A WASHINGTON NOTE: Schools need role in election debate

Asya Wilson, with braids as long and thin as she is, is happy that she will enter the eighth grade at a popular charter school in Decatur, Ga., where her mother, Mei Mei Casswell, was finally able to get her enrolled.

But this is not the first time the shy, 13-year-old honor roll student has been enrolled in a charter school.

“By no means is she going to go to the public high school in the district that her mom lives in. It’s horrible; really, really bad,” said her father, Michael Wilson of Baltimore, to explain why his only child bounced back-and-forth from a public school to a now-defunct charter school to a public school and back to a charter school again.

She wasn’t getting the attention she needed in public [elementary] school for “a really good student.”

“It just didn’t pass the smell test,” Mr. Wilson said.

Her stepmother, Raina, said, “We’re always looking for the best programs for her.” This weekend she was helping Asya, who just completed computer camp at Morgan State University, pack to head off to historic Camp Atwater in Brookfield, Mass.

“But it shouldn’t be a situation where parents have to move all around to where they’re getting the best education for their kids,” Mr. Wilson said.

He noted that Asya’s mother has relocated a number of times seeking better schools in and around Atlanta.

Asya’s parents are in that group of American voters who believe education is the key to economic opportunity - not only for their children, but for the country. Education reform is their No. 1 priority during this presidential election cycle. However, they see that the much-needed reform of the nation’s schools is being overshadowed by rising gas prices, home foreclosures and foreign policy.

“Education is pretty close to the top of my priorities, right up there with world peace,” said Mr. Wilson, who pointed out that he is a first-generation college graduate. “But the candidates have not talked enough about it.”

An Associated Press poll on education conducted in mid-June found that half of Americans said the U.S. is falling behind the rest of the world in education, and 62 percent said that the quality of schools in the U.S. is worse than 20 years ago. The respondents rated education among their top concerns after the economy and gas prices, but ahead of the war in Iraq, terrorism, the environment, immigration and health care.

A June Rasmussen poll also indicated that 90 percent of voters believe education is important in the next congressional election. A May Pew Research Center survey showed that education ranked as the No. 2 priority for voters this fall, ahead of taxes and Iraq.

Arizona Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, laid out the key points to his education-reform package at the annual convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People on July 16. It includes support for school vouchers, teacher certification and merit pay.

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, said in his July remarks to the American Federation of Teachers, which is part of the Democratic core base, “You’ve shown that it is possible to find new ways to increase teacher pay that are developed with teachers, not imposed on them.”

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