Education and the Presidential Debates

Heard any conversation on education?

This is re-printed from the US DOEs The Teachers Edition newsletter, January 6 edition. Climate change, foreign policy, and the economy have been frequent conversation topics at recent presidential debates, but if you’ve wondered about the lack of questions regarding public education, you’re not alone. In a blog post on POLITICO, Arne Duncan listed the five questions he wishes would be asked, including ones about access to preschool and high school graduation rates. Only four percent of Americans find education to be America’s most important problem, according to one poll, which FiveThirtyEight.com’s Hayley Munguia suggests might be part of the reason we’re not hearing much about it at the debates.