Some presidential pre-candidates on education

Herman Cain on education: "Education is the key to unlocking a prosperous future. At the heart of education should always be the students. Unfortunately, education has become weighed down with administration that has shifted the focus from educating students to maintaining an excessive level of bureaucracy through expanded unionization and regulation. It’s time to unbundle education from the federal government down to the local level."

Mitt Romney on education: "Our conservative agenda strengthens our family in part by, by putting our schools on track to be the best in the world again, because great schools start with great teachers. We'll insist on hiring teachers from the top third college graduates and we'll give better teachers better pay. School accountability, school choice, cyber schools will be priorities and we'll put parents and teachers back in charge of education, not fat-cat CEOs of the teachers' unions."

Rick Perry on education: " In 2026, I picture a nation filled with diverse people bound together by a commitment to liberty and a devotion to working hard to give their children a better life than their parents gave them. I see a people who can pray in their schools as they wish and towns across America that can publicly celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, or nothing at all. I see an education system that is the envy of the world, controlled by parents and the people according to the beliefs of the communities in which they live. I see an energetic mix of public, charter, and private schools, delivering options so people can choose what is best for their children, rather than getting stuck because a too-powerful teachers' union or government bureaucrat tells them how they must learn. The result is an important balance of academic excellence, local values, and a firm understanding of our nation's core founding principles--all of which will carry our nation forward with new generations of American achievement."

Barack Obama on education (2008): "We’ll make sure that every child in this country gets a world-class education from the day they’re born until the day they graduate from college. What McCain is offering amounts to little more than the same tired rhetoric about vouchers. We need to move beyond the same debate we’ve been having for the past 30 years when we haven’t gotten anything done. We need to fix & improve our public schools, not throw our hands up and walk away from them. We need to uphold the ideal of public education, but we also need reform. That’s why I’ve introduced a comprehensive strategy to recruit an army of new quality teachers to our communities--and to pay them more & give them more support. We’ll invest in early childhood education programs so that our kids don’t begin the race of life behind the starting line and offer a $4,000 tax credit to make college affordable for anyone who wants to go. Because as the NAACP knows better than anyone, the fight for social justice and economic justice begins in the classroom."
(2009): "In a global economy where the most valuable skill you can sell is your knowledge, a good education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity--it is a prerequisite. And yet, we have one of the highest high school dropout rates of any industrialized nation. And half of the students who begin college never finish. This is a prescription for economic decline. So tonight, I ask every American to commit to at least one year or more of higher education or career training. This can be community college or a four-year school; vocational training or an apprenticeship. But every American will need to get more than a high school diploma. And dropping out of high school is no longer an option. It's not just quitting on yourself, it's quitting on your country. That's why we will provide the support necessary for all young Americans to complete college and meet a new goal: By 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world."

Words, words, words.