The Question that Never Came

I sat through all three hours of Wednesday evening’s Republican Presidential Debate – dubbed by some pundit as the ‘Simi Marathon’ – waiting for a question that never came. It could have been any one of a number of questions, and it could have taken many different forms: What is your view of school choice? Would you commit to maintaining the Common Core State Standards? How might federal education policy help to close the ‘achievement gap’? How would you make higher education more affordable? Should pre-kindergarten education be mandatory? What’s your view of merit pay for public school teachers? Would you support an expansion of charter schools? How do you feel about private investment in public education (and/or public investment in private education)? And so on.

I waited in vain. Three full hours.  A torrent of questions.  And nary a one concerning education. Not one. Nada. Apparently, the trio of moderators, and the powers-that-be at CNN believed it more germane to ask the top tier of GOP candidates whose visage they would prefer to adorn a twenty dollar bill, and what code name they’d adopt should they be elected. Now there’s substance! Maybe in the next debate the candidates will be asked to identify their favorite bedtime snack, or Beatles’ song.

I’m not trying to impugn the relevance of the major issues raised by Dana Bash, Hugh Hewitt, and (overwhelmingly,) Jake Tapper. But is education not deserving of a place among them? Ought we not count education among the most significant of the challenges we face as a nation? Is not our strength, both economic and moral, and standing among the nations of the world intimately tied to the education of our children? By 2018 we’ll be spending an estimated $1 trillion on public education (at all levels of government). Shouldn’t that merit at least one question about whether we’re getting our money’s worth?

Then again, if we’re going to point fingers, maybe we should start by pointing them at ourselves. After all, if we insisted that our candidates for office accord greater importance to education, a number of yesterday’s contestants would have made it a point to provide answers to the questions that weren’t asked. They’d have done so because they’d wish to appeal to a significant, identifiable stakeholder group.

I’m confident that there are enough of us out there. Perhaps this is an opportunity for those of us who embrace conflicting views about various education policies to set aside our differences, band together, and insist that upcoming presidential debates give education policy the attention it deserves.

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