WASHINGTON - This election season, msnbc.com is presenting a weekly series assessing the issues and controversies that the next president will confront once he takes the oath of office.

This week, we look at the state of public elementary and secondary education, and where the candidates stand on funding, school choice and teacher pay.

Why it matters
The United States spent nearly $72 billion on elementary and secondary education in 2007, which is the highest in terms of expenditure per student and as percentage of gross domestic product, among the G-8 countries, according to the Department of Education.

But according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States trails many developed countries in educational quality. In 2003, 15-year-olds ranked in 24th, 19th, and 12th of 38 nations in mathematics, science, and reading, respectively.

This deficit was the focus of the last question of the final presidential debate on October 15.

Moderator Bob Schieffer asked presidential candidates Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama how they would employ the federal government to raise the United States’ international standing in elementary and secondary education.

The candidates agreed on the importance of the mission.

“This probably has more to do with our economic future than anything and that means it also has a national security implication,” said Obama. “There’s never been a nation on earth that saw its economy decline and continued to maintain its primacy as a military power.”

Video   Improving American education Oct. 15: Presidential debate moderator Bob Schieffer asks John McCain and Barack Obama about what they intend to do about the U.S. trailing much of the world in math and science competency. MSNBC

McCain tied education to social equality, calling it “the civil rights issue of the 21st century.”

Invoking the racial struggles of the 1960s, he continued: “There’s no doubt that we have achieved equal access to schools in America after a long and difficult and terrible struggle.”

But beyond the notion that the United States must improve its public school systems, McCain and Obama agree on little in terms of the role of the federal government in doing so.

Where the candidates stand
In 2000, Gov. George W. Bush ran his successful presidential campaign focusing largely on education reform at the federal level – a focus that had rarely been used to the same extent by a Republican seeking national office.

Bush’s education proposals culminated in the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which bases the allocation of federal funds for schools on state-administered achievement tests.

Many education interest groups, such as the National Education Association, criticized the effectiveness of No Child Left Behind, charging that its emphasis on testing provides incentive for states to lower achievement goals and schools to teach students to master the test instead of developing critical-thinking skills.

“Right now it’s a high-stakes test; it’s a single test once a year and really has nothing to do with the individual student,” Dennis Van Roekel, president of the NEA, told msnbc.com.

“We’re going need some time doing some good research to figure out how do we adequately measure if students are learning,” he added.

Interactive Analyze this! Review the presidential debate Msnbc.com lets you review the video action by question, topic or time.

Obama, who is backed by the NEA, echoes this sentiment in his education policy, saying that although states should continue to oversee student assessments, the federal government should increase funding for “states to implement a broader range of assessments.”

His plan does not, however, specify how much federal funding of assessments should be increased.

In the Oct. 15 presidential debate, McCain countered his opponent’s plan, saying “Throwing money at the problem is not the answer,” adding, “You will find that some of the worst school systems in America get the most money per student.”

McCain’s stance against increased federal funding is echoed by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington. “We should be hesitant to look to Washington to solve the problems in education” said Dan Lips, a senior policy analyst who specializes in federal and state education issues.

“One of the problems that we’ve seen is that federal funding comes with a lot of regulations and bureaucracy, and at the end of the day, much of that funding that Congress provides for education ends up being spent outside the classroom on bureaucracy and administration,” said Lips.

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