Education

I believe we need to reinvest our resources in our children, and tackle the extensive problems left in the wake of No Child Left Behind.  Our children are our future - it is nothing short of our duty to ensure that they have access to an education that provides them with all of the skills they will need to succeed in a changing world.

The sad legacy of the once promising No Child Left Behind program may be characterized briefly but fairly as follows: It is very likely the largest ill-funded federal mandate in our nation's modern history.

This program has proven that it is one thing to talk about a program but certainly another to support it.

The federal government spends only 2.4%* of the entire budget on education. That number is appallingly low.

In the failure to invest in the education of our youth, we achieve nothing but broken promises.  In the near future it will be their job to lead this nation, to invent and deploy our new technologies, and do the many things necessary to maintain our nation's domestic and international strength.

We need to increase our investment in both primary and higher education, particularly with an emphasis in the areas of new technology, math and science - an area in which we have been steadily losing our international competitive advantage.

Otherwise, we risk the frightening possibility that Americans will lack the skills to compete all over the every-shrinking globe.

(*Source U.S. Department of Education website available at http://www.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/role.html, last viewed November 21, 2007)