If I were advising either presidential candidate--which I'm not--I'd tell them to say as little as possible on education. Partly that's because of the electorate: Americans are focused on other things, what with $4-per-gallon gas and flat-lining wages. And partly that's because of policy: it's hard for a candidate for federal office to talk about schools and not mention the big gorilla in the room: the No Child Left Behind Act. But the bases in both parties hate the law, yet neither candidate wants to run away from it entirely. So they keep mum. Good idea.
Dan Gerstein, a onetime aide to Senator Joe Lieberman and a consultant to Democrats for Education Reform, disagrees. He took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal yesterday to urge Barack Obama to make education a key part of his acceptance speech:
The ideal issue for Mr. Obama to focus on in the speech and beyond, as Mayor Bloomberg can attest, is education. No challenge is more consequential for our country than closing the achievement gap in our urban schools and raising the competitiveness of our workforce. And no special interest has done more to stand in the way of change in our public schools than the teachers unions that dominate Democratic politics.The unions' chokehold on the party (and by extension the futures of millions of black and Hispanic children) is starting to loosen. One sign of that was the impressive number of progressive leaders who showed up to support Mr. Obama's change agenda and embrace an aggressively pro-innovation set of principles at a forum sponsored by Democrats for Education Reform (full disclosure: the group is a client of mine) here in Denver on Sunday. That group included three of the country's most influential African-American mayors, all rising stars in the party--Adrian Fenty in Washington, Cory Booker in Newark, and Michael Nutter in Philadelphia.
Imagine what the party's first African-American presidential nominee could do to liberate millions of low-income children of color, not to mention elevate his standing as a change agent, simply by declaring that the era of unequal education is over in America. Mr. Obama doesn't have to, nor should he, attack or even mention the unions. Just do what he has already done (but louder): challenge his own party to change its policies to put children first, and embrace innovative solutions like longer school days and years, high-quality charter schools, and performance pay for teachers.
That's not just change you can believe in. That's change you can bank votes on.
As an "education expert," I want to believe that Gerstein is right, that talking about education would be good for Obama (and, likewise, good for McCain). But I'm skeptical. Maybe four years from now, when "NCLB fatigue" has worn off, the public will be ready. If I had to bet, I'd say that Obama is going to mention gas prices and the economy, and leave most of the education talk for his surrogates.
