Education Week - January 13, 2016 - 23

Democratic nomination, to make
tuition free at public colleges and
universities.
Clinton did make waves last
month during a campaign stop in
Iowa-the site of the first voting, in
caucuses Feb. 1-when she pushed
for more K-12 funding but also
said, "I wouldn't keep any school
open that wasn't doing a betterthan-average job." Presidential
administrations have no power to
close schools on their own, however,
and her campaign quickly clarified
that Clinton has no interest in
shuttering schools.
During Democratic debates,
former Maryland Gov. Martin
O'Malley, has talked up Maryland's
public school system during his
tenure. But that hasn't elevated his
candidacy or K-12 issues generally.

Not the Default
So far, in both the Republican
and Democratic debates, only one
direct question has been asked
about K-12 policy-it was directed
at Bush regarding his support for
the common core, which the rest of
the GOP field, except for Ohio Gov.
John Kasich, opposes.
Aside from that brief reference on
the national stage, the potential for
common core to gain traction in the
White House race, after its highprofile and tempestuous political
history, has gone unfulfilled for the
most part.
"Common core is not an animating issue for the general public.

I think the testing issue is," said
Patrick McGuinn, an associate professor of political science at Drew
University.
Howell, of the University of Chicago, noted that while education
so far is receiving, at best, meager
airtime during the White
H o u s e r a c e,
that hasn't always been the
case in previous election
years.
During an
JEB BUSH:
October 2000
The former Florida
debate begovernor and GOP
tween Repubpresidential hopeful has a lican George
deep record on education. W. Bush and
Democrat Al
Gore, for example, the two parties' nominees
had an extended exchange about
vouchers, school funding, and
teacher pay.
Bush lobbied for a national
reading initiative that focused on
the early grades, and more flexibility in teacher-hiring decisions.
Gore proposed a $10,000 hiring
bonus for teachers, and giving
states the power to close down
schools and reopen them with
new principals and "a turnaround
team of specialists who know what
they're doing."
But while Bush, as president,
took the chance to reauthorize
the main federal K-12 law a year
after taking office-the eventual

makeover of the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act known
as NCLB-the next president
won't have that chance until 2019,
when ESSA is technically up for
reauthorization.
"There's not a whole lot left to
talk about," Howell said, in terms of
what the next president can claim
he or she will change.

Unusual Period
Advocates like Marc Porter
Magee, the founder of the 50-State
Campaign for Achievement Now,
or 50CAN, which supports changes
to the teacher labor market and
test-based accountability, says
there hasn't been a "high-quality
conversation about education in
the race on either side" in the 2016
cycle.
Yet Magee also acknowledges
that states and districts, especially
under ESSA, are likely to resume a
greater role in setting K-12 policy
in the coming years after the recent
surge of federal activism under
President Barack Obama.
"I think we've all kind of operated under the assumption that
that was unusual and was unlikely
to be sustained," said Magee, whose
group hasn't endorsed any candidate for president. "We shouldn't
expect the next president to have
the impact on the conversation
that President Obama has had on
the conversation."
In the competitive Republican
field, a complex set of factors has

left Jeb Bush without much chance
to leverage his extensive K-12 experience as a campaign strength.
For one thing, Bush's poll numbers have shriveled. A recent survey of national polls by Real Clear
Politics had Bush getting 4.3 percent, down from 15 percent in the
summer, as GOP candidates who
don't have a lot of history with
K-12 issues, including the real estate developer Donald Trump and
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, have
prospered.
And with R e p u b l i c a n primary
voters heavily focused on
national security and immigration and
distrustful of
government on
a broad sweep
of issues,
HILLARY CLINTON:
Bush's chance
The Democratic
to talk about
presidential front-runner K - 1 2 i s s u e s
has made headlines on a like acc o u n t ability, as his
variety of K-12 issues.
brother George
W. Bush did 16
years ago, hasn't materialized, said
Howell.
"I'm not sure there ever was
an opening for him to push for
those sorts of things," he said of Jeb
Bush.
Separately, in the GOP field,
both Cruz and Trump, along with
Huckabee and U.S. Sens. Rand
Paul of Kentucky and Marco Rubio
of Florida, have at least floated the

possibility of getting rid of the U.S.
Department of Education.
"It's the price of admission for
the Republican presidential primary," said McGuinn, of Drew
University.
Otherwise, the candidates for
the most part haven't spent significant time promoting traditional
GOP K-12 positions like school
choice. (Among sitting senators
who are running for president,
Rubio and Sanders did not vote on
ESSA, while Cruz and Paul voted
against it.)

Light Footprint
While there's no effort in the
works for this year that mimics the
ED in '08 initiative, education advocates of various stripes may not
care too much about its absence, or
about education's light footprint as
an issue, Howell said.
Jim Blew, the president of StudentsFirst, for one, said he'll actually be happier if points of contention in public schooling stay clear
of the presidential-campaign vortex
and aren't distorted by sound bites
and backlash.
Blew, whose organization lobbies
in state capitals for charter schools
and test-based school accountability, among other policies, also said
states haven't really lost as much
power in recent years as some
might think.
"It absolutely is cleaner when we
can have these discussions state by
state," Blew said.

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Education Week - January 13, 2016

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