Obama unviels $18B education plan, goes after Edwards and Clinton

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- Illinois Senator Barack Obama visited the state's most diverse high school to deliver a comprehensive K-12 education plan that aims to improve teacher pay, early childhood learning and math and science test scores. The plan costs upwards of $18 billion a year.

Obama said that overall he wanted to move an education system away from a "those kids" mentality (as in "those kids can't learn") to one that a looks at every child as "our kid". In his plan he lays out 35 separate initiatives.

"We are not a 'these kids' nation. We are the nation that has always understood that our future is inextricably linked to the education of our children -- all of them," he said.

He also used the speech to go after rivals Hillary Clinton and John Edwards for voting against more funding of No Child Left Behind when they were both in the US Senate.

"It's pretty popular to bash No Child Left Behind out on the campaign trail, but when it was being debated in Congress four years ago, my colleague Dick Durbin offered everyone a chance to vote so that the law couldn't be enforced unless it was fully funded," Obama said. "Senator Edwards and Senator Clinton passed on that chance, and I believe that was a serious mistake."

The plan came after he announced in Iowa that, as president, he would make community college free.