If you listen to Barack Obama on the campaign trail, he bashes President Bush's signature education law, No Child Left Behind, like any good Democrat would. But dig a little deeper, and this liberal seems much more like a centrist when it comes to education.
He's danced around the issues of merit pay for teachers, charter schools, and even dared to appear not entirely opposed to the idea of taxpayer-funded vouchers for private school tuition.
In fact, Obama used the issue of education as an example of how he's capable of bucking his own party (and the powerful National Education Association teachers' union). In this Politico interview, he says: "I'm not going to be bound by just a certain way of talking about these things, in order for us to move forward on behalf of our kids." He professed his support for charter schools and "looking at how we can reward excellence in the classroom" (which sounds a lot like merit pay, an issue the teachers' unions oppose.) He admits that the unions haven't been "thrilled" that he's talked about such issues.
That's not exactly music to the NEA's ears, and their endorsement is still up in the air.
And neither was Obama's statement to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in the run-up to the Wisconsin primary in which he suggested he might change his mind on vouchers if research backs it up, and if it's what's best for kids.
After his so-called "openness" to vouchers hit a few newspapers and the blogsphere, his campaign went into damage-control mode, sending Education Week this statement, offering a different interpretation of Obama's interview with the Journal Sentinel. According to the campaign, Obama, in the interview, "repeated his longstanding opposition to vouchers." Not quite. What Obama did was give a six-minute, thoughtful response indicating he was a skeptic of vouchers, but that he might change his mind if there was research to back it up.
Obama's statements on vouchers raised the eyebrows of the the Ohio Federation of Teachers, which sent a letter to the Obama campaign before their state's primary, asking him to clarify his views on vouchers. And a day before the Ohio primary, just in the knick of time, they got a response.
In his letter to the Ohio teachers dated Feb. 29, Obama blames a "misleading" article for causing the commotion, but it's hard to blame the paper when you're on video saying that you might reconsider your position on vouchers under certain circumstances.
Obama says he's consistently been an "outspoken" opponent of vouchers. But the Ohio teachers' group told me they're not yet convinced.
And although Obama certainly hasn't given a ringing endorsement of vouchers, it stands in stark contrast to his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton's not-under-any-circumstances opposition to vouchers, which she claims could be used to fund training grounds for "jihad."
Vouchers aren't the only area of controversy that Obama has encountered. He also waded into the potential landmine of merit pay for teachers, an issue that unions oppose.
Obama promoted merit pay in a July speech to the National Education Association. And in 2006, Obama introduced a bill that would have created a pilot project to evaluate teachers based in part on the test scores of their students, according to this Education Week story.
And he alludes to merit pay in his education plan by giving a nod to districts like Denver, which use student test scores as one means of evaluating teachers for salary raises. But he doesn't come out and directly say whether test scores should be part of the salary equation. Instead, he says teachers should be rewarded for their deep knowledge of subjects, additional training they receive to help high-needs students, and a "variety of contributions" they make to student learning.
The question is, would Obama approach education reform with a centrist frame-of-mind if he had the full power of the Presidency behind him, and wasn't fighting it out for the nomination?