[Rockingham]

When GOP candidates criticize public schools without offering specific reforms, they get beat up as being critics who have nothing better to offer. Moreover, in the absence of credible alternatives, the public school lobby insists that, no matter what else is said as to public education, more cash and a smaller classes are needed.

Unfortunately, the public mostly buys into that. Thus the standard GOP public school platform is standardized testing, charter schools, limited vouchers -- and more cash. The new fiscal realities may make more radical reforms possible, but such reforms will still need to be explained and promoted to the public. There is no escape from the battle of ideas.

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

Quite so. There must be ideas.

I mean, the agenda is simply stated, but it’s not the things normally discussed, as the FastPitch article explains. (All those boring specifics about dubious programs are killing us. Let’s stick to stuff that everyone can understand and applaud.)

Here, I can state the whole platform in 20 words: Teach reading, writing, arithmetic, and geography in the early grades, then shift more to history, science, literature, and the arts.