In this case, unfortunately, the text of that speech is much more instructive than most of the articles that try to summarize it—even if the speech provokes as many questions as it answers. Among them: When McCain proposes “to direct 500 million dollars in current federal funds to build new virtual schools, and to support the development of online courses for students,” what will be removed from the federal budget to free up those funds? When he says, “no longer will we measure teacher achievement by conformity to process. We will measure it by the success of their students,” what exactly does he mean? Sure, McCain is knocking-while-not-discounting NCLB…but how, exactly, does he propose to measure student “success” without the “conformity to process” that is, by definition, a test? If a McCain administration would adopt a school choice policy that would allow some children to leave the public school system, what would that administration do for all the children who would be left behind?

I’d add one more question to the list: Why aren’t campaign reporters asking those questions for us?

• 1
• 2