The Core Knowledge Blog

Checker Finn noticed that the words “No Child Left Behind” never even crossed the lips of Obama or McCain in their convention acceptance speeches.

In the education sphere, that’s roughly equivalent to talking about America’s foreign and defense challenges without mentioning Iraq. NCLB is the 800-pound gorilla of federal K-12 education policy and the foremost topic of conversation whenever this domain is touched on. In fact, as I roam the land, it’s the only federal education issue that non-educators invariably ask about. Yet in their major campaign kick-off addresses, both wannabee presidents managed to talk about education without disclosing that they’re even aware of its existence.

NCLB is a “damaged brand,” Finn writes, even while the public still supports standards, assessment, and school accountability.  But the silence from the candidates has as much to do with “real and serious” internal schisms in each party, Finn says.  Democrats are split over the role of teachers’ unions, and if schools alone can boost performance, or if problems beyond schools’ control need to be addressed first. 

The GOP, too, faces a pair of big (and also overlapped) splits, both reverberating with past vs. present, of what might be called Reagan-era vs. Bush-era thinking about education priorities. One involves Uncle Sam’s role: forceful driver of reform or an undemanding source of dollars to states, districts and parents to do pretty much what they think best in the K-12 sphere. The other Republican schism is between supporters of school choice as the surest path to better education and advocates of standards, testing and results-based accountability, i.e. between reliance on the marketplace or on government-driven change.

The upshot: the less McCain and Obama say about NCLB the better. “Stick with the crowd pleasers today and save for tomorrow — some tomorrow after November 4 — any clear plans for what to do when statutory reality can no longer be avoided,” Finn concludes.