Guideposts for attacking Obama on education

Wall Street Journal today offers advice to Sen. McCain on going after Sen. Obama on education. The Illinois senator sends his daughters to a pricey school in Chicago while opposing vouchers for poor children.

McCain's education temptations

I'm not alone in writing about the school choice options McCain could push in the campaign -- if the campaign chose to elevate the issue. This op-ed in the Wall Street Journal lays out the voucher possibilities. My recent Politico piece looked more at charters and the implications of choosing Lisa Graham Keegan as a top adviser. McCain's advisers, however, caution against expecting to see education float to the top of the campaign issues. The war and the troubled economy will most likely continue to dominate, they predict.

Richard Whitmire

Is Obama for or against vouchers?

It seems that Barack Obama, who told the big national teachers unions last year that he opposed public financing of vouchers for students to attend private schools, has changed his tune.

Campaigning in Wisconsin, where Milwaukee's popular voucher program sends more than 15 percent of the city's school children to private schools, Obama told the editorial board of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he is open to the idea of vouchers if studies end up proving they are effective in raising student achievement.

Obama said he remained a "skeptic" about vouchers, but would reconsider if the research showed otherwise. There has not been a conclusive longitudinal study of the effectiveness of Milwaukee's voucher program, although a new study is underway.

Rival Hillary Clinton has been highly critical of vouchers, even warning that widespread use of them could result in public financing for kids to attend schools that teach "jihad."

This Week in Education's Alexander Russo points out, however, that this isn't the first time Obama has spoken this way about vouchers and that he likes to use education as an example of his independence from Democratic orthodoxy.

I suppose it doesn't hurt to bring this up on the eve of Wisconsin's hotly contested primary.

This post also appears on my education blog Get on the Bus.

(Image: Obama with students at Northcentral Wisconsin Technical College. Credit: Wausau Daily Herald)

Romney's "Excellence in Education" Agenda

On the same day we learned that voters in Utah decisively shot down the nation's first universal private-school voucher program, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney—who has significant ties to the state—reiterated today that he will promote school choice as part of his education agenda.

So where was Romney during the voucher fight in Utah? He pretty much kept quiet, despite pleas from voucher advocates to lend his political capital to the fight.

Yet school choice has a prominent role in his education agenda, which he discussed today in South Carolina, along with other hot-button issues, such as merit-pay for teachers and changing the No Child Left Behind act to focus more on individual student progress rather than school progress.

Mitt Romney and the Mormon Faith

I'm Michele McNeil, a state policy reporter for Education Week, and I'll be tracking and discussing Republican Mitt Romney's education ideas as the presidential race continues. This is good timing for my first blog entry as I've just returned from an assignment in Utah for a story about school vouchers, where I learned about how the Mormon faith influences opinions and decisions about public schools. I think this might be instructive as we monitor the education views of Romney, who is a Mormon.

On a visit to the world headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City this week, I learned that Mormons, who prize the notion of family, are big supporters of public schools and only operate their own private schools in areas of the world where public education is lacking. Tonga was one example a tour guide gave me. It's worth noting, however, that in Utah, high school students who are Mormons get an hour a day of "release time" for religious instruction. Mormons are also fierce supporters of "free agency", or studying issues and making their own choices.

The two beliefs—support for public schools and freedom of choice—certainly must influence Romney. And, these beliefs create tension in the current debate over school vouchers, which often pits the ideas of public school against parental choices. It's a very hot topic in Utah, which has a referendum on the November ballot asking voters to keep, or throw out, a universal voucher program. It's also an issue for Romney, who has said he supports vouchers programs.