McCain, on effectively implementing the No Child Left Behind Act.

John McCain: Well I think I would implement more effectively the No Child Left Behind Act so that we can have much better performance out of K through 12. I think that it was a good beginning. Many people say they just wanna scrap it. Well those who wanna do that, I say, “Well do you want us back to where we were before we passed that law?” But it needs to be fixed and I think we can fix it. I think we need more student loan programs. We need to reduce the interest rate as we recently did.

I think also we have to think about incentivizing math, science and engineering students, because that’s the need for the future economy of this country and we have a real shortage of ‘em. I’d like to make education affordable and available to every single American. I’m not saying that they’d have to receive that education; but at least it would be available and affordable, and we’re a ways from that. But it would start with telling math, science and engineering students that we’re gonna do everything we can to make sure they receive an education in those specialties, and then broaden it out into every other.

Recorded on: 11/20/07