Obama Lands in Denver

Sen. Barack Obama at the Mapleton Expeditionary School for the Arts (Photo/Erin Rosa)Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama arrived in Thornton today to visit one of his top education advisers at the Mapleton Expeditionary School for the Arts and to field questions about schools and opportunity in the United States.


While a full recap of the event will be published Thursday, here are a few major points the candidate touched on:

– The necessity to have high school diplomas and college degrees to compete with the global economy.

– Criticism for the way standardized tests are used and how much time is spent on them.

– Support for free community college tuition through tax credits

– Support for legislation allowing certain undocumented students to attend universities.


The Thornton school is headed by Principal  Michael Johnston, who has been named as one of Obama’s top three education advisers.

Erin Rosa was born in Spain and raised in Colorado Springs. She is a freelance writer currently living in Denver. Rosa's work has been featured in a variety of news outlets including the Huffington Post, Democracy Now!, and the Rocky Mountain Chronicle, an alternative-weekly in Northern Colorado where she worked as a columnist covering the state legislature. Rosa has received awards from the Society of Professional Journalists for her reporting on lobbying and woman's health issues. She was also tapped with a rare honorable mention award by the Newspaper Guild-CWA's David S. Barr Award in 2008--only the second such honor conferred in its nine-year history--for her investigative series covering the federal government's Supermax prison in the state. Rosa covers the labor community, corrections, immigration and government transparency matters. She can be reached at erosa@www.coloradoindependent.com.

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