Campaign K-12 astutely points out that the number of "surrogates" representing the Obama campaign appears to be expanding infinitely. This morning one of those surrogates, Mike Johnston, sat down in the hot seat for a "reporter roundtable" with the national education press corps here at Fordham. (Last month we hosted, you guessed it, Lisa Graham Keegan to speak on behalf of the McCain campaign.)
Mike, like Lisa, is a friend and colleague and did a heckuva job fielding (and sometimes deferring) tough questions. He stuck to the Obama script, more or less, but a few interesting details emerged, at least for me:
-- When asked by the Washington Post editorial writer about the Senator's position on the D.C. voucher program, he stated bluntly that, as far as he knows, Obama is opposed to school vouchers "in any context." Perhaps that hard line will soften if Obama becomes president, particularly if he sends his own daughters to a private school once he moves to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
-- He wouldn't say if Obama supports national standards and testing, though it was clear that Johnston sees the logic. He did refer to an Obama promise to bring the governors together to encourage them to work toward common standards--probably about as much as a president could do on that touchy issue right now.
-- He stated quite strongly that Obama had "no intention" of backing away from NCLB's accountability provisions--though he does want to get a fuller, richer picture of student achievement than can be provided by reading and math tests.
-- When asked about the McCain campaign's strong support for virtual schools, Johnston refused to say that Obama endorses that particular approach, just that the Senator likes public school choice and "programs that work." I asked if that was because of the teachers unions' staunch opposition to virtual schools; ??Johnston argued that Obama (Mr. Postpartisanship) simply isn't about promoting "certain ideologies," but pragmatic solutions, and that some virtual schools "work," and some don't.
The talk of transcending ideology is of course consistent with the rhetoric coming out of the Obama campaign, but I'm not sure how to square it with the Senator's position on vouchers. Any fair reading of the research would say that vouchers "work" in terms of boosting the achievement of poor students--or at least several voucher programs do. So isn't his opposition to vouchers, nonetheless, for "ideological" reasons? Why else be opposed to them "in any context"? Surely it wouldn't have to do with--you guessed it--his support from the teachers unions.
