This is from the lead editorial in Sunday’s Chicago Tribune, "When schools fail our kids": "When schools fail, as they do too often in Illinois and other places, their students are not the only ones who suffer. The rest of us pay the price: a less productive economy and more social ills. So voters this fall need to ask which presidential candidate is likely to do more to improve American education. Unfortunately, neither Barack Obama nor John McCain has done nearly enough to chart a path to better schools for all." The Tribune is right; the problem with some of our public schools is serious. While arguments about solutions go on and on, kids’ lives are being wasted. But does the solution really lie with Barack Obama and John McCain, as the Tribune seems to think? No, it doesn’t. Our national government is big and it has a lot of money, but it cannot solve all of our problems. First, not all of our problems can be solved by government. But even when it comes to those problems that government can solve, the federal government cannot solve them all. I understand the desire of people to look to Washington to solve our schools’ problems. For those who think the solution is more money, Washington has a lot of it (along with a printing press for even more). For those who think the teachers unions are too powerful and we need more competition in education, the hope is that they can get what they want by winning one battle in Washington instead of having to fight separate battles in every state. But both of these views are wrong. Education is not a one-size-fits-all kind of problem that the federal government should handle. Local people in local districts know what is best for their schools. They are the ones who should be deciding. Besides, both Senator Obama and Senator McCain have other things they will need to worry about if they become President, things that need a national answer and can’t be done at the state level. Senator McCain has said he needs to know more about economics. He should spend some time thinking about that. Senator Obama needs to do a lot of studying on foreign affairs and military matters to make up for what is a pretty thin record in those areas. The United States has different levels of government so that not every problem needs to be solved in Washington – and because not every problem can be solved in Washington. Local governments and state governments need to solve our education problems, and the voters need to make sure they do. Our leaders in Washington have other things they should be doing.
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