To be sure, a lot of the scrutiny Obama has received is rooted in key decisions that he is in the process of making regarding his plan to address our struggling economy--decisions such as the makeup of his team of economic advisors, the details of his stimulus plan, his level of support for an auto-maker industry bailout, and so on. And other sources of scrutiny are timely simply because they concern intriguing cabinet level selections, with Senator Hillary Clinton headlining the list.

But Mr. Obama is already drawing what can best be termed "challenges" from observers as to his leadership ability and reform views on a wide variety of less prominent issues as well--and education is a terrific example of this. Two pieces just this past week--one in Newsweek and another in the Wall Street Journal--call out Mr. Obama and whether he will be able to deliver on his promises of the change we need, changes that are particularly vital in school reform.

Newsweek questions whether Senator Obama's purported commitment to change in education will actually ring true through the lens of recent developments in D.C. Public Schools, where controversial Chancellor of Schools Michelle Rhee has threatened to unilaterally revoke teacher tenure in exchange for a merit pay system that would reward the district's best teachers salaries approaching $130,000--where "best" is judged by how much students improve in learning. In the Wall Street Journal, Stanford Professor Terry Moe questions more broadly whether Mr. Obama will have the political gumption needed to take on teachers unions to make changes that many in the school reform arena think are crucial: expanding school choice, strengthening school accountability, and reassessing teacher pay in exactly the kind of ways contemplated by Michelle Rhee.

Why the attention and, arguably, premature concern over Mr. Obama's ability to deliver reform in education when he becomes president? I suppose part of it owes to a desperately hungry media news cycle that has had a year's worth of Obama-watching and that is loath to give it up now that the election season is over (But wait! Media! What if we entered President Obama in this hotly-contested, closely-watched, and rife-with-implications electoral race!) And another part of it has to do with the de facto nature of a constitutional conundrum concerning where power actually rests during lame-duck periods like the one we are in now.

But another source of the unrest and concern over Mr. Obama's ability to lead has to do with the nature of the electoral coalition he put together and that propelled him to the White House. It's no surprise that any time a candidate receives more than 66 million popular votes that not all of those voters will agree with each other on big issues, but in education there is a divide, alluded to in the WSJ op-ed that has unique implications: a good percentage of the Democratic base plays by the old playbook of teacher-union driven reform models, while many others ask more exclusively, what is best for school children?

Here's where a recent development kicks in: President-elect Obama tabbed a pro-union, old-school reform thinker, Linda Darling-Hammond, to be the leader of his education policy transition team, drawing concerns from progressives in the newer camp of school reform. The same thing has happened, in some eyes, in the economic team put together by the Obama leadership, a team that has a lot of old-school ties to the Clinton years (not to mention Mrs. Clinton herself at State).

What does it all mean? We're still two months away from President Obama's first day in office, but already the second-guessing is starting. The second-guessing, however, does little good (other than to give me something to blog about). Better for us, as a nation and punditry, to ease off on the political commentary a bit and wait until the President-elect actually gets into office and develops a record on these very issues. Once that happens, any and every move and decision made by the administration will be fair game.

The video and pictures below are from protests in the streets of Italy (video) and Germany (photo), where students in the past weeks have taken bold action to show their anger with government proposals in each country cutting education spending and services:

It's impossible to analyze the events in Italy without reference to the flagging economic conditions affecting the entire globe. Italy is on the front-lines of the economic downturn, with the world's third largest debt (behind only the US and Japan), but only the 7th largest economy by GDP. In light of the economic situation, Italian Prime Minister Sylvio Berlusconi has sought to make dramatic spending cuts--as much as $7 billion Euros, or $9 billion US--in the education system. Proposed cuts would include eliminating as many as 70,000 teaching positions in elementary schools and reducing spending in Italian high schools and universities.

In Germany, student protests are just beginning (compared to the protests in Italy, which started towards the end of October). German students are upset with overcrowded classrooms, high-pressure school exit exams, and teacher quality in general.

While estimates vary, the number of youth protestors in Italy has been widely reported as in the hundreds of thousands--anywhere from 100,000 to 500,000. Given that Italy's population is five times smaller than the United States, one has to wonder what would happen if hundreds of thousands or even millions of American youth stood united to demand improvements in our schools.

To be sure, much remains to be determined as to whether Italian student protests will lead Prime Minister Berlusconi to recant on his promises to cut education spending, or whether there will be some electoral blowback (a Reuters report showed Mr. Berlusconi's approval rating falling a significant 4% in just the past month as the protests have gotten underway). But if the experience from student social movement building in Chile is any lesson, we almost certainly have yet to see the final impact of the protests.

No, it's not the breed of dog they should bring to the White House (although the leading candidate is good news for animal shelters across the country who will get some free press: rescue dog!)

And it certainly has nothing to do with the drapes in the oval office or whether to team up with Senator McCain and Governor Palin to steal the hope diamond.

The most important issue facing the first-family-elect has to do with where Sasha and Malia...

should go to school.

It is a tricky question, substantively, to be sure. There are two widely renown, elite private schools that most pundits have at the top of the Obama's list: Georgetown Day School and Sidwell Friends School. The Obama girls both currently attend the University of Chicago's Laboratory School, a highly regarded private school in its own right, and it wouldn't be a culture shock for the two of them to transfer to either Georgetown Day or Sidwell Friends, where Chelsea Clinton was enrolled. I doubt either the Obama girls will have trouble getting admission, and their parents can probably foot the ~$30,000 tuition.

But a wild card is in the picture, which makes the choice for the first family difficult not just substantively, but symbolically: Thomson Elementary School, one of the higher achieving elementary schools in the DC Public School system. The school seems to be a beacon in a district that is largely maligned by low test scores and high drop-out rates, although recent reforms under new school Chancellor Michelle Rhee have drawn positive reviews from a number of education reformers.

The substantive issues are relatively straightforward, and they are for the Obamas to decide: where do they think Sasha and Malia will get the best education to prepare them for a successful future? It's the same choice that face so many families across the country, except for two major differences.

The first difference, of course, is that the vast majority of families don't even have the option of sending their kids to $30,000 a year primary schools. If history is any guide, it's likely that the Obama kids will do what many wealthy families do and send Sasha and Malia to either of the private schools, since the last first kid to attend a public school was Jimmy Carter's daughter, Amy, over 30 years ago.

But the second difference between the Obama family choice and the choice facing most American families is that millions of people are watching their decision. Put simply there are political implications when one chooses to send their kids to an elite private school that is out of reach for mainstream America, and yet tries to understand mainstream America's challenges.

Now I, and many others such as the USA Today editorial board, don't think the Obamas should make the choice for political reasons. But that doesn't mean politics don't exist on this decision. Thomson Elementary serves nearly 300 school children, 69% of whom are from low-income families, and 96% of whom are minorities (40% Hispanic, 34% black, and 22% Asian-American, the remainder white). There is undoubtedly a message sent if Mr. and Mrs. Obama enroll Sasha and Malia there; whether one calls it faith in the American public education system, belief in the American dream, or just good old fashioned seeing-what-your-tax-dollars pay for.

Where do you think they should send their kids (or do you think its no business of nosy bloggers like me?)

But before getting to the initiatives, a quick dissection of what President-Elect Obama may mean for children in the early months of his administration. There are two quick and easy wins that look to be likely bets on any 100 days type calendar: expanding funding for children's health insurance --a measure vetoed by President Bush--via SCHIP and passing a new college tuition tax credit to benefit at-need college students in exchange for community service.

The tougher question is what President Obama will do about reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (AKA NCLB). It's unlikely that he will tackle NCLB in the early part of his legislative calendar simply because: 1.) It will cost a lot of political capital to do so, and 2.) that capital, in the eyes of most Americans, is more urgently needed on economic action, energy policy, troop numbers in the Middle East, and even health care. So the best answer to the question, what will President Obama do on K-12 education in the very early going? He'll punt... at least until middle-late 2009.

To the ballot measures. Missouri, Colorado, Maryland, and Arkansas each had ballot proposals to increase access citizen access to gambling with a back-end result of increasing (or substituting) public education funding. All four initiatives passed. Just goes to show what happens when you bundle up a bunch of core American values--freedom, education, risk-taking, greed--in one neat package and place it on a ballot: people will vote for it.

Nebraska and Colorado each had initiatives to ban affirmative action, part of California millionaire Ward Connerly's steady march to rid states of the policy one by one (affirmative action bans have been passed in Connerly's home state of California, Washington, and Michigan in previous elections). The ban passed easily in Nebraska, but was just declared defeated in Colorado, by the narrowest of margins.

Colorado wasn't done with controversial measures affecting education, though. A trio of anti-union measures, Amendments 47, 49, and 54 were up for decision as well, and the first two were defeated easily, largely through the campaign organizing of the Colorado Education Association. 47 & 49 would have made it illegal for school districts to force teachers to pay their union dues by witholding pay from their paychecks, a fairly common practice in schools across the nation--but Union control lives on. Amendment 54, however, passed narrowly--a measure designed to limit the lobbying influence of organizations who receive no-bid / non-competitive contracts from the government. The measure was supported as a pro-democracy plan to limit lobbyist and special interest influence; teachers unions are likely to file suit over the initiative on first amendment grounds.

Lastly, the initiatives I was personally most curious about: Oregon measures 58 and 60. Both failed by wide margins--58 proposed to restrict non-English instruction in schools and 60 attempted to change Oregon's system for teacher pay from a seniority-based system to a merit-based system. No question that 58 runs counter to progressive notions of equity along racial and ethnic lines by essentially rendering Spanish and other second language classes not just inferior, but illegal in certain school settings.

But measure 60 is a bit tricker. It is the kind of measure that was no doubt destined to fail, but which just may prove prescient; the kind of idea that is rightfully placed directly before voters because entrenched political interests are unlikely to support it. The idea is this: if we, as a people, believe that data systems are appropriate and in place such that educators can be measured, rewarded, or recognized as in-need of improvement based on how much they are helping their students learn, then shouldn't that be a system of paying teachers that deserves consideration instead of paying our oldest teachers most (which may be, at best, only loosely tied to student learning)? In other words, it's totally appropriate to pay an experienced teacher "A" the most money out of an entire staff if teacher "A" is in fact helping their students advance the most in math, reading skills, science, etc. And if that's the case, can anyone make an argument for why we would pay teacher "B", whose students, year-in and year-out, show absolutely no improvement in reading or math skills more than teacher "A"? No way right?

Now what if I told you that teacher "A" has been a teacher for 6 years and teacher "B" for 30 years. Would you suddenly want to pay teacher "B" more (in some districts, as much as 100% more) just because he is older? I can't think of a single reason why we'd do that. At its heart, that is what measure 60 was about, though. Of course, there are lots of nuances about the data and why any merit system has to be cautious so as to avoid over-drawn conclusions, but Oregon Measure 60 is not some political hack job idea--it's a serious issue.

Finally, in perhaps the most important decision still to be made, word on the street is that there is a leading contender in the race to be the First Dog promised to Sasha and Malia Obama:

GOLDENDOODLE!!!!

There is more at stake in the voting booth than just these state level initiatives too; in many towns and cities voters will have to choose between increasing taxes for various services or abiding by the pressure of a slowing economy and cutting local spending. In California alone, for example, there are more than 50 local education-related ballot initiatives having to do with teacher salaries, new text books, new school buildings or building repairs, and so on. Most of these local education spending bonds pass during ordinary election cycles, but during this economic downturn, it is anyone’s guess how much voters will be affected.

Chief among the crucial state initiatives concerning education are four categories: gambling for education proposals, proposals to end affirmative action, a set of controversial initiatives aimed at curtailing union power in Colorado, and a really controversial initiative in Oregon aimed at drastic reform of how teachers are paid throughout the state.

The first set of interesting ballot proposals are in play in Missouri, Colorado, Maryland, and Arkansas. Depending on how one looks at them, they are either pro-gambler’s rights proposals or proposals to supplement or modify existing school spending structures. Basically the states propose either to expand state lotteries, extend casino hours and gambling limits, allow slot machines, and raise casino taxes to fund education. In Missouri, for instance, there is a state cap limiting the amount of money that individuals can lose by gambling in a certain time period ($500 per 2 hours) that would be lifted, with all additional revenues turned over to schools—an amount estimated between $100 and $130 million per year.

Sounds like a pretty good idea, right? The primary concerns that have been expressed against the law are either the pretty standard anti-gambling argument, which may be true—but how much we should prefer to protect irresponsible folks who are pretty wealthy from harming themselves over providing better schools to kids is an open question. The second concern with these proposals, however, is a bit more on point: what if state legislatures decide to use the revenue generated from these plans to replace, rather than add to, current school funding plans? If this is all that the initiative would amount to then it’s not as clear that it’s worth supporting, and there are no guarantees in the actual law to ensure that new revenues would be added to the school funding pie.

In Colorado and Nebraska there are ballot proposals to end affirmative action. These are hardly new ideas, as similar measures have passed in California, Washington and Michigan all within the past decade. Both states’ anti-affirmative action measures look likely to pass.

Colorado has 5 more interesting ballot initiatives of its own, in addition to the affirmative action measure. Amendments 47, 49, 54, 58, and 59 propose collectively to limit the power of teachers unions and marginally increase taxes on industries such as oil and gas to further fund education. 47, 49, and 54 in particular have drawn the ire of teachers unions, for they attempt to stop unions from requiring that teachers join the local union in order by, among other things, making it illegal for a school district to automatically detect union dues from a pay check to be paid to the union headquarters. These "right-to-work" laws already exist in a handful of states which has brought down rates of union membership, though it is hard to say if this has led to any major gains for students. Amendment 54 would prevent anyone who receives a no-bid contract from the government from making a campaign contribution to any candidate. The idea seems pro-democracy in spirit, since wealthy corporate donors wouldn’t be able to buy influence from candidates, but some groups such as the teachers unions and firefighters who would be proscribed from contributing under the law have attacked it as an amendment limiting their free speech rights. More on these amendment proposals here; an argument against them from a Colorado teacher here.

Lastly, a pair of extremely interesting initiatives are on the ballot in Oregon courtesy of initiative-proposer-extraordinaire Bill Sizemore. Measure 58 would prohibit non-English-language teaching for more than two years, and Measure 60 would switch teacher pay to a performance-based rather than seniority-based system. You know these measures are controversial just by following the money: already Oregon teachers unions have spent over $6 million fighting these two initiatives.

Of the two, Measure 60 is especially worth watching, since it basically calls for the exact kind of paradigm shift in how teachers are paid that prominent education experts have called for in recent years—a proposal that even Barack Obama supports in principle. The idea, backed by a group called “Preserve Our Best Teachers” is simple, that classroom performance and not seniority should determine teacher pay raises. Unions object ostensibly because of data concerns with evaluating just which teachers are providing the best educational instruction to their students, but the concept of a professional being paid based on how good they are at their job, if it is discernible, is a tough value to oppose.

Put succinctly, Wilson finds that teachers in widely-renown high-achieving charter schools (such as the 75 schools that belong to three celebrated charter networks--the KIPP schools, Achievement First schools, and Uncommon Schools) are so rare in terms of academic background and other qualifications that it would be virtually impossible to replicate these schools' high quality teaching staffs in other schools.

He draws this conclusion by starting with an analysis of the high achieving schools and what percentage of the teachers there come from selective colleges (as just one proxy for talented young teachers). It turns out that somewhere around 80% of the teachers in high-performing charter schools serving low-income youth graduated from colleges that are regarded by Barron's profile of American Colleges as "very competitive". By contrast, in the public schools writ large, only 19.2% of teachers graduated from the "very competitive" colleges.

What does that mean? Well for starters, it clearly means that we need to get more of our nation's brightest young people into teaching, and programs like Teach For America can help with that. But Teach For America currently has 5,000 corps members--barely 1% of the total number of teachers in just the public schools employed by 66 school districts in the Council of the Great City Schools. Moreover, only 140,000 students graduate each year from colleges ranked by Barron's as "highly competitive" - and even if half of them chose to spend two years teaching in these low-income city schools, only 33% of classrooms in the schools would have such a teacher.

Wilson goes on to suggest trying out programs to turn existing teachers who do not fit the elite college typecast into high-performing teachers as a way to out-flank the sheer numbers shortage. As a principle, he is absolutely right to suggest that nothing about a person's college inherently makes someone a qualified (or unqualified) teacher. After all there are plenty of book-smart people who would not have the personal skills to thrive in low-performing schools, and plenty of very educated and thoughtful people in schools that Barron's hasn't blessed with it's "highly competitive" label.

But Wilson's suggestion to focus our dollars, policies, and political capital on improving existing teachers is an interesting choice, since it has a clear alternative: spending the money and political energy to attract and retain high quality educators from all educational backgrounds. Put another way, what if instead of assuming a two-year teaching commitment from today's talented college grads we could recast the financial incentives and work-place conditions of the teaching profession to encourage them to spend 10 or 15 years teaching? What if instead of paying the oldest teachers the most and forcing talented young teachers to leave because they're not earning what they are worth, we flipped compensation on its head and paid the best teachers the most no matter what their age? Wouldn't a 25 year old making $55,000 teaching because they are getting tremendous learning gains for their students be more inclined to stay in the field than one who makes $35,000 as is the case these days? It's a numbers game when it comes to fixing our schools... but the trick is choosing among a load of options as to how to make the numbers work.

There are effectively three broad categories of losses that schools will incur in the coming years, each of which will have significant impacts on school children. The first category is direct losses that school districts have sustained as the result of a significant portion of their operating and capital budgets being held in stock assets that have lost tremendous value. The most obvious examples are school districts such as the 26 in California's San Mateo county which had budget resources tied up in Lehman Brothers at the time of the company's collapse. More than $60 million is now tied up in bankruptcy court proceedings from the county's 26 districts, with the schools likely to lose a significant portion of that total.

Making matters worse is that some of the affected districts will need those dollars in the near-term in order to finance school repairs, make payroll, and other day-to-day operations. Sequoia Union High School District, for example, estimates a loss of $6 million from the county's decision to invest its savings in Lehman Brothers--money that will have an impact on the district's 8,200 students this year.

But even those school districts without huge direct losses from falling asset values are getting pinched as well. The overall downturn in the economy, evidenced by reduced economic activity, falling property values, and home foreclosures will also have an impact on school district pocketbooks by reducing annual tax revenues that all schools rely on, at least in part. Since local property tax funding accounts for as much as 70% of many school districts' revenues, district leaders across America are watching with a weary eye as home foreclosures and falling property values persist. This is the second category of trouble that the financial crisis is threatening upon schools.

This effect is compounded by the fact that reduced property tax revenues may, in some cases, affect the credit scores that rating agencies give to districts who try to sell bonds to finance their school budgets -- meaning that schools will have to pay investors higher interest rates to raise money for building fixes, books, and other expenses. A half point interest rate increase on a $250 million, 6-month loan would amount to an extra $1.2 million that a school district or state has to spend on things other than teachers and school improvement efforts.

Thirdly, many schools are running into short-term problems associated with the nature of their budget receipts. School districts that receive property tax revenues in lump-sum payments once or twice during the year typically finance the early months of their budget cycles with safe, short-term loans. But as banks increasingly hoard cash reserves, the rates that schools have had to pay have increased drastically, leading to further cuts in order to make payroll and finance other school necessities.

The federal government's $700 billion rescue / bailout may help to address some of the structural issues, but as long as the economy itself is contracting, schools will have to bear some significant brunt of the nation's losses. Which means that the only sure-fire long-term investment that America can make to ensure a healthier future economy--an investment in our children--will undoubtedly take a backseat.

At stake in the union contract negotiations are some pretty typical issues: teacher pay, length of contract, work hours. Specifically, the city's new schools superintendent, Arlene Ackerman, wants to increase the length of the school day and raise pay for teachers in hard-to-staff subjects and schools. While both ideas are widely regarded as having positive impacts on student achievement and closing the gap between wealthy and low-income students, the unions have been reluctant on both fronts. The union is also bargaining for a long-term contract, while Superintendent Ackerman is looking for a one year deal--purportedly because she would like to become more familiar with the district before signing a longer teacher union contract.

Commenting on the ongoing negotiations and how they have tended to miss the issues that matter most for students--such as getting high quality teachers into every Philly classroom regardless of the school's achievement levels, socioeconomics, and racial breakdown--one student observed, "I've seen students cut class and come to my classroom to avoid bad teachers. The system of teacher distribution in Philadelphia is broken."

What is fascinating about this news item is that the student protestors, more than two dozen organized by the Philadelphia Student Union who gathered outside an elite magnet school in the city to deliver their message, got quick responses from the negotiating parties. The Superintendent's spokesperson issued a statement saying, ""The district's top priority in negotiating the current contract is ensuring that we place teachers where children most need them." She went on to say that Superintendent Ackerman would welcome sitting down with students and parents at the negotiating table if the unions approved it.

Unfortunately, the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers union president, Jerry Jordan, did not express his support for the idea of student participation in the negotiations, although he pointed out that the union "has always taken a position of watching out for kids." One may wonder how this position of watching out for kids can possibly be consistent with refusing to let them have a voice in these issues that direly affect their education.

What might it look like if low-income and low-performing schools were staffed by caring teachers who are committed to their students? Maybe something like this (a staff video made to congratulate graduating students in a Bronx middle school):

Mathews's inspiration for writing the article is the experience of a principal at a DC charter school called KIPP DC:KEY Academy, where two low-performing teachers were fired before Christmas and replaced with what Mathews describes as, "proven talents" who turned around their classrooms to the benefit of students. In ordinary public schools, because of union protections for teachers, principals do not have the freedom to act this quickly and unilaterally. Instead, in traditional public schools the principal would likely only have the power to authorize mentorship and professional development for the struggling teacher, make negative comments on evaluations, and then recommend not rehiring the teacher at year's end (or in some cases, after a period of years of probation).

Mathews is right to point out the powerful lever that charter school principals have to weed out hopeless teachers, but he misses an equally important, if not more important issue: what good is it to be able to fire teachers if there aren't higher quality alternatives to replace them? In the DC KIPP academy example that Mathews cites, it only helps that the principal can fire the two bad teachers because she has access to two better teachers who can replace them!

The problem is, most schools don't have a deep reserve pool of high quality job-seeking teachers in wait, should their initial staff members prove ineffective. Indeed, from my own teaching experience, where our school was able to fire three teachers mid-year (15% of the full time teaching staff), the challenge of taking over an often times dysfunctional classroom from the previous teacher can prove insurmountable to even the most hard-working replacement. If that replacement is not a "proven talent" as was the fortunate case for the DC KIPP principal, the power to fire a teacher is only half of the solution.

The other half, of course, is increasing the pool of high quality teaching candidates in low-performing school districts--a challenge which is much more complicated than the power to fire. It incorporates licensing rules, pay structures, workplace rules, and other issues that have plagued K-12 public education for some time. In other words, the power to fire is only a part of the equation--truly fixing our struggling schools will also require a fundamental shift to the human capital picture in public education.

This much is uncontested: Bill Ayers participated in the bombings of several public monuments, including the New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, the US Capitol Building in 1971, and the Pentagon in 1972. He was a leading member of a radical, leftist terrorist organization called the Weatherman. He spent a short period of time in jail after turning himself in for these crimes in 1980. And he is affiliated with US Senator Barack Obama.

But what is the nature of that affiliation? And perhaps more importantly, what does Bill Ayers believe and how does he act today? Without question, if Senator Obama has in any way shown signs of supporting Mr. Ayers admittedly guilty and radical past, his candidacy would be suspect. But there is no evidence that this is the case.

To begin with, the connection between Senator Obama and Mr. Ayers comes down to three principal items. First, and most notably, they served together on a Chicago school reform initiative called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, an effort designed community partnerships with local public schools that was also launched in fifteen other communities. Also serving on the board of the Annenberg Challenge in Chicago were individuals such as Patricia Graham, former dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Arnold Weber, former president of Northwestern University.

How, you might ask, did a self-admitted domestic terrorist come to rise to lead a well-funded and well-reputed school reform initiative? Because Mr. Ayers, since his days as a leftist terrorist, has gone on the straight and narrow. He is currently a distinguished professor of education at the University of Chicago who has garnered attention for his academic efforts in pedagogy, along the way working with officials such as Chicago Mayor Richard Daly and others.

The second connection is that Mr. Ayers and Senator Obama also served together on the board of an anti-poverty foundation called the Woods Fund of Chicago, which continues to provide support to organizations that seek to educate and empower low-income residents of Chicago. Thirdly, Mr. Ayers contributed $200 to Senator Obama's Illinois State Senate election campaign in 2001.

So does Mr. Obama support a hyper-radical leftist ideology of domestic terrorism? Does he support some unorthodox, militant view of the role of public education? There is no evidence of it. After all, Senator Obama was only eight years old when Bill Ayers committed initial, unjustifiable acts of violence. But I'd love to hear facts about their relationship and how it might impact the next five weeks if you have evidence or conclusions that I've missed here!

Representative Miller's comment sheds light on an interesting phenomenon. The American public overwhelmingly supports action to improve public education, even at the federal level. When asked in general whether they support the goals of the law--increasing student achievement and narrowing the achievement gap for low-income & minority children by holding schools accountable for student performance--large numbers of voters agree. But when you ask someone how they feel about the actual law named "No Child Left Behind"? Cringe, sneer, boo.

Need numbers? Start with last month's Phi Delta Kappa / Gallup poll, which found that 67% of Americans thought the law should be changed or scrapped. Or how about this ETS poll, which found that Americans favored the law 56% - 39% when it was explained based on its component parts and goals, but were against the law 43% - 41% when it was actually referenced by name.

Maybe that's why the No Child Left Behind is the "10,000 pound gorilla" in the room that neither of the candidates is talking about.

But how, you ask, is it the case that so much about the law rides on the name alone, and not the actual substance? Part of it is a branding issue--interest groups actually opposed to the substance of the law such as the teachers unions have done a great job equating the brand of NCLB with teaching to the test and other unsavory, if vague, notions. Another part is just a general lack of understanding about what the law actually entails; a post hoc ergo propter hoc effect, so to speak. Public schools have been struggling, particularly in low-income urban and rural areas, for quite some time in the US, but today's observers tend to attribute this failure to the most recent event in education policy: NCLB. It's no better logic than attributing my winning $10 on an instant lotto ticket because I had a banana for breakfast, but it's a common enough fallacy that NCLB would be probably unpopular regardless of its name.

One thing is for certain, though. Both candidates have been right as a strategic matter to steer clear of mentioning NCLB in their campaign speeches. It's toxic, and it's just as easy to score points by talking about education as a values issue instead of the nitty-gritty that seems to make NCLB so controversial. Seems like we'll have a big gorilla just hanging out until the election is over, when some new catchy name will be unveiled to headline a law that will most likely be strikingly similar to the existing No Child Left Behind Act.

But the most painful part of the campaign season for most ordinary Americans is how we are subjected to senseless lies and irresponsible attack ads which make it virtually impossible to make any kind of accurate judgment about what the two candidates would do for our country.

One of the most disgusting ads I've seen in quite some time was put out just two days ago by the McCain campaign. Understand that I would be the first to call out the Obama campaign if they had put the ad out instead--my interest here is in challenging either candidate when they misrepresent their own positions and records on the ever-important issue of public education reform... or in this case, when one misrepresents his opponent's views. I've said it before and I'll say it again: the issue is too vital to millions of children and indeed the very future of our nation to play partisan political football with. Judge for yourself in the following 30 second clip being shown in various battleground states:

The ad basically alleges that Barack Obama thinks it is more important to teach kids about sex than it is to teach them how to read. It begins by misrepresenting a series of Education Week and Washington Post articles that actually speak approvingly of Senator Obama's maverick and reform-minded views on school reform, and then goes on to suggest in voice-over--on top of a picture of a smirking Obama--that his only accomplishment in education is a sex education bill for kindergarteners. The not-so-subtle implication is that Senator Obama is actually a run-of-the-mill sleezeball or perhaps worse, a pedophile.

The truth? Senator Obama is actually well-regarded by reform-minded education thinkers who respect his bold uncoupling of the Democratic platform on education from the narrowly-focused goals of teachers unions which have dominated Democratic views on school reform for the last half century. And the sex education bill that he passed while in the Illinois Senate? It actually supported age-appropriate sex education that would help teach children how to protect themselves from sexual predators and pedophiles. In other words, if one watches the McCain ad while considering the truth, the ad actually implies that Senator McCain is against providing children with critical information that may help them avoid sexual abuse.

But Aaron, wait! Who are YOU to say that the McCain ad is mis-representing the Washington Post and Ed Week positions on Senator Obama's education platform? Aren't you no worse than the McCain ad if you don't provide facts to back up your assertions? Fair enough. So don't take it from me that the Washington Post and Ed Week support Senator Obama. Take it from them, directly, here (the Washington Post actually fires back at the McCain camp directly for twisting its words, and here for the original Ed Week piece.

Senator McCain begins explaining his views on public education in the first minute of the above video, with a bold pronouncement that, "Education is the Civil Rights issue of this century." He continues to talk about the importance of giving every child access to a good school, and the role of the government in providing families with choice if their neighborhood public school is failing. It is all pretty standard rhetoric at this point for Republican candidates--and rather appealing rhetoric at that, since even many of those who are against the controversial idea of vouchers can understand the sentiment of wanting to provide all children with the chance to get out of a chronically low-performing school.

But at two minutes and fifty-three seconds, Senator McCain fires a direct shot across the bow at his opponent, saying, "Sen. Obama wants our schools to answer to unions and entrenched bureaucracies. I want schools to answer to parents and students." A powerful charge, indeed, which the McCain campaign hopes to mount as part of a broader challenge against the idea that Senator Obama will bring change to Washington, DC. If Senator Obama only wants to make schools answer to unions and bereaucracies, after all, how will that put children in any better a position than they are today?

The problem is, the charge is patently false. Regardless of whether one has conservative or liberal leanings on public education issues, no objective observer could look at the Obama education plan without thinking that he is walking a fine line with regard to teachers unions who have long been a friend to the Democratic party. Even a full year ago, Obama was making bold and risky statements to the face of the unions themselves --such as his appearance in front of the National Education Association in July 2007 where he expressed his support for teacher merit pay, an idea that could not be more anathema to the unions.

In an election where both candidates have made unfair and at times inaccurate statements about each others' records and character, one would hope that an issue as important as the education of millions of children might be sacred ground. For the next two months, sadly, it doesn't seem that this will be the case.

Lost in these headlines, however, has been one key topic that may well have as much impact on the future of our nation as all the rest: education. Indeed, school reformers interested in pushing education into a more prominent position of debate between Senators Obama and McCain have more or less held a backseat over the past several months.

This is not how the leaders of at least one non-profit organization envisioned the election cycle. Ed in '08, a $60 million effort funded principally by the Gates Foundation to raise the election day prominence of public education as an issue. The group has made major ad buys in radio, print, and even on TV without much impact--one TV ad is embedded here:

Why hasn't education been more talked about? It's hard to say. After all, it's not as though the voting public isn't interested in public education, and it's not like there aren't meaningful debates to be had over key issues like teacher pay, charter schools, pre-kindergarten, and school accountability. One possibility is that other news have been "sexier" in the sense that they are more timely and seemingly urgent--the housing crisis and gas prices fit this description. Another possibility is that the two campaigns do not disagree enough on the major questions (both are more or less in support of NCLB with modest revision) to be the point of a debate. Either way, it doesn't bode well for America's children that more public attention has been paid thus far to John McCain's real estate holdings and Barack Obama's wife's dress color than to their schools.

The six steps include: providing universal access to pre-kindergarten programs for low-income children; expanding parent choice and access to charter schools; improving standards and accountability systems so that high achieving schools and teachers can be rewarded and modeled; extending school days and the school year to help low-performing children; improving teacher recruitment and hiring practices; and re-examing school funding within the realms of teacher pay and after school programming.

The six proposals are hardly radical ideas; each of them has been suggested to improve student achievement at one time or another. What is interesting, however, is the timing and target of the call--a plea for action by widely respected Democrats who see education as an issue that can propel the Obama - Biden ticket to victory in November.

A recent PDK / Gallup poll seems to confirm this possibility. In the poll, respondents were asked which presidential candidate they would vote for if they were choosing solely on the basis of improving public schools. 46% said they would vote for Senator Obama, compared with only 29% who supported Senator McCain (the remaining 25% said they did not know).

The poll result is noteworthy for two reasons. First off, it shows a clear issue-motivated party preference on the part of voters that did not exist in either the 2004 or 2000 president elections, when President Bush was virtually tied with Sen. Kerry and Vice President Gore on the question of who would improve public schools more. To the extent that this preference is deeply held, education seems to be an issue on which Senator Obama has potential to draw voters to his camp.

The second interesting element of the poll is that the clear candidate preference has emerged in spite of a relatively quiet campaign season when it comes to the issue of education. It is one thing that voters express preferences on economic issues and the Iraq war, where both candidates have spoken extensively on the subject and where clear distinction exists. But voters support Senator Obama on education even without a clear sense of how he differs substantively from Senator McCain. One wonders if Senator McCain would be wise to draw comparisons between his education platform and Senator Obama's, rather than contrasts as a way to reduce the gap expressed by likely voters.