Thursday, we continued our look at some of the big issues in this year's presidential election. The topic of the night was education.
President Bush says the "No Child Left Behind" initiative will benefit over one million children in North Carolina. The overall goal is to have all children proficient in reading and math by the 2013-2014 school year. Over $1 billion has been put into the state's public school system to do that.
Presidential candidate John Kerry also supports the "No Child Left Behind" act, but says it's under funded.
We asked parents in Eastern Carolina what education improvements they would like to see. Some told us more classrooms with fewer students and others wanted to see teachers get a pay raise.
"No Child Left Behind" statistics show our state met 69 percent of 81 target goals last year.
