As a mother of two small children, I am very interested in each candidates vision for education. I have checked the campaign websites of the front-runners and find Mike's vision is closest to mine.

Since Hillary is most likely to get the Democrat nomination I have really been checking her out on the issues that matter the most to me. It is not as easy on the Republican side to know who will get the nomination but I believe Mike Huckabee shows the most promise of a close match up against her. Let's look at them together:

Hillary Clinton- first of all when you go to her website it does not have education listed under issues, it is clumped in a group with the title of "Supporting Parents and Caring for Children."

This section has several bullets but only three could really be considered education. The first one on education was a pledge to pay teachers more. While noble, this really does not guarantee a focus on children learning, it's focus instead is on the financial welfare of the teachers. Now we should note that this is quite vague, it does not say if there will be any stipulations to this increase.

The second bullet is about the NCLB Act. She claims it Fails it's objective in a way that gives a not-so-subtle dig at the current administration. My first instinct was to remind her Bush will not be on the ballot and we want to know where we go from here. But instead, I noticed she says it will be reformed but makes no mention of how, again she is vague.

The third and last bullet is on early childhood education (pre-school). Like increasing wages for teachers this is noble but,again, she does not give any details. If she considers the system to be failing then how is she going to fix it and why is bringing the children in younger going to help if we are just going to do more of the same.

It seems to me that she is trying hard not to offend anybody by her plans. The problem is she will not get my vote without some real vision and not just a vague mention of a possible issue.

Mike Huckabee - his website has an extensive page on education and what he thinks is needed. Not only does he tell you what but he even tells you why. I have no idea who wrote this page of his site but it was done well. Bravo!

Huckabee has several statements about education and I don't want to reproduce his entire page so I will only mention a few that really caught my attention.

First, he strongly supports music and art education. Mike says they are as important as other subjects because they promote creativity and work the right side of the brain. My oldest is super creative and I agree that he learns better when his creativity is part of the learning process. Mike goes on to note that strong music and art programs increase overall academic acheivement.

The second statement was very creative in itself. He supports testing for teachers and dismissal for incompetent ones ( now most teachers would get really worried at this point, but stay with this for a sec.) He wants to give bonuses for high-performing teachers in low-performing schools. he even suggests forgiving student-loans for these teachers. He believes that teachers themselves should be involved in the development of compensation initiatives.

The third and probably my favorite point is that Mike believes that the States should carry out the education programs and the Federal Government should assist and empower them to do it right. I like this idea because people in Washington DC are too far removed to make decisions on how my children are best taught. This should be done by people that are farther down the totem pole and have better access to information that would vary from state to state or even district to district.

So having compared these two candidates, who do you think wins on education?

Needless to say, I like Mike!