McCain Calls for School Choice and Shakeup of Education Bureaucracy

This from Campaign K-12:

Sen. John McCain called for a shakeup of "failed school bureaucracies" and greater parental choice in education as he accepted the Republican presidential nomination Thursday night.

"Equal access to public education has been gained. But what is the value of access to a failing school?" Sen. McCain said at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul., Minn. "We need to shake up failed school bureaucracies with competition, empower parents with choice, remove barriers to qualified instructors, attract and reward good teachers, and help bad teachers find another line of work."

The crowd gave those lines one of the loudest roars of approval of the nominee's lengthy acceptance speech.

Calling education "the civil rights issue of this century," the Arizona senator said that parents deserve to choose a new school for their children a public school "fails to meet its obligations to students."

"And I intend to give it to them," Sen. McCain said. "Some may choose a better public school. Some may choose a private one. Many will choose a charter school. But they will have that choice and their children will have that opportunity." ...