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McCain pledging to NAACP more education options

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CINCINNATI — John McCain told the NAACP and some skeptical black voters Wednesday that he will expand education opportunities, partly through vouchers for low-income children to attend private school.

The likely Republican presidential nominee addressed the annual convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

In greeting the group, McCain praised Democrat Barack Obama's historic campaign.

"Whatever the outcome in November," McCain said, "Senator Obama has achieved a great thing, for himself and for his country, and I thank him for it. . . . Don't tell him I said this, but he is an impressive fellow in many ways."

But he went on to say the Illinois senator is wrong to oppose school vouchers for students in failing public schools. It's time, McCain said, to use vouchers and other tools such as merit pay for teachers to break from conventional thinking on educational policy.

He said Obama has dismissed support for private-school vouchers for low-income Americans.

"All of that went over well with the teachers union, but where does it leave families and their children who are stuck in failing schools?" the Arizona senator asked. "No entrenched bureaucracy or union should deny parents that choice and children that opportunity."

McCain received mostly polite applause in a room with some empty seats, two days after Obama received an enthusiastic reception from a standing-room-only audience.

McCain lauded Martin Luther King Jr. as a leader who "loved and honored his country even when the feeling was unreturned, and counseled others to do the same."