By most accounts, there are seven major players left in this exciting presidential primary season who might conceivably win their party's nomination. Of the seven, not a single one has made a public statement in their campaign speeches, literature, or on their website in support of the No Child Left Behind Act, which provides federal funding to school districts in exchange for holding those schools accountable for student learning. While some have expressed cautious acknowledgement of certain elements of the law, the overarching theme from the candidates is that the law needs radical changes or even needs to be scrapped.

What makes all of this surprising is the fact that pro-NCLB statements and op-eds like this one, a joint piece from the National Urban League and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and this one, published by the US Chamber of Commerce are published all the time. If the candidates aren't trying to woo Latino voters, African-American voters, and the votes of big business, who exactly are they trying to persuade?

When Senator Obama chides that NCLB "left the money behind" and that "the law has failed"; when Senator Edwards promises to "radically overhaul" the law, and when Senator Clinton promises to "end the unfunded mandate known as No Child Left Behind," one must wonder what minority voters, businesses, and other pro-NCLB groups are thinking. Maybe voters just don't care about the education issue in this presidential election.

They're certainly not looking to the Republicans to defend the law that actually holds schools accountable when they fail to improve the achievement of low-income and minority students year-after-year, instead of just turning a blind eye as our nation did for the better part of two centuries. Governor Huckabee talks about the reclaiming power of states in education, undercutting the accountability measures of NCLB. Mayor Giuliani says he opposes NCLB because it doesn't give parents nearly enough choice (a convenient ideological position, but one which is entirely unsupportable when you talk to many of the parents at my school--one parent actually enrolled her child in the wrong grade level at the start of the school year). Only Governor Romney and Senator McCain have offered responses that seem closer to support for the law, though they both criticize it (Romney on the states rights front, McCain on a more general it-needs-tweaking front, which is probably most accurate).

It remains to be seen, of course, which two candidates will emerge out of the primary process and whether their positions on NCLB will be changed by the time the general election comes around. Several of the candidates such as Obama, for instance, have avoided putting up detailed plans on educations on their campaign websites so far, possibly to avoid the pitfalls of being on record too soon. But the politicking can only last so long before parents, educators, and other concerned citizens must demand honest answers about how to move forward with the law, and not just clever sound bites.