Barack Obama - Education

Ok so I'm going to start with the candidate I am leaning towards voting for this year.

Education:
-"Zero to Five": Early learning challenge grants to promote voluntary, universal pre-school
-Increase Head Start funding
-Affordable high quality health care
-"No Child Left Behind": Move from having teachers prepare for standardized tests to testing for college preparation; improve accountability to struggling schools rather than punishing them
-Improve Science and Math in schools through teacher recruitment and professional help in the classroom
-Provide funding for schools to impliment intervention strategies such as parent involvement, mentoring, personal academic plans, etc. to reduce the drop-out rate
-Double funding for after school programs
-"Step Up": Provides summer learning opportunities for disadvantaged students
-"Gear Up," "Trio," and "Upward Bound" to promote college preparation for students from low-income families
-Supports transitional bilingual education
-Recruit, prepare, retain, and reward teachers: Teaching Service Scholarship in return to teaching in a high need field or location; mentoring; increase teacher pay
-American Opportunity Tax Credit: Tax credit for families with college students
-Simplify the application process for financial aid

Ok so this is all good and well on paper. I support all of these positions. However, he plans to hand out a lot of money the country doesn't have. We are still in debt way over our heads and it is growing bigger by the day. I definatly think we should increase spending in education and I also think that the No Child Left Behind, while it had good intentions, needs to be seriously reconfigured. Also, I think that there should be a lot of emphasis on helping struggling schools.