From Jay Matthews‘ column in Sunday’s Post:

Public schools in America began as local enterprises. They mostly remain so today. Some presidential candidates have tried to make them a big issue. Remember former Vermont governor Howard Dean’s attacks on standardized testing when he sought the Democratic nomination in 2004? It didn’t work. Education issues have never had a significant impact on a national election. […]

The most successful American politicians know that and are no more willing to turn against testing than they are to come up with a radically different system for paying the medical bills of us geezers. I suspect we will straighten out Medicare long before we agree on better ways to measure what our schools are doing. So if you crave an education debate, prepare to be bored in 2012.

Food for thought (or rather, debate) for this Monday and moving forward: education of course is a major factor in local elections, as we witnessed during this past mayoral election in DC. But does the inherently local nature of schools mean that education can never dictate, or even significantly influence, a national election?

Moreover, does the difficulty of assessing public educations factor into its absence from presidential platforms? Were there less controversy surrounding testing, would we in fact have more discussion of the larger issue — namely, the educational experience that standardized tests purport to measure?

Either way, a nationwide debate on public education could certainly catalyze local discussion and action. So what can we do to make that happen if our prospective candidates would rather not address it? And is that a fair characterization?