A vision of hope and values
Kerry calls for improving schools and keeping America secure

Sen. John Kerry delivered a passionate plea for AFT activists to join his fight for the presidency—an invitation that thousands of delegates gathered at the AFT convention seemed eager to hear.

Chants of “Kerry! Kerry!” filled the hall as the Massachusetts Democrat detailed his vision for the future—one based on hope and a belief that values without deeds are no values at all.

“Politicians who talk about valuing morality and personal responsibility ought to start by keeping their own promises,” Kerry said to cheers from the crowd. “Values are not just talk. They’re about what we live. They’re about the choices we make, the values we champion. And we believe that what matters most is not the narrow values that divide—it’s the shared values that unite all of us.”

To see the distinction between “value speak” and true values, Kerry said one needs look no further than the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), a victim of broken Bush administration promises as early as two weeks after it became law.

“Millions of children have been left behind—left with overcrowded classrooms, left without textbooks and left without the high-quality tests that measure what they are learning,” said Kerry, who pledged to fully fund NCLB and special education as president as well as address the longstanding crisis that inadequate, unsafe public schools present. “We shouldn’t be opening schools and firehouses in Baghdad and shutting them and watching them crumble in the United States.”

Change for the better
Kerry pledged to pursue school reform “in a constructive way that doesn’t make victims out of people or degrade people.” The goal of placing an excellent teacher in every classroom is a laudable one, Kerry said, and it begins with ending the “national disgrace” of uncompetitive teacher salaries. He called for increased professional development and a national commitment to raise graduation rates through strong interventions like high-quality after-school programs, which he aims to expand to 3.5 million more students across the nation.

He also called for new incentives to hold college tuitions down and new tax credits to help make college more affordable. Kerry made clear that he had no interest in pursuing many of the schemes and attacks on public education that have characterized the current administration. “No broken promises on funding. No more empty rhetoric on reform. No privatizing the public jobs that strengthen our communities. And no vouchers,” Kerry pledged.

In the international arena, the combat-decorated war veteran promised delegates, “I will keep America secure, but I pledge you this: We will never go to war because we want to; we will go to war only because we have to.”