Governor Palin speaks on the subject of education at the vice-presidential candidates’ debate

Washington University, Saint Louis, MO

October 2, 2008

[Moderator] IFILL: Governor?

PALIN: Say it ain't so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards

again. You preferenced your whole comment with the Bush

administration. Now doggone it, let's look ahead and tell Americans

what we have to plan to do for them in the future. You mentioned

education and I'm glad you did. I know education you are passionate

about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and god bless her.

Her reward is in heaven, right? I say, too, with education, America

needs to be putting a lot more focus on that and our schools have got

to be really ramped up in terms of the funding that they are

deserving. Teachers needed to be paid more. I come from a house full

of school teachers. My grandma was, my dad who is in the audience

today, he's a schoolteacher, had been for many years. My brother, who

I think is the best schoolteacher in the year, and here's a shout-out

to all those third graders at Gladys Wood Elementary School, you get

extra credit for watching the debate.

Education credit in American has been in some sense in some of our

states just accepted to be a little bit lax and we have got to

increase the standards. No Child Left Behind was implemented. It's not

doing the job though. We need flexibility in No Child Left Behind. We

need to put more of an emphasis on the profession of teaching. We need

to make sure that education in either one of our agendas, I think,

absolute top of the line. My kids as public school participants right

now, it's near and dear to my heart. I'm very, very concerned about

where we're going with education and we have got to ramp it up and put

more attention in that arena.