Education: Burning issue left smoldering by candidates

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Posing the last question Oct. 15 after nearly an hour and a half of the presidential debate, CBS News' Bob Schieffer started with a basic fact: "The U.S. spends more per capita than any other country on education. Yet, by every international measurement in math and science competence from kindergarten through the 12th grade, we trail most of the countries of the world. The implications are obvious. Some even say it poses a threat to our national security."At that moment, you could feel a magnetic pull in those households with school-age children, especially in the Hispanic households, heads tilting toward the TV screen. They are the voters who support the candidates who are for their kids. The most pressing issue for them has been education for more than 60 years. he reason for this is an important but little known part of our history. The 20th century effort to desegregate schools began in the 1940s and led initially by Mexican Americans. The relief was intended for the children of the many sons and daughters of refugees and migrants who had been displaced by the Mexican Revolution two decades earlier. In the 1920s, after the revolution, Gen. Francisco "Pancho" Villa himself was asked what he thought the revolution had been all about.He is reputed to have said it was about making reforms so that children could get an education. Historians have shown that, as Mexico's education system eroded, grandparents were better educated than their grandchildren. It was the mark of a society advancing backwards. Villa had experienced it himself and understood the underpinnings of the discontent.Here at home just the week preceding the McCain-Obama debate, higher-education circles were buzzing about a report by the American Council on Education. It showed the historic U.S. pattern, where each succeeding generation outperforms the previous one, has been broken. It is the first time since before World War II that progress has been reversed.ACE president Molly Corbett Broad followed with the warning, "We are at a tipping point in our nation's history. Alarm bells should be going off." The clang of her words is as important as the closing bell on Wall Street that ended trading on the day the Dow fell 936 points.The last issue Bob Schieffer raised on debate night was direct: "The U.S. spends more per capita than any other country on education. Yet, by every international measurement in math and science competence, from kindergarten through the 12th grade, we are the turtle of the advanced world."Some claim this poses a threat to our national security. Do you share that assessment? If you do, then what do you intend to do about it?" he asked McCain and Obama.The bob-and-weave approach by both candidates suggests they are equally clueless. Neither their advisors nor their own curiosity has led them to embrace course-changing reform. Therefore, their other measures should not be taken all that seriously. In this age, economic policy is education policy.The candidates made the federal response to our education dilemma another one of those perpetual hand-wringing "issues" -- like health care and Social Security -- that go on and on with elements of hope offered but with little insight or even a pledge they can be held accountable to make change happen.You can almost hear Nero's fiddle in their disengaged cool, the simplistic focus on "vouchers," their unwillingness to have a national engagement. They seemed more concerned about disturbing the establishment than answering to parents. Nearly a century later, it is ludicrous that a decidedly low-tech Pancho Villa must shout from the grave that he smells smoke and maybe our house is on fire.(Jose de la Isla writes weekly commentaries for Hispanic Link News Service. Email: joseisla3@yahoo.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)