The Every Student Succeeds Act requires school districts to set aside at least 1 percent of their Title I funding for parent engagement. Yet the parent engagement policies we’ve seen rarely reach their potential to improve student success.

In the Los Angeles Unified School District, district funds are often spent on programs that teach parents how to support their kids’ education at home, to encourage volunteering and respond to parent concerns through parent centers and parent representatives at school sites.

While educating parents and soliciting their feedback on school-site issues is important, authentic parent engagement goes further. Parents need access to the knowledge and tools to engage in policymaking at the district and school board levels, where real power to make positive change resides. We at , a Los Angeles–based grassroots organization of parents who want a more powerful voice in education policy, believe that the district should play a role in those efforts.

Parents are generally kept in the dark about how the most important decisions affecting their children’s education are made. In LAUSD, some of the farthest-reaching policies stem from the collective bargaining agreement between the teachers union (United Teachers Los Angeles) and the school district. These include not only salaries and benefits but also how teachers are assigned to schools and classrooms, the frequency and parameters for their performance evaluations, the criteria for layoffs and dismissals, and parent participation in school leadership councils.

Most parents don’t know that tenure doesn’t refer to “10 years” and are shocked that it takes only 18 months to achieve lifetime job protections in their schools. They are unaware that seniority, rather than performance, determines where teachers teach, how much they make, and whether they are laid off first. They do not know that the contract actually limits their decision-making power on school leadership councils by mandating that teachers make up the majority voting bloc.
(Click through the grid below to read other parent perspectives)

State and district funds can support meaningful parent engagement by allocating funds to shine a light on what the teachers’ contract actually contains, and how it relates to the things that have a daily impact on our kids, as well as parents’ roles in school-site decisions. The district can do this by holding regular briefings and feedback sessions at parent centers, training parent leaders to share the information with parents at their school sites, and establishing a feedback process for parents to give their input on the contract proposals.

Beyond providing transparent information to parents and soliciting their feedback, however, districts need to give parents real and actual power to make change. Parents are tired of the kind of “engagement” that asks for their input and then promptly ignores it.

One potential way to hold districts accountable for listening to parents on these issues is to give parents a vote to approve or deny the union contracts, and make school board support contingent upon parent approval. To our knowledge, no one has ever tried this before.

For years, the district has operated behind closed doors, largely shutting parents out of the negotiation process. The final collective bargaining agreement has as much impact on kids as it does on the adults who negotiate its terms. But kids don’t have a union. Kids have parents, and parents are the only advocates with no financial interest motivating their actions. Their sole interest is in the success of their kids, which is, after all, the very purpose of education. Parents have a right to an equal role in the collective bargaining process to ensure that the result puts kids rather than adults first.

There’s one other way parents can hold the school board accountable for including them and listening to their needs: Get out and vote. Parents did that in , organizing against and unseating the two-term incumbent in District 4 by a landslide. That should serve as a wake-up call to anyone who thinks parents can safely be ignored.

However, a significant percentage of parents in Los Angeles are unable to vote for school board members because of their status as undocumented immigrants. We believe these parents have just as much of a right to have their voices heard when it comes to their kids’ education. Any vote to approve or deny union contracts should include all public school parents, including undocumented immigrants.

This would give real power to the most disenfranchised parents, whose kids are often stuck in the lowest-performing schools. LAUSD recently declared itself a safe zone for undocumented immigrants, but families should expect more than just safety. They should expect educational excellence and the power to make it happen.

There is an absolute link between parent involvement and student achievement, and it’s our responsibility to find a way to make sure parents are a piece of the puzzle of their children’s academic success. We can think of no better use of federal parent engagement funds than to ensure that parents have full information about, and an equal say in determining, the policies that have the greatest impact on their kids’ education.

Parents have been shut out of the process long enough. It’s time to shift the paradigm from parent engagement to parent power. It is the only way to hold the school district accountable for putting kids first.

Katie Braude is executive director of , a Los Angeles–based grassroots organization of parents who want a more powerful voice in education policy.

Chantel Hunter Mah is a family-law and estate-planning attorney from South Los Angeles. Her children currently attend Mark Twain Middle School and Venice High School. She is a member of Speak UP and the Venice Chamber of Commerce’s Education Committee and was formerly employed by LAUSD as a parent/community representative. Additionally, she has served in a variety of school leadership roles, including School Site Council, Local School Leadership Council, and booster club president.

Front Royal, Virginia

“I thought it would be like Cadet Kelly,” she said. In the 2002 film, the main character, a free-spirited artist type played by Hilary Duff, enrolls at the fictional George Washington Military Academy and doesn’t fit in with the tough, disciplined culture.

When Salami, now a senior, returned home for her first break, friends from her old school brought her presents and asked if she was OK, as if she had taken ill.

But at Randolph-Macon, no one has shouted in Salami’s face. She hasn’t had to crawl through mud or scale walls to complete an obstacle course.

Instead, her experience has been shaped primarily by extracurricular activities, which she said was the primary reason she left public school for military school. She is a member of Cadets in Action, a fundraising group; she also plays in the school’s praise band and performs in theater productions. Randolph-Macon’s 2015 production of Godspell was so good, Salami said, that students performed it at a conference in Portland, Ore., alongside college productions. This fall, she’s in the cast of Cinderella.

Like Randolph-Macon, most of today’s military schools are a far cry from the harsh, regimented institutions Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has described on the campaign trail.

Trump, who avoided the Vietnam War draft through educational and medical deferments, has said that the time he spent as a teenager at the New York Military Academy, a private boarding school where his parents sent him because of disciplinary problems, was the equivalent of military service.

At NYMA, he got “more training militarily than a lot of the guys that go into the military,” the candidate .

“Everything that they learn in these schools, the purpose is to push them to college. These are college prep programs that use a military education model to maximize the impact on the young men and women,” said Ray Rottman, president of the Association of Military Colleges and Schools of the United States and a retired Air Force colonel.

Nationally, the association has 41 members, serving the entire range of grades, from pre-K through college. Together, they educate about 9,000 K-12 students, Rottman said.

At Randolph-Macon, students wear uniforms and take Air Force Junior ROTC classes. The school owns two airplanes, housed at a nearby regional airport, and students can graduate with a pilot’s license. There’s a competitive drill team, and the school day begins with a military-style flag ceremony. At homecoming, officials hold a memorial ceremony for alumni who have died in service to the country.

But within this military framework, there is a strong focus on the arts and humanities. The school requires double English classes for all students through junior year and holds an annual poetry slam, among other arts offerings, said Celeste Brooks, director of public relations.

During a recent visit, teachers were seen to be far from the harsh disciplinarians barking orders portrayed in films. Math students were given extra time at the start of class to finish homework because a concert the night before had kept many kids from completing the assignment. In an AP government class, a senior spent more time looking through photos online than listening to that day’s lecture about federalism. The teacher, Brian Barbour, said that was fine — he treats the class like a college lecture, and students are free to decide how much effort to put in.

De-emphasizing discipline also means that military schools these days are vigilant about not accepting students who have displayed behavior problems, Rottman said. If behavior issues emerge later, “unfortunately, they have to be let go. One kid like that will take five or 10 kids with them in a downward spiral,” he said.

For most students, the military focus ends at graduation. At Randolph-Macon, some alumni attend the service academies or enroll in ROTC programs in college, but only around 10 percent, said the school president, David C. Wesley, a retired Air Force brigadier general.

Hallway bulletin boards display photos of recent graduates, along with the colleges they were accepted to and where they enrolled — places as varied as New York University, Penn State and local community colleges.

“Most [students] will never wear a military uniform again, but they will leave here with values that most people associate with the military,” Wesley said. “Service is universal for our kids, but it doesn’t have to be military service. It’s just service of others, being part of something larger than yourself.”

(Photo by Randolph-Macon Academy)

A tradition of service, changing with the times

Randolph-Macon has followed a similar trajectory. Founded in 1892, it originally was an all-boys prep school that fed into Randolph-Macon College. It became a military institution about 25 years later, associated with the Army’s National Defense Cadet Corps.

Enrollment dipped in the early 1970s, and the trustees decided to begin admitting girls. They also switched military affiliation to the Air Force’s JROTC program, thinking an emphasis on aerospace could help recruitment in the post-Vietnam era.

Today, Randolph-Macon enrolls 305 students, 256 in high school and 49 in middle school. About a third are girls, and about a third are from overseas. (There are more students from China, for example, than from Maryland.)

Trump’s alma mater, the New York Military Academy, located in the town of Cornwall-on-Hudson, has had trouble more recently. The 126-year-old institution closed abruptly for a few weeks at the start of the past school year after the owners declared bankruptcy. The school, which is still listed as a member of the association, was eventually .

(Photo by Randolph-Macon Academy)

Tuition at private military schools can rival college costs. At Randolph-Macon, it’s $37,409 for high school boarding students from the U.S., more for international students. About 35 percent of students receive financial aid, and the average award is $8,500, staff said.

But because they are public schools, military-themed charter schools are tuition-free.

Mark Ryan, superintendent of the North Valley Military Institute in Sun Valley, Calif., near Los Angeles, called the military theme of his nonresidential charter school the “suit of armor” that guides his student body.

North Valley students are grouped in military units, wear uniforms and earn military commendations, but the real emphasis, as at the private schools, is on college prep, Ryan said.

“The belief is all of these skills … are going to transfer to college success,” he said.

In many ways, three-year-old North Valley would look “very, very similar” to any private military school, Ryan said. “The bigger difference is we are definitely serving a much more needy demographic.”

While most students go to private schools performing at or above grade level, most arrive at North Valley below where they should be, Ryan said. The vast majority, 88 percent, are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, a common measure of student poverty. Ten percent are homeless, and 10 percent are in the foster care system, Ryan said. Twenty percent have special needs.

Rottman estimated there are 40 military-themed charter schools around the country, three of which are members of his association. One of the first was the Oakland Military Institute, started in 2001 by then-mayor Jerry Brown, who is now governor of California. Brown wanted to create a school that mirrored the type of education he received in Catholic school, with its college-prep focus and military affiliation.

Obviously, Brown couldn’t replicate a religious curriculum in a public setting, so instead he “chose the perfectly legal alternative of affiliating with the California National Guard, with its emphasis on ceremony, discipline, inspiration, and leadership training,” he wrote in the .

Ryan, who worked at Oakland Military Institute for eight years, said Brown wanted to provide more choices to enable parents to educate their children as they saw fit.

“The reality is that Jerry’s vision was that this sort of option needed to be available for typical public school students who otherwise wouldn’t have had the opportunities you could have if you went to a $30,000-a-year private school,” Ryan said. ]]> /article/no-longer-the-schools-of-trumps-youth-military-academies-focus-on-college-prep-character/feed/ 0 /article/tucker-when-will-trump-get-honest-with-his-coalition-of-fear-its-not-walls-they-need-but-better-schools/ /article/tucker-when-will-trump-get-honest-with-his-coalition-of-fear-its-not-walls-they-need-but-better-schools/#respond Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 +0000

Economic anxiety is clearly a big part of the answer. Trump has managed to tap into a rising tide of fear swamping working-class voters as they have watched their jobs disappear, wages stagnate and savings vanish — a coalition of fear that unites the underemployed, undertrained and the xenophobic. They have little hope for a financially secure future, and they now believe their children may be even worse off.

Against that backdrop, you’d think Trump would have a lot more to say about K-12 education. While the basic governance of public schools remains in the hands of governors, state legislators and local school boards, presidents from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama have shown the out-sized influence that the nation’s chief executive can exert over education policy.

And the next president ought to use every bit of that influence. After all, guaranteeing schoolchildren a high-quality education is among the most certain solutions to the problem of restoring the great American middle class. It would do more than igniting trade wars, banning immigrants or building walls. It would convert fear into hope.

A focus on revamping public education would help repair not only the economy but also the nation’s civic fabric, which Trump, instead, is threatening to rip to shreds. He plays to the basest instincts of some of his supporters, pandering to their xenophobia and lending legitimacy to their resentment of people of color.

A more thoughtful candidate would explain that the real problem is an economy transformed by the forces of globalization and technology. That means that today’s workers must know more to command good jobs.

They need keen math skills, the ability to solve complex problems and the ability to communicate well. But too few of our students are leaving high school with those tools. (Yes, graduation rates are improving, but many of those students still aren’t ready for post-secondary institutions.)

Yet, Trump has had precious little to say beyond denouncing Common Core — which, like most government policies, he simply doesn’t understand. One Trump ad claimed: “…education has to be at a local level. We cannot have the bureaucrats in Washington telling you how to manage your child’s education. So Common Core is a total disaster. We can’t let it continue.”

In fact, Common Core is not a federal government initiative. It’s an effort led by governors and state school chiefs to ensure that all American schools adopt similar high standards.

Confusing matters further, during a recent CNN Town Hall-style forum in Milwaukee, Trump told moderator Anderson Cooper that education should be among the federal government's top priorities. But he quickly backtracked after Cooper reminded him that conservatives such as his rival, Ted Cruz, want to eliminate any federal role in education policy.

Trump clearly hasn't given the issue (or any issue) much thought.

(More: All the Ways Donald Trump Flubbed on Education at the CNN Debate)

If Trump were serious, he would focus on the reforms that public schools really need — accountability for principals and teachers, innovation that encourages high-performing charter schools and lifting standards that recognize every child’s potential.

While failing schools in low-income neighborhoods tend to get the lion’s share of news media attention, the simple fact is that American students as a group, including middle-class kids, are falling behind their peers in other developed countries.

Take a look at the scores from the Program for International Student Assessment, which is sponsored by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a group of 34 countries committed to democracy and market-oriented economies. The test judges reading, science and math and is administered every three years. The U.S. usually scores in the middle of the pack — behind countries such as Canada, Germany, Japan and Great Britain.

That shows that our public schools haven’t kept pace with the demands of a global economy. It’s not that our schools have gotten worse, or that the feds have ruined everything with their dastardly Common Core, but that they haven’t improved nearly as much or as quickly as they need to to keep pace.

Trump has barely mentioned any of that, choosing instead to sell his supporters a fantasy that suggests they can easily become as rich as he is. Big talk that somehow never includes mention of the fact that he was born to wealth and inherited his father’s business.

There are no quick and easy answers to the twin problems of income inequality and wage stagnation. And there is no single or simple answer to the complexities of a global economy.

But let’s be clear: the slow and winding road to “Make America Great Again” goes right through public school classrooms. ]]> /article/tucker-when-will-trump-get-honest-with-his-coalition-of-fear-its-not-walls-they-need-but-better-schools/feed/ 0 /article/tucker-progressives-like-bernie-sanders-may-be-confused-about-charter-schools-but-black-parents-arent/ /article/tucker-progressives-like-bernie-sanders-may-be-confused-about-charter-schools-but-black-parents-arent/#respond Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 +0000

One of the most popular misconceptions is that charter schools represent “takeovers” by wealthy corporate interests or rich conservatives who are indifferent to public education and greedy for the tax dollars that keep public schools open.

That helps explain Sanders’ bungled response, during a recent CNN Town Hall, that he didn’t support those charter schools that are “privately run.” (The 74: Feeling Confused by The Bern? 4 Theories on What Sanders Actually Thinks About Charter Schools)

In fact, public charters are no bastions of 1 percenters. Instead, many of them serve as lifelines for poor kids, rescuing them from schools where little learning takes place. That’s why they are so popular with black families.

The contentious debate over charter schools is a fault line through the political left, a divide pitting public education reformers against those who favor the status quo. Though many black educators, especially those employed in grades K-12, are fierce opponents of charter schools, black parents take a different view.

Last year, the Black Alliance for Educational Options released a survey of black voters in four states — Alabama, Louisiana, New Jersey and Tennessee. It found that majorities in each state. Roland Martin teamed up with TV One, where he hosts a black-oriented news show, to sponsor a similar poll, and it showed similar results: more than 70 percent of black voters .

It’s easy to see why if you take a clear-eyed look at the state of traditional public schools, especially in poorer neighborhoods. Lots of them are sub-par, with low scores on standardized tests, principals and teachers who fail to inspire and mediocre graduation rates.

Given limited means, many black parents feel trapped. They have neither the resources to buy homes in neighborhoods with good schools nor the money to afford private or parochial schools. Suburban school districts, by the way, punish parents who enroll children who don’t live in the district — some going as far as to make arrests. (The 74: Opinion: Why Are We Arresting Mothers for ‘Stealing’ An Education?)

(The helps explain the difference in support for public charter schools. In 2011, the median wealth for a white household was $111,146, while it was $8,348 for a Latino household and $7,113 for a black household, according to government data.)

Public charter schools are free to attend, just like traditional public schools. They have open attendance policies. (Many public charters have more applications than seats; those schools usually select students through a lottery.).

To be sure, charter schools are no panacea. Some have failed; others are not doing any better than nearby traditional schools.

But the best among the charters are posting substantial gains, even among students from less-affluent families. Those are kids whose best chance for gaining a toehold in the economic mainstream is through a first-rate education.

Progressive politics are supposed to promote the poor, stand up for the weak and advocate for the voiceless. If so, the progressive movement ought to be a strong supporter of public charter schools.

Then — in typical Trump fashion — his victory speech made Twitter erupt in fury Wednesday after he declared his love for the “poorly educated.”

“We won the evangelicals. We won with young. We won with old. We won with highly educated. We won with poorly educated. I love the poorly educated,” Trump said.

Cue the outrage:

I LOVE THE POORLY EDUCATED
Your GOP front runner everyone. If this doesn't make you ? the direction of this country

— Sheikh Ebad (@eSHEIKH_)

"I love the poorly educated!"

— Mike Mitchell (@mikemitchellnyc)

"I love the poorly educated" may be the most on-the-nose pander that's ever been pandered.

— Michael McKean (@MJMcKean)

In a lot of ways, Trump’s hat tip to “poorly educated” voters makes a lot of sense. In December, FiveThirtyEight from three national surveys and determined Trump’s lead over other candidates in the GOP field relies heavily on Americans without college degrees. In fact, Trump had a double-digit lead among voters without college degrees. Of the survey respondents who had received a college degree, Trump’s appeal was similar to that of Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.

Source: FiveThirtyEight

"I love the poorly educated" is the drop-the-mic ending to America's superpower status.

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi)

Donald Trump: "I love the poorly educated."

— Dylan Stableford (@stableford)

I LOVE THE POORLY EDUCATED Funny Donald Trump 2016 Shirt Check It out Here

— Merchshirts (@merchshirts)

I Love the poorly educated Bumper sticker!

— 1m0ut4H3r3 (@GottaChangeIt)

Bush released a plan Sunday that would, at its broadest levels, return authority to states and give students in all types of schools  more choices. Here are five things to know about .

ALL IN ON CHOICE — Bush’s plan calls for greater choice at every stage of schooling, from preschool through college. Most of these choice options would be administered by converting 529 plans, which give families  tax benefits when they save for college , into education savings accounts that could be used to pay educational expenses of all types at all levels of schooling. Bush would allow family members, employers, and others to contribute to the plans, and would use tax breaks to encourage contributions to low-income children.

In the K-12 arena, Bush proposes doubling federal supports for expanding high-quality charter schools and maintaining the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, which funnels federal dollars to low-income Washington parents to help them pay for private school tuition. President Obama has in past budgets proposed eliminating the program, and he and congressional Democrats proposed this fall to extend it.

Bush also wants to let Title I money for low-income children follow them as they move among schools. He’d also do the same with money given out through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which helps schools with the additional costs of educating children with disabilities. (For these programs, though, it would be left to states’ discretion whether or not each participates.) Congressional Republicans proposed the Title I portability idea during this year’s debates to reauthorize No Child Left Behind but it was not included in the final compromise.

ADDRESSING THE YOUNGEST LEARNERS — Bush, like many Republicans, says there are dozens of overlapping federal programs for preschool. (That number comes from a  by the Government Accountability office that found 45 federal programs for young children. Democrats often note that the report counts programs that have other primary purposes, like the school lunch program or child care supports given to victims of domestic violence.)

Bush proposed giving the money, which totals in the billions of dollars, to states to refund to low-income parents to use as they see fit, for center-based or home-based programs, at varying times of day. States would be tasked with ensuring program quality and rigor. The program would give about $2,500 to each family in states that participate; Bush’s plan notes that “in most cases it will require more than the federal dollars to ensure adequate funding for a strong start for a low-income child.” The federal dollars are intended to supplement local, state and family spending.

NO MENTION OF COMMON CORE — Bush throughout the campaign has been criticized as too liberal to be the Republican nominee because he backs the Common Core State Standards. The only question asked about K-12 in the 10 debates held by both parties, in fact, happened back during the very first debate, when Bush was asked about his support for the standards. (Ohio Gov. John Kasich is the only other Republican candidate who backs the standards.) His new education, plan, though, doesn’t mention standards or the Common Core once. It does say that Bush’s goal is to ensure that all Americans, regardless of where they grow up, graduate from high school “college or career ready.”

NEW INNOVATION FOR HIGHER EDUCATION — Bush proposed a new system for higher education financing, one that would offer most high school graduates a $50,000 line of credit to use for higher education. Low-income students, and low-income adult borrowers, would also get an additional Pell Grant. Pell eligibility depends on income; the maximum award for this academic year is $5,775. For young people, that Pell allotment would be decided when the student was in eighth grade. (College access advocates have said making students aware of their financial eligibility earlier makes college seem more in reach as they enter high school.)  

The plan also would allow students to use the funds at a wider variety of post-secondary programs beyond traditional four-year and community colleges. Currently, programs that are eligible for financial aid must go through a cumbersome accreditation system that often isn’t sufficiently flexible to judge new types of post-secondary programs. New programs, would be accredited by industry associations or other groups. The programs would have access to the federal loan money for their first classes of students once they had a proven track record of success.

Borrowers would then repay 1 percent of their income for every $10,000 of that allotment used, for a maximum of 25 years. The most borrowers would repay is 1.75 times what they borrowed, the plan said. (According to the federal government’s student loan repayment calculator, a graduate with $50,000 in debt at the current 4.29 percent interest rate and a $45,000 per year salary would repay between $61,606 and $89,325 total, depending on the repayment plan used. That’s somewhere between 1.23 and 1.78 times the initial loan.)

Bush also wants to help those who have already borrowed by encouraging people to use existing repayment programs, allowing borrowers to extend their repayment period, and making it easier to discharge student loans in bankruptcy.

NO FEDS ALLOWED – Unlike Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and others who have called for the total abolition of the federal Department of Education, Bush’s plan would continue it. He would, however, cut its roughly 4,000-member staff by 50 percent.

Bush’s plan pledges that he will defend state control of education and adds that “the federal government cannot, and should not, impose a one-size-fits all model of anything on states.”

He thinks the flexibility given to states under the newly adopted Every Student Succeeds Act in terms of school accountability should be expanded to other, unspecified areas. He’d also propose giving low-income and high-needs schools the opportunity to earn additional federal dollars based on improving student outcomes. ]]> /article/five-things-to-know-about-bushs-education-plan/feed/ 0 /article/gop-presidential-contenders-talk-education-poverty/ /article/gop-presidential-contenders-talk-education-poverty/#respond Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 +0000

The candidates Saturday participated in the Jack Kemp Forum on Expanding Opportunity in Columbia, South Carolina. House Speaker Paul Ryan and Tim Scott, a South Carolina senator, moderated three panel discussions with the six candidates who attended.

The day’s first panel started with Bush, Christie, and retired neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson.

(Check out The Seventy Four’s interviews with Bush, Christie and John Kasich from our Education Summit in New Hampshire in August, and our interviews with Carson and Marco Rubio from November.)

Bush emphasized that states, not the federal government, should control education.

Florida, for example, has made gains in early-age literacy by providing four-year-olds with half-day preschool programs. The state should have greater flexibility to use federal dollars, like those from the Head Start program, as it sees fit.

The current system, with lots of federal oversight, yields little more than a bureaucratic mess that doesn’t actually help kids, he said. Eighty percent of bureaucrats in the state education office in Florida deal with 10 percent of education dollars — those from the federal government, Bush said.

“This is a joke. We’re not improving education because we have bureaucrats on one side filling out forms for bureaucrats on another side,” he said.

The current funding system — “based on little butts in a seat” — also isn’t helping children by limiting them to progress through their educations based on their age. Instead, he said, a competency-based system should be created to allow children to move through material at whatever rate they can master it.

“We shouldn’t just fund the beast. We ought to be funding people that have the strength and character” to change the existing system, Bush added.

Christie made the most pointed dig of the day — one he has voiced before — at teachers unions.

“The single most destructive force for public education in this country is the teachers union,” he said.

The unions in his home state of New Jersey gave $20 million to Democrats in the state legislature during his last re-election, he said. Democrats in the legislature also said they wouldn’t back any new education reforms, citing the union’s support during the election, Christie said.

He didn’t spare any criticism of Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton, either, noting she was endorsed by both the American Federation of Teachers and National Education Association ahead of the primaries.

“She is bought and paid for just like my legislature is bought and paid for, and no changes will be made” to education nationally if Clinton is elected, Christie said.

He also suggested two policies unions traditionally don’t back: teacher pay based on performance, and a longer school day and school year.

Carson, for his part, reiterated his previous comments that home-schooling is best. He also said the country should focus more on vocational education, STEM programming and the use of technology in the classroom. It’s essential that the country not leave any child behind so that we can compete economically with China and India, vastly more populous countries, Carson said.

Later in the day, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio had a separate panel that touched on school choice and, again, the importance of vocational and technical education. Immigration protesters interrupted Rubio several times, charging that he did not represent Hispanics and wanted to deport families.

Rubio reiterated ideas he’s previously proposed to offer a federal tax credit to businesses that donate to nonprofit organizations that assist low-income families with tuition for private schools. It’s immoral that only poor parents don’t have a choice of where to send their children, he said.

He also urged a greater emphasis on vocational and technical training. Students who attend high schools that don’t offer it should be able to use Pell Grants to study at a community college while they’re still in high school, he said.

Kasich said Ohio has already started offering vocational programming as early as seventh grade. Guidance counselors, he said, should have more training and time to better help students select their future path.

He talked about the importance of on early childhood education — young children who grow up in poverty often don’t have “the kind of development of in their brains that they need” to be successful when they get to school, he said.

The event was sponsored by the . Kemp was a professional football player, representative from New York, housing secretary and 1996 Republican vice presidential nominee. He called himself a “bleeding heart conservative” and supported affirmative action and rights for undocumented immigrants alongside more traditional conservative economic positions. The foundation named for him has aimed to promote that legacy since his death in 2009.

It’s understandable that those of us who spend our time working on education are desperate for any information about how Clinton would govern on the issue. But many seem to be missing an important point: it probably doesn’t matter that much, what the next president thinks on the issue, so long as No Child Left Behind is replaced with a new version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) ahead of Inauguration Day in 2017, as appears increasingly likely.

Take Clinton’s comments at the AFT roundtable, which got particular for her views on teacher evaluation and compensation: “I have, for a very long time, also been against the idea that you tie teacher evaluation and even teacher pay to test outcomes. There's no evidence. There's no evidence.”

Here Clinton is rebuking the Obama administration’s push to connect teacher evaluations to student achievement, and in turn tie evaluation to pay. (She’s wrong about there being “no evidence” to support such policies, by the way. There is in fact evidence for both of them, though there’s certainly no research consensus on either issue.) Based on this and other comments, some have that Clinton would be a “huge break” from Obama on education; other outlets have covering Clinton’s education views with of credulity.

So let’s look at that: Might a president Clinton roll back Barack Obama’s evaluation push?

In all likelihood, no. That’s because if a new ESEA passes, it will probably for the federal government to mess with state and district teacher evaluation systems. That’s right: illegal. That is, even if a President Clinton wanted her Department of Education to strip tests out of evaluations, she would find it impossible to do so under a revised ESEA.

In fact, the large federal role in education that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan promoted may come to an abrupt end right as Obama leaves office. Duncan was able to use carrots (in the form of Race to the Top funding) and sticks (in the form of waivers from onerous No Child Left Behind sanctions) to get states to adopt many of his priorities.

But a reauthorized ESEA would make waivers obsolete by definition and does not appear likely to include anything resembling a Race to the Top–style incentive fund. That also means that Clinton will have a hard time doing anything significant on charter schools, which Duncan pushed to expand through — you guessed it — Race to the Top. As Alyson Klein of EdWeek , “states would be handed the car keys” on most major issues.

In other words, the question worth asking is not “Does Clinton agree with the Obama/Duncan agenda?” but rather “What power will she have to change the status quo?”

Of course, the next president won’t be impotent when it comes to education. The specifics on ESEA have yet to be finalized, and the extent of the Department of Education’s regulatory power, although obviously scaled back, is not totally clear. And it’s worth remembering that just a couple years ago, no one could have predicted the extent to which Duncan would be able to push through his ambitious education agenda. (If there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that a driven Secretary of Education backed by the President and given a little bit of money can have a big impact on policy.)

Plus ESEA has not passed. It still needs to get through a conservative House wary of both its exclusion of title one portability and inclusion of testing requirements; it still needs to persuade committed Democratic accountability hawks in the senate and the White House. If it stalls indefinitely, the next president could be in an incredibly powerful position to advance his or her education agenda.

But if ESEA does pass, most of the education reform work that Duncan and Obama helped lead will return to states — and the next president may be all but powerless to advance or inhibit it.

As the stock market wobbles, we can’t afford to short-circuit our middle-class economic engine. Nor should we blame students for seeking to improve themselves through education. Instead, we have to radically rethink how we approach college affordability—and we must guarantee that access to quality higher education isn’t a luxury for the rich alone.

Here in Colorado, we’re already taking steps to tackle this challenge. Several pieces of legislation passed last session as part of this state’s Ready to Work package expanded professional and academic opportunities for young people seeking to enter the workforce without taking on a crushing financial burden in the process. But Colorado can’t tackle this challenge alone.

The 2016 presidential election is a can’t-miss opportunity to put this issue at the center of the national debate. Fortunately, Hillary Clinton has stepped up to the plate. Her comprehensive college affordability plan, released earlier this month, would move mountains for Colorado’s former, current and future students—as well as for those all around the country.

Called the New College Compact, Clinton’s plan would tackle the cost crisis at both ends—with policies that both make college less expensive in the first place and that make loan repayment more affordable as young graduates get on their feet. Under Clinton’s plan, tomorrow’s college students will to rely on student loans to afford their tuition, and those who graduate with debt will never face repayment costs 10 percent of their salary.

I believe Clinton’s plan is the one America needs to tackle this burgeoning crisis, head-on, but I also understand that others may disagree, preferring other plans. That’s what America’s all about! But surely what we can all agree on is that it is unacceptable to simply ignore the challenge of college affordability, especially when its consequences are so glaringly obvious here in Colorado and across the country.

With some politicians around the country refusing to even acknowledge this issue, we need a leader like Hillary Clinton who can bring together a broad coalition to achieve real reform.

After all, on an issue as important as this one, America deserves better than politicians who refuse to tackle the big issues. Our students need help, and Hillary Clinton has put together the strongest college affordability proposal of a presidential frontrunner in history. I hope that more leaders across the country, and particularly in Congress, follow her lead.

Photo by Getty Images: Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton discusses college affordability and student debt relief at a town hall meeting at Exeter High School August 10, 2015 in Exeter, New Hampshire.