Coincidence or catch-up?

We see news of our fearless leader visiting the swing state West Virginia in an effort to keep his slim lead. Topic: high school education.

Funny but Kerry unveiled his education plan this week.

Making a very smart move, Kerry pinpoints one huge gap in Bush's cornerstone policy, NCLB: high school graduation rates.

Kicking off a three day campaign swing where he will talk about his plans to strengthen education in America, Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry today promised strong leadership in education that will make up for three years of broken promises by George W. Bush. In Albuquerque, Kerry today focused in on the area of high school graduation.


“If we want to build a stronger America, we need an educated America,” Kerry said. “Our schools should be palaces for learning. Our teachers should be the best and the brightest among us. And our principals should be the best leaders around. We should invest in education, not just because of what we can teach our children, but because of what they will teach us 20 or 40 or 80 years from now.”
As part of his commitment to strengthening education, Kerry today unveiled a plan to increase the number of high school graduates in America by 1 million students over the next five years.

George Bush promised to “leave no child behind” and to end the “soft bigotry of low expectations.” Yet today almost one-third of our high school students do not even graduate high school. The numbers are particularly bleak for minorities, as only about one-half of African-American and Latino youths are graduating.

Despite this crisis, the Bush administration has failed to enforce key graduation provisions in No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and done little to obtain accurate data about dropout rates. Given the chance to make a difference, George Bush has repeatedly opposed initiatives that would increase graduation rates.

“It is time to stop shortchanging our education reforms and get this done right,” Kerry said. “This administration is not paying attention to graduation rates and is hiding the fact that more than 1 million kids drop out every year. We cannot let empty rhetoric and misleading test scores count as real results.”

Could it be our leader is a bit worried about his West Virginia lead?