McCaskill blasts Talent on education; slams No Child Left Behind law

Claire McCaskill blasted her opponent on the subject of education Thursday.

McCaskill, challenging incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Jim Talent for his seat in November, told a Thursday afternoon press conference that "in the area of public education there is more contrast between Sen. Talent and myself than in any other issue."

McCaskill took Talent to the woodshed for what she said were spending cuts and underfunding to all aspects of education. She told reporters that just for publicly funded institutions of higher education, tuition costs had gone up in Missouri by 75 percent since 1999. "That is unacceptable, and it's just flat wrong," she said, accusing the Administration and Congressional Republicans of "waging war on public education."

McCaskill said the Bush Administration had never fully funded its "No Child Left Behind" program, claiming it had been underfunded by $43 billion since 2002. "This underfunding º means we cannot get the kind of improvement out of our schools that we need to get," she said.

McCaskill said the money that could have gone into funding the added $43 billion had instead gone to people making $25 million or more. But when asked whether she thought the tax breaks should be repealed, she sidestepped the question. "I'm saying we need to change our priorities," McCaskill said.

"I could find $43 billion [in savings] if you gave me a year and a staff of strong auditors."

She said the auditors should look at "Cost-plus" and "no-bid contracts" in Iraq to find the savings. "We're spending $9 billion a month in Iraq right now," she said, "and a lot of that is going toward the privatization of things."

In addition, McCaskill complained about the accountability aspect of No Child Left Behind, calling it "one size fits all." "Yes we need to have standards for our schools to try to achieve," she said, "yes we need to be able to measure their success with some form of accountability."

McCaskill said a national standard obliged teachers to "teach the test" rather than use creativity and imagination, suggesting the two were not compatible. "We are squeezing creativity and imagination out of the classroom," she said, "therefore harming the professionalism of the great teachers of Missouri, by not allowing each state to come up with their own measures of ways to test, and allow even some communities to come up with their own measures."

However, McCaskill's suggestion of more localized testing appeared to contradict her own objection that teachers were "teaching the test."

Reporters challenged her on her objection to a national test and triggered an apparent backtrack. "There are some who argue, though, that the reason for No Child Left Behind for statewide standards is to make valid comparisons of the abilities of students who come from different school districts as they compete in college education and as they compete in the workforce, when we don't have a way to make those comparisons now," said one.

"We have to crawl before we can walk," McCaskill replied, "And I think it would be important for us -- for states to do that on an individual basis before we start setting national standards that are not flexible and don't embrace local control."

McCaskill also criticized the No Child Left Behind act as "onerous and excessive," and pointed out there were 588 requirements states had to meet under the law. But when reporters asked her which ones she would eliminate, she simply replied that "588 is too many."

When pressed on the issue, McCaskill insisted some -- which she did not specify at the time -- had no place in Washington.

The bill which McCaskill criticized so heavily passed the House by a vote of 381-41, and the Senate by a vote of 87-10. The votes suggested very strong bipartisan support, at least at the time, for the law.

McCaskill also criticized what she said were cuts to student aid, totaling $12.7 billion. "And that in fact was a vote that Sen. Talent cast the deciding vote on," she said.

Reporters challenged her again, and she appeared to backtrack from that statement as well. "When was that?" asked one reporter.

"It was the budget bill," she said, "and vice-president Cheney cast the tie-breaking vote on Dec. 21, 2005."

"But is it fair to say Jim Talent cast the deciding vote?" asked another. "Vice-president Cheney broke the tie."

McCaskill pointed out that had Talent voted "the other way," the cuts would not have occurred. Yet another reporter pointed out Talent was one of 50 senators to have voted against the measure.

And under further questioning, she did not identify whether the $12.7 billion in "cuts" were actual reductions in funding from the previous years for student loans or decreases compared to what had been requested. She said the unspecified cuts had the effect of raising the interest rates on student loans.

Reporters persisted. "Did it eliminate any loans or just make existing loans more expensive?" asked yet another. "Did it make the provisions of getting a loan more difficult for people or just make the borrowing of money more expensive?"

And again McCaskill sidestepped the question. "No place has there been more inflationary increase -- no place has there been the kind of increase we've seen in tuition in this country," she said.

McCaskill also criticized Talent for having voted to abolish the Department of Education, and prompted yet another challenge, echoing her own objections to No Child Left behind. "There are some people who say the federal government has no business being in education, that education is a state issue" said a reporter. "How would you deal with those arguments if you are elected to the Senate?"

"Frankly, I think those arguments have a lot of merit," she said. "The federal government can provide assistance with a lot of resources, but one size fits all is not a good idea."

She nevertheless insisted on her opposition to Talent's vote to eliminate the department. "I just don't think it's a good idea to have our schools micromanaged from Washington, D.C.," McCaskill said.

gexelby@dailystatesman.com