BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) -- The top four candidates for governor tonight each listed education as a critical area of need in Louisiana, but they disagreed on how to improve public education as they started answering questions in the first televised debate in the governor's race.
John Georges, a registered independent from New Orleans, says he supports voucher programs that would take money used on public education to send poor children to better-performing private schools. He also says teachers should be paid better and all public school students should have laptop computers.
Democrat Foster Campbell says he's adamantly opposed to vouchers but would push to open schools year-round to offer better training to students.
Bobby Jindal, the Republican congressman and front-runner in the race, says he supports school choice. He says it's unfair to tell our children to wait. Jindal also says students need more access to technical education classes.
Democrat Walter Boasso says he would consider tossing out the high-stakes LEAP test in a complete restructuring of the way the state provides education. He suggests focusing on the child -- not statistics.
The debate at the Old State Capitol was the first face-to-face meeting of the four major candidates in the governor's race.
The primary election is October 20th.
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