Education on the Trail

Here are six education themes for 2016, and the candidates most likely to embrace them.

Education policy is rarely a top issue in presidential campaigns. In the main, that's fine; most of the action is at the state and local level. Still, this week's education policy summit hosted in New Hampshire by the education news website The Seventy Four and the American Federation for Children gave six of the 17 GOP presidential contenders the chance to burnish their K-12 credentials. (A second summit featuring Democratic candidates is slated for October in Iowa.)

To help the candidates hone their stump speeches, my Fordham Institute colleagues and I spent some time recently brainstorming campaign themes we'd like to see candidates from either party embrace. Here's what we came up with:

Education reform is working. It's by no means unanimous or uncontroversial, but Americans are generally supportive of the education reform agenda, broadly defined. An Education Next poll released this week shows solid (if softening) support for reform staples like charter schools, testing and accountability, merit pay for teachers, and tax credits to fund scholarships for low-income children. Voters even like higher standards as long as you don't use the words "Common Core." And while there's no room for complacency, reform is working: Test scores are trending up, particularly in math; graduation rates are too, especially for low-income kids of color.

Most likely to adopt this in her stump speech: Hillary Clinton. She has vocally supported charter schools since her husband's presidency. Democrats at the national level, including her former boss, President Barack Obama, have largely supported the reform agenda for decades. Come the general election, Clinton will want to remind centrist voters of her reform bona fides.

College isn't the only ticket to upward mobility. One of the great overreaches of the reform era is the "college for all" mantra that so many have preached for years. In the documentary "Waiting for Superman," journalist Jonathan Alter memorably said, "If you don't go to college, you're kinda screwed in America. And America's kinda screwed." This is, well, screwy. Yes, there's a substantial wage premium associated with earning a college degree. But if the goal is upward mobility – and it should be – college is not the only route to the middle class. Many forms of post-secondary training and education are closely associated with higher wages, not just four-year college degrees.

Most likely to adopt this in his stump speech: John Kasich. The Ohio governor can brag about beefing up career and technical education during his tenure, including opening such options in middle schools and allowing students to gain industry credentials while still in high school.

chool choice is growing – and changing lives. Charter schools now educate nearly 3 million American children, with hundreds of thousands more on waiting lists. The Education Next poll shows support for charter schools slipping from a high of 54 percent last year to 51 percent now, but that's still nearly double the number (27 percent) of those who oppose them. The reform rhetoric of rescuing low-income kids stuck in failing schools has clearly stuck. Wonks debate whether choice "works" to spur improved outcomes. But parents seem to value choice as an end in itself.

Most likely to adopt this in his stump speech: Jeb Bush. He already claims to have created the country's most ambitious school choice programs as Florida's governor. "This is America," he said of school choice at Wednesday's education summit. "Why wouldn't we think we could apply the same common sense principles in everyday life, and apply it to education?"

America's best and brightest need attention, too. When I taught fifth grade at low-performing public school in the South Bronx, I lamented one day to an assistant principal that the kids in my class who were at or above grade level were getting none of my attention. "Those kids aren't your problem," she replied tartly. The lesson stuck and it stung: Most of our effort in education today is aimed at getting strugglers to the starting line. Those who are already there are too often starved for attention. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed this week, my colleagues Chester Finn and Brandon Wright put it well: "If we cannot bring ourselves to push smart kids as far as they can go, we will watch and eventually weep as other countries surpass us in producing tomorrow's inventors, entrepreneurs, artists and scientists."

Most likely to adopt this in his stump speech: Ben Carson. If a poor kid who grew up to become a brain surgeon can't get America excited about gifted education, who can?

School discipline is under attack. Ask a teacher, "What's the biggest factor holding back student achievement in your school?" Don't be surprised if many, perhaps even most, cite disruptive student behavior. However, black students are three times more likely than white students to be suspended from school. That's led the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights to demand racial parity in rates of punishment. The numbers don't lie, but this is a devilishly hard issue to manage successfully from 35,000 feet. Schools need to be deeply reflective about discipline. But it's hard to imagine much good coming from schools becoming afraid to maintain basic order for fear of running afoul of the feds. Moreover, the EdNext poll asked the public about "disparate impact" in discipline, too. People hate it.

Most likely to adopt this in his stump speech: Scott Walker. The Wisconsin governor has tried to explain away his flip-flopping on Common Core as protecting local control of schools. Arguing Common Core is federal overreach is a thin reed. This is a flaming arrow.

Bring back civic education. It's a pretty safe bet that Horace Mann, the father of public education, went to his grave never once having uttered the phrase "college and career ready." We've become used to thinking of education as almost entirely a private good. But there's an essential public dimension to education that's largely gone missing in the ed reform era: preparation for informed participation in our democracy. Along with "college" and "career" it's time to restore a third "c" as a co-equal goal of education: citizenship.

Most likely to adopt this in her stump speech: Carly Fiorina. "We are no longer educating citizens," she said at Wednesday's education summit. "I think it's a good idea if everyone has to take a citizenship test," she said.