Two Policy Panels, Two Takes

It's only Tuesday, and already this has been a week filled with policy discussion. Yesterday, ED in �08's executive director Marc Lampkin was part of a panel at the American Enterprise Institute called "Education as a Presidential Issue: Historically and in 2008," talking about some of the particular challenges that we've seen in this election around the issue of education. He touched on some of the factors that we at ED in '08 have been facing, including a cynical national media, the dominance of the Iraq war early in the primary season, and the shadow that NCLB casts over the education debate and ongoing governance issues.

However, Marc also emphasized the progress we've seen - the presidential campaigns have frequently expressed their appreciation for the research and policy materials we've provided, and our field and media presence has certainly helped raise the visibility of what is often dismissed as a state and local issue to greater national attention.

National attention to education was also the subject of a panel that I participated in this morning over at The Center for American Progress. Some of you may remember when I blogged about an insightful article on the issue of American education standards by Matt Miller, which appeared in The Atlantic earlier this year.

Well, Matt has expanded his article into a full paper, which I commented on, along with Matt himself and Reggie Felton, Director of Federal Relations at National School Boards Association. Now, while the three of us all agree that it's time to see some more federal attention to the issues confronting American schools, we have some very different ideas about what that should look like. This made for some interesting conversation, touching on diverse issues like school boards, financing, and politics.

I spoke about my plan in which a president might work with a group of states (say 15) to draft a set of common standards that would serve as a voluntary model for others. They would agree to benchmark the standards annually against the highest performing nations in the world (our competition). Other states could join the consortium at any time, and states would be given incentives to adopt the model standards, such as free use of assessments designed to measure performance against the standards (and reimbursement for cost of test administration), or a new deal under NCLB with different timelines and accountability provisions to support meeting the higher standards.

This is only one example of how a national leader might use their bully pulpit to work with state and local leaders to raise expectations and achievement for all of America's students. As Matt writes, three-quarters of Americans favor some kind of national effort to raise academic standards, and those kind of approval numbers aren't something a president (or candidate) should ignore!