vouchers drain them of both. He supports funding to rebuild inner-city schools and rural schools, for more textbooks, for higher paid teachers, and for smaller class sizes. Kerry voted to approve national education standards and against a bill that would have permitted tax-free savings accounts up to $2000 per child annually to be used for public or private school tuition or other education expenses.
Kerry believes the No Child Left Behind Act should be amended because it is fundamentally flawed. Kerry says it unintentionally rewards states and districts with low standards, and penalizes those adopting higher standards. He believes that schools should be judged on more than just test scores. He has proposed establishing leading indicators of the success of a school in educating its students. Test scores would be one criterion. Other measurements would include:
Parental satisfaction (John Kerry on Education, online).
John Kerry's views on poverty in America can be summarized in the Manifesto the Senator signed in 2000. The manifesto reads:
"In the 1990s, Americans resolved to end welfare dependency and forge a new social compact on the basis of work and reciprocal responsibility. The results so far are encouraging: The welfare rolls have been cut by more than half since 1992 without the social calamities predicted by defenders of the old welfare entitlement. People are more likely than ever to leave welfare for work, and even those still on welfare are four times more likely to be working. But the job of welfare reform will not be done until we help all who can work to find and keep jobs -- including absent fathers who must be held responsible for supporting their children.
In the next decade, progressives should embrace an even more ambitious social goal -- helping every working family lift itself from poverty. Our new social compact must reinforce work, responsibility, and family. By expanding the Earned Income ...