Center for Education Reform
October 2002
The Center for Education Reform (CER) has issued a timely guide to next week's gubernatorial and state education chief races, intended to assist voters in deciphering the candidates' claims and accusations on the subject of education. Concise and reader-friendly, it's based on a recent CER survey that queried candidates about charter schools, school choice, testing, and to a lesser degree, teacher quality, curriculum, and class size. Party affiliation turns out to be a fairly good predictor of their survey responses; just three Republican gubernatorial candidates openly oppose school choice, while only a single Democrat favors charter schools. CER found the results "less than encouraging." Too many platforms stress popular measures like increased expenditures and smaller classes while ignoring reform strategies like charter schools and testing. Though astute education watchers won't find much new information about races in their own backyard, the report provides a handy pre-election overview of the national scene. See http://www.edreform.org/pubs/votersguide.pdf. Education Week has also published a helpful candidate comparison; see "Gubernatorial Candidates and Their Education Platforms for 2002," October 23, 2002, http://www.edweek.org/ew/vol-22/08govsbox.htm.
