By Joy Resmovits
(From Huffington Post, May 23rd, 2012)
In a week-long series of campaign activities that began Wednesday with an address to the Latino Coalition’s Annual Economic Summit, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is taking on the issue of the state of the nation’s schools.
“Too many dreams are never realized because our education system is failing,” Romney said, according to prepared remarks. “We are in the midst of a national education emergency. The only reason we don’t hear more about it is because our economic troubles have taken our national attention away from the classroom.”
Romney will push for school vouchers, deregulating and expanding charter and online schools and a lighter federal hand in education. In the broader sense, Romney’s message on schools is one that seeks to paint President Barack Obama as wholly beholden to special interests in a way that prevents him from governing on children’s behalf.
For the last year, followers of the 2012 presidential campaign have heard very little from candidates on the topic of education. While the issue ranks high among voters’ priorities, it rarely determines votes on its own, but tends to poll even higher among women, a demographic that could boost Romney, who is currently locked in dead heat with Obama.
“If I’m president of the United States, instead of just giving lip service to improving our schools, I will actually put the kids first and the union behind in giving our kids better teachers, better options and better choices for a better future,” Romney said at a Tuesday evening fundraiser.
His rhetoric about putting children first is familiar in education circles: It’s the adopted mantra of the movement known as “education reform,” a consensus group among Democrats and Republicans that favors accountability, data, charter schools and linking teacher evaluations to test scores.
But the reform movement has embraced Obama for the most part. As a senator, the president drew hundreds to the first fundraiser for a group known as Democrats for Education Reform, an advocacy group that numbers among liberals’ major sources for education funding outside of unions.