Education Next – Frederick Hess
“After six months of blather, we’re finally approaching the turn where the 2016 Presidential contest gets real. How unreal has everything been thus far? At this point in 2007, Barack Obama was a curiosity getting smoked by the Clinton juggernaut. So, even in a normal year, there’d be lots of uncertainty ahead. . . and this year has been anything but normal. I’ll leave the general political prognostication to those who get paid to do that sort of thing for a living, but as Iowa and New Hampshire come into view, here are a few thoughts about what developments may mean for education. For the past four or five months, everything on the Republican side has been drowned out by the rise of the Donald and the emergence of Carson and Fiorina. There’s been remarkably little discussion about policy specifics, even as candidates like Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio have offered up a slate of serious proposals on important questions. As Trump’s numbers start to dip and Carson encounters turbulence, it’s unclear how things are going to shake out. It’s possible to sketch a scenario in which any of six or eight GOP candidates claim the nomination. If Trump and Carson fade and a candidate more explicitly focused on an “opportunity agenda” gets on the leaderboard, education may become much more visible in the GOP contest than it’s been to date.”(more)