Opinion

Gary Johnson: The Presidential Candidate and Former New Mexico Governor's Take on Education

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Media has always focused on Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump expressing their opinions on different issues. Thus, it is a like a breath of fresh air from time to time to hear the other candidates opinion about the issues, especially on education. Gary Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico and Liberty Party's frontrunner, made some strong points on education issues.

As the former governor of New Mexico, Johnson is known as a very strong proponent of school vouchers believing that it would encourage competition which, in turn, would force public schools to improve.
"Public schools are not going to go away, but they are going to embrace the innovation that would occur if students had a choice," he said.

He even proposed to give students of New Mexico a $3,500 school voucher for the school of their choice. When criticized about it, he said that his plan will, in fact, benefit public schools more. He added that Americans are already spending $5,500 per child and when a kid opted out for a school voucher, public schools will gain $2,000 more.

Johnson is also a proponent of creating testing standards to reform the public school system. The standard will help schools assess where they are at and what they need to improve on in order to bring quality education for the kids.

Aside from being a supporter of the school voucher system, he made a controversial stand regarding the complete abolition of the Department of Education. Instead of the federal government in charge of the education system, he proposes that each State should have the freedom where and how to spend their money with regards to education. He furthers his argument by saying that the Department of Education was only created during the time of Jimmy Carter.

On the issue of student debt crisis, he supports the idea of the federal government to help students by refinancing existing debts and giving lower interest rates to get back on their feet.

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