Five Reasons Educators Must Vote

Education is the most important factor in shaping our country's future. As an educator, you have the expertise to determine which candidate's education policies will lead to a bright and promising future for our nation's children.

With five days left until election day, we'd like to share our top five reasons educators should vote. To add your own reasons to the list, share your comments below. 

1. Your vote is uniquely informed by the needs of the hundreds, maybe thousands, of students you have touched. Give them a voice in this election.

2. A vote for education is a vote for the economy, national security, and the environment. 

3. Ensuring that our children are healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged requires the commitment of policymakers. Schools alone cannot accomplish this task.

4. By voting, you lead by example and model for your students how to be a responsible and civically engaged citizen.

5. The next president and Congress will decide the course of No Child Left Behind.

If you're not sure where the candidates stand on education, make sure to watch the Teacher's College debate between Linda Darling-Hammond and Lisa Graham Keegan, the respective education advisors for Senators Barack Obama and John McCain.

To receive updates and alerts informing you when your voice can make a difference in shaping education policy, join ASCD's Educator Advocates.

Comments

[CArole urban]

We need somone in office who believes strongly in education to put that as a priority to the nation. No Child left behind has to go. There has been to many stipulations put educators where it is hard to aide students to better themselves in education or give them the tools to do this. More and more cuts contiue to happen where the class sizes are going up and the the interventions and technology can not be used to the best to help students or to make students strive to be their best.

[gloria Ruttman]

NCLB must stay for accountability reasons. Since its inception there has been an increase in scores and closing of the gap. NCLB is an extension of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act except with teeth in it. If you want to get the teachers' union out of education and let the teachers start teaching for students and not union members then vote McCain/Palin. Give our lower economic parents with children and our minority population the right to a free education-- free to choose good schools, with teachers who have the students' intertests at heart and not their own or the union that spports them. We need accountabillity in education if we teachers want to have equal prestige among other professional such as doctors and lawyers and not be assoicated with labor unions.

[Penny Coppedge]

The education of our children is the single most important issue facing our country. No less than the future of our Democracy is at stake if our students are not properly educated. The answers to every crisis we face sit it our classrooms in the minds of our children. We need to cultivate their ideas and teach them how to change their ideas into realities.
No Child Left Behind needs to be amended, not ended. There are many good aspects of NCLB including accountability. However, the assessment of our students with special needs to make sense for them. Educators need to be at the table to provide expertise on this matter.
The whole child needs to be educated and the focus needs to expand to other aspects beyond just reading and math test scores. For our children to thrive and change the world as it is, they need to be safe, healthy, engaged, challenged and supported.

[George Peternel]

Vote to make sure that the President we elect today will support the work of teachers at all levels by serving as a persistent, relentless and self conscious model of an educated person, unlike our soon to be out-of-office President who despite his Ivy League degrees, prefers to be a persistent, relentless and self-conscious model of a country bumpkin.

It should be fairly obvious which of the candidates fits this description.

[Seth Price]

I resent the term "country bumpkin". It is a slur which is derogatory towards a specific race (white) and socioeconomic status (poor). Can I assume that you, George Peternel are in fact willing to discriminate against the underprivileged European Americans? I hope my kids never enroll in your class and face your bigotry.

[Frank]

Maybe country bumpkin is inappropriate. How about "person born of privilege who has attained a professional position that requires much more intellect, knowledge, and skills than he is capable of displaying."

[Seth Price]

I'll give you that. I'm sick of hearing people described as bumpkins, hillbillies, hicks and rednecks. If a teacher describes his or her students as such, he or she should be treated the same as if he or she had described an African American with various derogatory racial slurs. It's the same thing, stop the hate.

[George Peternel]

There's a difference between the good natured ribbing found in the humor of a Jeff Foxworthy and the hateful speech of a KKK demagogue. They are not the same thing.

My point about the kind of President we should elect was not intended to revolve around the term "country bumpkin." Fortunately, America elected a President yesterday who has consistently demonstrated through his actions and words that he is an educated person. Hurrah!