxes go to pay for the ##$%$@ school system that I am paying to take my son out of because they are so incompetent.

So I get the privilige of supporting the idiots that run that school system PLUS pay to send my child to a decent school. I'd much rather take those tax dollars, funnel them to the private school and pay the difference in tuition.

Bah.

[theworm[$]]

Thanks for the info MJ. Thats why I couldn't say I agree with the education policy.
When I lived in Omaha, they had just started desegregation. Students were assigned to the geographically closest high school, but you could choose to go to another public high school if you were a minority in that neighborhood. We lived right across the street from a high school, and I went there. They were known for English programs. The downtown school was the best in the city for Math/Science. It was in a predominatly black neighborhood. Eye and a few other kids from our neighborhood "commuted" to that school to take advantage of that program. Our neighborhood was predominantly white, but minority kids could come to our school if they chose. Most people went near there home, but it was one little step towards change.

I do not support the voucher system for the reasons mentioned by MJ and Lynn.

MJ - Sorry if I took your thread off track.

[lynnzop[$]]

Well, maybe I'm confused on what the voucher programs are/do. Don't they allow you to funnel the funds you pay in toward the school of your choice?

[drmomentum[$]]

If you don't have kids in school, do you get to funnel the money to cocktails, or a vacation? If yes, then I want vouchers, too, once my kids graduate.

So there's another platform plank I support (provisionally).

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

They funnel money to the school of your choice and away from the local school. If the local school is low-performing, they now have fewer resources to use to improve their performance. But if I understand correctly, the money isn't just your property tax money (and maybe not all of that), it's federal and state tax dollars that go to support the school districts that get funneled to private schools. As a person who's interested in the schools in my area being good (because of property values and neighborhood quality of life, not because I have kids), I wouldn't like seeing a portion of MY tax dollars go to XYZ Corporation School - or ABC Religious School - and watch the school at the end of the street get worse and worse.

Not a derail, Wormie, we're still discussing the platform. The "post something positive" was a challenge to get a useful (and hopefully civil) discussion started (and I notice no one's posted in the Dem/Obama thread...).

[theworm[$]]

Well, I could post thing that I like in that thread, but you asked for McCain supporters.

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

To get it started anyway

[AuntieEmma[$]]

From the GOP platform -- things I like:

Working against human trafficking, AIDS in Africa, genocide in Darfur, abuses of the Zimbabwe government. The reasons are self-evident.

And who could argue with this:

Americans hit by disaster must never again feel
abandoned by their government. The Katrina disaster
taught a painful lesson: The federal government’s
system for responding to a natural calamity needs a
radical overhaul.

[thinkerlady[$]]

mjfrombuffalo said

They funnel money to the school of your choice and away from the local school. If the local school is low-performing, they now have fewer resources to use to improve their performance. But if I understand correctly, the money isn't just your property tax money (and maybe not all of that), it's federal and state tax dollars that go to support the school districts that get funneled to private schools.

I don't know much about the detail of the voucher system, but I think they take the "cost to educate" per student factor, and a major percentage of that $$ is sent to the school of choice. Now that money can be made up of tax dollars, or federal or state $$$. The other thing that I am not certain of is the changing of public schools factor. For example where we live there are many area districts, that aren't far apart. If I decided to take my kids out of one district and put them into another, I would have to pay a "tuition" of sorts to the public school. I think if vouchers were in place they would be ok for that in addition to the private schools.

The argument about vouchers is that when the $$ is taken away, usually from a poor performing school, then that school continues to perform poorly due to a lack of funds. The plus side is twofold, parents have more control over where they want their children educated, and school have to do well to maintain and attract students.

I am not necessarily in favor of vouchers, but I am in favor of some kind of tax reduction for those of us who send our kids to private schools. Either that or let's do away with school taxes comple