"Specifically, we agree on the need for reorienting our federal education policy to make it more performance-based, with much greater emphasis on results instead of rules and regulations," they wrote. "We agree on the need for streamlining the federal bureaucracy, providing local districts with more flexibility to decide how best to allocate their federal aid to meet their local priorities and encouraging principals and teachers to experiment with innovative programs and practices. We agree on the need to expand educational options for America's families, particularly for low-income parents, by promoting the development of independent public charter schools and broader public school choice programs...."

But, they wrote to the President, while their plans calls for increasing spending by $35 million in five years on educational programs in disadvantaged communities, "it is not clear to what extent you are willing to raise funding levels to help raise standards."

The Democratic plan continues to focus federal dollars on five goals: 
"closing the achievement gap, improving teacher quality, assisting immigrant children to master English, spurring innovative practices and promoting choice within the public school framework," they said.

Regarding school choice, they said, "in our bill we strengthen federal support for the charter school movement and create a new funding stream to encourage states and local districts to establish inter- and intra district public school choice programs. However we are opposed to voucher provisions that would take federal funding out of disadvantaged public schools. We are particularly concerned by the fact that your voucher component would take away Title I funding from failing schools after three years. 

"Instead of going down this road, we would urge you to take a different course that gets us to the same goal of helping children trapped in failing public schools For example in our bill, we call for targeting additional resources and technical assistance to help turn around poor performing schools and when these interventions are not sufficient, we require states and local districts to take strong corrective actions, such as reconstituting the school, converting it to a charter school, or shutting it down and allowing the students to transfer to a higher-performing public school..."
Donald H. Harrison