Making the grade?

Back to School: Barack Obama and John McCain try to convince Americans that their vastly different education proposals would pass instead of fail | Lynn Vincent

Associated Press/Photo by LM Otero

On the presidential race, Nathan Miller has already made up his mind: He will vote for Barack Obama.

Miller, a high-school English teacher in Apple Valley, Minn., recently penned Teaching in Circles, a memoir he said "explores what compels me to stick with teaching and what is trying to drive me away."

Obama is offering more solutions that address the latter, Miller said: "John McCain seems to see that the problems with public education lie within the schools and that the solutions are to be found outside the schools. Obama seems to be suggesting more solutions that work inside the schools that would reach kids who are struggling."

Miller, a registered Democrat in his 11th year of teaching, said the kids who struggle most "are those who don't come from healthy homes in the first place. McCain's idea that giving parents more control and more school choices doesn't actually solve the underlying problem of uninvolved parents."