“College isn’t even viable for lots of people because it’s still too expensive,” Humphrey said. “What are we doing to ourselves, putting ourselves into debt while we’re just starting out in life? This puts us behind for the rest of our lives.”

Hulshof wants to expand needs-based scholarships, specifically for students going into math and science. Scholarships currently consume $100 million in appropriations from the Missouri budget. He also wants to increase higher education funding at the rate of inflation plus 2 percent each year starting in 2011.

“In most of the last 10 years, that formula would have sent significantly more money to higher education than has been,” Baker said.

Hulshof’s plan also includes a fast track to create groups of ready-to-hire employees for particular sectors and greater access to technical schools and community colleges for students who aren’t looking for a four-year degree. Toward that end, he wants to invest $5 million his first year in office into setting up technical and community college programs.

Nixon is proposing the Missouri Promise program, which builds on the existing A+ Schools Program, currently in about half of Missouri high schools. It pays for two years of community college for students who meet certain academic, community service and financial requirements. Shur said Nixon’s plan expands the existing program to all high schools and then pays for the last two years of a four-year college degree too.

“The plan is to design a plan for middle class families where students can get a four-year degree and graduate from college debt-free,” Shur said.

K-12 funding

Funding is also a challenge for K-12 education, and Cade warns his student teachers to prepare for a continuing battle for space in classes and school buildings. He said these have been the critical issues in education for years, and they don’t appear to be going away. More money would help, he said.

“Don’t ever let someone tell you that money doesn’t make a difference,” Cade said.

Baker wouldn’t give specifics about Hulshof’s plan for K-12 education until next week, but said the candidate’s philosophy is to fulfill the state’s promise to fully fund schools through the existing funding formula.

“We have to have a balanced budget,” Baker said. “Both candidates have promised not to raise taxes, so this will be about how each candidate is going to pay for those things that he wants to do.”

Shur said Nixon has promised to improve early childhood education, provide more support for Parents As Teachers and to change the way high school seniors look at their final year in school. Nixon wants to let seniors earn up to a full semester of college credit during that final year in high school or focus their energies on vocational and technical programs.

Accountability

Acronyms are becoming the tools of accountability for public schools. There’s NCLB (No Child Left Behind), AYP (Annual Yearly Performance) and MAP (Missouri Assessment Program). These programs are designed to offers assessments of how districts are doing to penalize those that don’t measure up.

Just last week, the Joplin R-8 Board of Education added its support to a federal bill that would provide school districts with temporary relief from NCLB penalties and urged Congress to reform education assessment.