It was a signal to white liberal and moderate voters that he cares about urban issues and is not indifferent to the poor. The idea was to give permission to white moderates to vote for him if they’re dissatisfied with the president.

Davies’ brief interview with David Fattah, father of Democratic U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah and board member at Bluford Charter, was a solid inclusion. In focusing his analysis on the strategy behind—and local reactions to—Romney’s visit, however, Davies’ report (now online) didn’t give listeners as much on the specifics of (let alone practicability of) Romney’s education plans.

Local television, too, offered typical (read: brief and unremarkable) same-day coverage of Romney’s visit, epitomized by this WPVI-TV (ABC) segment reporting that “apparently Mr. Romney wanted to see, and be seen, at the well-regarded charter school,” and featuring some of those “nice ‘optics’” noted by WHYY’s Davies. WPVI-TV’s John Rawlins observed Romney’s “was something of a soft visit here …no fiery partisan rhetoric, and he didn’t even mention the president by name during the round table discussion.”

How Romney’s education plank might fare in practice is an open and critical question. A National Journal breakdown by Fawn Johnson suggests that capacity restrictions at good schools and other logistical challenges would sink much of Romney’s plan, or at least keep it from being fully realized. Writing at The Huffington Post, Michael Petrilli of the education policy group the Thomas B. Fordham Institute called Romney’s agenda a good start with room and time to be made better.

Either way, Romney’s education reform ideas provide great fodder for editors and reporters looking for an opportunity to dig into an issue of substance, something with real consequences for students and parents. I covered education issues in my not-so-distant newspaper days, and I recognize the challenges and frustrations of this sort of reporting, of making sense of and then pushing past the spin from various sides with a dog (but maybe not a kid) in the education fight.

Among the questions I had after digesting Romney’s specific plans and the related coverage:

What options exist for low-income students? What options do local residents want?

What would happen if parents had vouchers? Where could they go or not go?

Where and how have choice programs demonstrated success?

What plans for improvement do existing public school leaders offer? How will these plans work with existing and future cost structures?

What does it mean to hold districts and schools accountable? How does that work?

The layers and complexities are many. What’s sorely needed—in Pennsylvania, other swing states, and the rest of the country—is reporting that moves beyond the optics of one charter school campaign stop, beyond the claims and counter-claims from campaigns and interest groups, and digs into the candidates’ policy proposals.

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