Obama calls for $18-billion boost in education spending

Manchester, N.H. – Barack Obama proposed an $18-billion increase in federal education programs today, accusing Democratic presidential rivals Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Edwards of shortchanging public schools.

The Illinois senator outlined a broad agenda to expand early childhood education, reduce high school dropout rates and improve substandard schools in impoverished areas.

Sketching a bleak portrait of the nation’s school system, Obama lamented the millions of students who read below grade level, get too little math and science instruction and wind up unprepared for college.

“It’s morally unacceptable for our children,” Obama told a crowd in a Manchester high school auditorium as a morning snowfall began blanketing the city. “It’s economically untenable for our future, and it’s not who we are as a country.”

To pay for his proposals, Obama suggested cutting spending on the Iraq war, delaying sending astronauts to the moon by five years, auctioning surplus federal property and closing a tax loophole for chief executives, among other things.

He lauded the No Child Left Behind law for its goal of lifting achievement standards, but he said the government had failed to give schools enough money to meet mandates for improvement.

Obama faulted Clinton and Edwards for not supporting a 2003 Senate measure that would have suspended enforcement of the law if it wasn’t adequately funded. The New York senator and former North Carolina senator made “a serious mistake” by not voting for it, Obama said.

“Forcing our teachers, our principals and our schools to accomplish all of this without the resources they need is wrong,” Obama said. “Promising high-quality teachers in every classroom, and then leaving the support and the pay for those teachers behind, is wrong. Labeling a school and its students as failures one day, and then throwing your hands up and walking away from them the next, is wrong.”

No Child Left Behind was designed to force schools to track data on low-income and minority students and hold schools accountable if those pupils do not do well.

The Clinton and Edwards campaigns noted that Obama, as a state senator, had voted to require Illinois to implement No Child Left Behind.

“In the days before Thanksgiving, we are grateful for the existence of actual fact,” said Chris Kofinis, Edwards’ campaign communications director. “In his rush to criticize others, Sen. Obama left out the inconvenient fact that he supported No Child Left Behind as an Illinois state senator before he opposed it as a presidential candidate. It’s not ‘a new kind of politics’ to try to have it both ways.”

Noting that Clinton had “fought on behalf of children for 35 years,” campaign spokesman Phil Singer said that “Sen. Obama simply can’t match that kind of leadership and experience.”

Obama’s plan (http://my.barackobama.com/page/-/HQpress/112007%20education%20plan%201.pdf) would spend $10 billion a year on programs for children up to 5 years old. It would expand Head Start and other preschool programs and increase the availability of child care to working families.

“For every dollar we invest in these programs, we get $10 back in reduced welfare rolls, fewer healthcare costs and less crime,” Obama said.

The program would also expand training for teachers and reward those who work in underperforming schools. It would offer $200 million to states and districts that lengthen their school day and academic year.

After his speech, Obama paid a visit to a study hall, where he faced a question on his own high school years. He recalled being a “goof-off” who favored basketball over studies.

“There were times where I got into drinking, experimenting with drugs,” he told the students, repeating a disclosure he has made before. “There was a whole stretch of time where I didn’t really apply myself a lot.

“I did a lot of catching up,” he added, “when I got to college.”

michael.finnegan@latimes.com