As the campaign picture continues to become clearer, it’s time to take a closer look at the positions of all three candidates on issues relating to education and technology.

All three candidates believe the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) needs reform—but Clinton and Obama would go much farther than McCain in proposing changes to the law.

Both Clinton and Obama call for more funding to make NCLB work, but Clinton also addresses what she considers a fundamental problem with the law’s structure: She believes school accountability should be based on the year-to-year performance of students, rather than on how schools with disparate local funds stack up against each other.

Instead of asking low-income schools to catch up to wealthier institutions, she says, the program should deliver rewards and sanctions based on individual school improvement.

Obama would use federal resources to help states write new assessments that accurately measure students’ knowledge, including 21st-century skills such as critical thinking. He also favors making science education a higher priority in schools, and he wants to implement a comprehensive tracking and feedback system to measure the performance of both students and teachers from year to year.

McCain, meanwhile, wants to add greater flexibility under NCLB for children with disabilities and those with limited English proficiency. But he stops short of advocating wholesale changes to the law and its accountability measures.

Of the three candidates, Obama has been the most vocal about the need for schools to change to meet the needs of 21st-century learners. One big project that Obama wants to undertake is the creation of twenty “innovation school districts” throughout the country.

Obama’s Innovation Districts (IDs) plan would let districts apply for grants to implement education reforms, and twenty districts across the country would receive the grants. The IDs bill would appropriate $1.5 billion yearly for these districts, or about $75 million per district. These districts then would be viewed as models for educational innovation in other districts.