Mitt Romney As President: Where Would He Stand On Education?

President Barack Obama and Republican hopeful Mitt Romney haven't been talking much about education's toughest questions aside from recent attention on student loan interest rates.

To that extent, neither are even discussing their own successes in school reform, largely because of a party-base problem, Andrew Rotherham writes for TIME.

While Obama has four years of presidency under his belt, and an extensive education record to show for it, some are wondering how Romney's platform and past achievements in the area would translate in the Oval Office.

In a policy brief released Friday by the Democrats for Education Reform, DFER Policy Analyst Omar Lopez, DFER Massachusetts State Director Liam Kerr and DFER Director of Federal Policy Charlie Barone write a tough review of "What Kind of President Would Mitt Romney Be on Education," and grade both the presumptive nominee and Obama in an "Education Report Card."

"It will be critical to educate voters on what the likely result of a Romney administration would be on education policy for both the middle class and our most economically vulnerable," the DFER authors write. "Nothing short of an abandonment of the issue of school reform, a rejection of bipartisanship, and a shirking of responsibility to help college students and local schools with precious federal resources at a time when their own budgets are tighter than at any time in recent history."

Overall, Romney supports testing and accountability, merit pay and school choice, but is skeptical of the role of unions and efforts to reduce class size. He recently backed Obama's student loan proposal to keep interest rates from doubling to 6.8 percent on July 1. The issue has received criticism from conservative interest groups like American Action Forum, which argues that the higher rate would only cost each student an average $1,000 more in debt over the term of the loan, or around $7 per month in future payments.

But as the DFER authors point out, Romney also supports Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) "A Roadmap for America's Future" fiscal year 2013 budget proposal, which would cut Pell Grant eligibility. The proposal would therefore reduce total Pell grants by about $170 billion over the next decade -- largely affecting poor students -- and allows for Stafford loan interest rates to double to 6.8 percent. It would also end student loan interest subsidies for those in school and make Pell spending discretionary instead of mandatory.

The policy brief also notes Romney's assertion in February that the government should determine an interest rate that "doesn't have the taxpayers having to subsidize people who want to go to school," and his suggestion last week to students to "get the education, borrow money if you have to from your parents."

The Romney-backed Ryan budget also cuts nearly 20 percent of the federal education budget, which would "have severely detrimental effects on those on the lower rungs of the economic ladder," the DFER authors write. They purport that the cuts would eliminate 200,000 students from Head Start programs, reduce services for 10 percent of middle schoolers due to Title I cuts in disadvantaged school districts and lower Pell Grants by more than $1,000 per student by 2014.

The role of the U.S. Department of Education has also been a contentious issue among the GOP. While some like Michele Bachmann had repeatedly called for the agency's abolition, Romney has said he "will either consolidate with another agency, or perhaps [making] it a heck of a lot smaller," but will not get rid of it entirely, a statement attributable to his general favoring of large reductions over complete elimination.

In 2007, he said that he had been wrong in an earlier belief that the Education Department should be shuttered, after realizing the value of the federal government in "holding down the interests of the teachers' unions" and prioritizing students and parents. But had Romney hoped to shield himself from stark opposition by suggesting downsizing versus closure, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, isn't sold.

"If all he wants to do is use the Department of Education to go after unions -- then he’s clearly not interested in using it to help kids," Weingarten said in a statement last month. "How does it help kids when Romney wants to use the federal government to undermine teachers and their unions? Romney is out of touch. He doesn't get it."

The presidential hopeful has pointed to his education record via successes in Massachusetts while he was governor. But the DFER authors point out that policies that led to those achievements were implemented before he took office, and for future federal success in education, he must "muster up the political courage to take on Republican tea partiers inside and outside of Congress," noting his vacillating statements on Race to the Top and the DREAM Act.

While Romney supported the federal accountability standards of the Bush-era No Child Left Behind law, Obama has approved numerous waivers to states that offer more local freedom in school reform and performance measures. The Republican candidate has also said that Obama's Race to the Top competition standards for student testing, charter school incentives and teacher evaluation standards "make sense," though the federal government should still have less control over education. The competition has rewarded states with billions of dollars for pursuing education initiatives supported by the Obama administration.

Take a look at DFER's report card on Obama and Romney below:

Also on HuffPost:

Comments

[Rodin 2]

03:14 PM on 05/25/2012

To answer the question in the headline: Exactly where he stands on every other issue--everyone has the same right to all the benefits of a civilized society--all the education you want that you can pay for, all the medical care you can pay for, all the food you can pay for, all of anything and everything you can pay for.

[Patrick Fogarty]

01:01 PM on 05/09/2012

Education in the United States is a shamful display of all the negatives you could muster . While some countries are moving foward and providing students with opportunities. This country is making the avalability of education a challenge at all levels while watering down the quality to the point that elementary and high school level of education is so low that graduates would not be able to meet the requirements of college level entrace exams . That goes for state run and community colleges as well as private . Mitt Romney would have no interest in changing that situation he is satisfied with the status quot . As is the rest of conservatives .

[John D Slavik]

09:27 AM on 05/08/2012

As a staunch Republican I can say that I have no trouble voting for Obama based on Education reform alone. My spouse is a teacher and I have watched how the mandates of the government in accountability using the NCLB Act as the prime motivator have destroyed the American school system. We don't need waivers on a state-by-state basis. The entire Act needs to be thrown out. The narrow focus on government defined core subjects has shrunk the curriculum to the point where learning has become torture and this destruction of the learning environment is ruining an entire generation.

In actual hours spent working the average teacher now makes about half the minimum wage leaving them unmotivated and exhausted while recruiting new teachers is becoming hugely difficult and problematic. The repetition and drill required to excel at standardized testing eliminates the student's ability to think creatively and utilize higher-order thinking skills. The future economy will have no use for a generation of unthinking drones whose only purpose for existence is rampant consumerism without the education to be competitive at anything more than menial labor. Do we really want a country full of children who define success by having the newest model of iPad or iPhone?

[LATEACHER1X]

02:41 PM on 05/07/2012

Romney as president- gives new meaning to the doc., "I am Congo."

[Albert Jenkin]

12:46 PM on 05/07/2012

In short, not an open and honest enemy of public education, but hardly the friend of public education. He falls short of his own church's long-time support of public schools in Utah.

[Mark In LA]

09:27 AM on 05/07/2012

Anything coming from the "education establishment" isn't worth the paper it is written on like their degrees. Education majors have the lowest entrance scores and IQs in all of academia. You'd be better off listening to your dog or one of your old Beatles records played backwards if you want to listen to something intelligent.

http://www.businessinsider.com/this-chart-shows-just-how-much-smarter-engineers-are-than-everyone-else-2012-4

[darkmark]

12:47 PM on 05/07/2012

the "What Everybody Is Getting Wrong About The New President Of France

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/what-everybody-is-getting-wrong-about-francois-hollande-the-next-president-of-france-2012-5#ixzz1uCfDagRA
" was rational.

[Albert Jenkin]

12:56 PM on 05/07/2012

All because too many of our grandparents believed the old line that "Those who can, do; and those who can't, teach." There was a nice piece of confusion on the old frontier. Scorn for "book-learning", but eagerness to build schools. Someone wrote once that teachers pay will be at the right scale when immigrant families scrimp and save to send their children to become teachers.

[racmd]

08:35 AM on 05/07/2012

Mr. Romney, the GOP and the TP (not the roll in my bathroom) can respond to this easily, "I got mines!!"

[stephan67]

08:26 AM on 05/07/2012

Romney believes that education is a privilege you have to pay for (like healthcare ). He is fighting against the interests of the ordinary people.

[babyeiya]

06:10 AM on 05/07/2012

Romney only believes that rich people should be allowed education. As for the rest of us, well too f***kin bad....

[ed conn]

06:07 AM on 05/07/2012

Remember the Rich dont really want to fund education for the public. The Evangelicals feel that secular education especially science is evil; and the rednecks and hillbillys think the people with anything higher than an 8th grade education cant be trusted

[marinemomof3]

08:25 AM on 05/07/2012

#53

[mangez merde]

05:47 AM on 05/07/2012

Hopefully Romney would support math education since Romney himself doesn't seem capable of counting to ten.

Criticizing Obama for spending to much time at Harvard when Romney spent 1 more year at Harvard than Obama.

Of course, Romney meant 3 years at Harvard was to long for a black man to be allowed at Harvard.

[mangez merde]

05:39 AM on 05/07/2012

Where would Romney stand on Education ????

He would pass a bill requiring students to borrow money from their parents who have $350 million.

[PamperedHousecat]

05:45 PM on 05/07/2012

Think of the jr., community, and 4 yr colleges/universites that will close?
Think of the non-academic personnel whose paychecks depend on them?
Think of l the families that will suffer either directly or indirectly because of college closures?
Think of those testing companies that will go bankrupt beause there would be no reason for kids to beef-up test taking skills, because their parents only make 50k, and therefore can't lend their little nutleys money to go to college?
Think of all those production companies that won't be able to produce media commericals to get young people to apply for college?

But, do not worry!
Mitt and the GOTP will get the economy rolling with....?.

And all those people (esp. those who vote GOTP) who use to GO to college, thought they were going to college, thought they would send their children to college, WORK at college, or have something to DO with college, or have ANYTHING to do with education in general, can just WAIT until the the 1% trickle down on them.

Only those most "worthy" students, whose parents have lived on ramen noodles for the past 7 yrs., AND have explained to their less talented siblings that only one of them can go to college, and they must be content with whatever jobs are in the trickled-in-to pool, will attend college.

From "Robin Hood, Men In Tights" the "Rest of you can Bu&&er Off"

[mangez merde]

05:37 AM on 05/07/2012

Where would Romney stand on Education ????

For the 1% yes.

For the 99% no.

[marinemomof3]

08:27 AM on 05/07/2012

For the 1% who serve in our military, NO

[mangez merde]

05:37 AM on 05/07/2012

Where would Romney stand on Education ????

He would stand on the throats of teachers ????

[fozzi58]

04:49 PM on 05/07/2012

And his best new bud Chris "Krispy Kreme" Christie would squeeze them to death.

[mangez merde]

05:21 PM on 05/07/2012

I call him the Pillsbury Dough Boy, but alliteration is always good.

If you come to my Canada you won't have to get your country back.

Citizen's still in control here and 1,000x more knowledgeable than most Americans.

But, even we elected a conservative PM.

Danger lurks everywhere.

[Eha]

02:16 PM on 05/06/2012

Hard to say what kind of "education President" Mr. Romney will be, isn't it, as Mr. Romney is rather mercurial, and the future is a tangle of forking paths. Nevertheless, I'll hazard a guess. It doesn't matter one bit what Mr. Romney promises during his campaign. The dream of quality education and training for the majority will continue to tank. If Mr. Obama is re-elected, it'll be the same story. There's no lack of evidence of our race to sub-mediocrity. The health of the educational system has been entrusted to armies of bean counters and drumbeating ideologues who are militant about running schools according to a business model and/or promoting one type of groupthink over another. Consider, too, other variables which impinge upon public education, viz. the contempt accorded even the best teachers; the overemphasis on preparing for assessment tests vs. more productive use of classroom time; the sorry state of reading abilities; the caste structure of education determined by income inequality; the pervasive dumbness of our popular culture; etc., etc., etc. Throw in our persistent strain of anti-intellectualism, and it's impossible to imagine one person being in any kind of position to effect significant change in education. If public education were a house, it would be riddled with termites.

[marine3314]

10:49 PM on 05/06/2012

Yes. But keep in mind this all by design. Make public education dysfuntional so you can say it is, thereby making it necessay to eliminate it. The aim is to eliminate public education and replace it with private education. Capitalism in education equals billions for the rich.

[marinemomof3]

08:28 AM on 05/07/2012

bingo !