Mitt Romney is the only presidential candidate willing to admit, however implicitly, that the No Child Left Behind and the current US Department of education is a way to neutralize the powerful teachers' unions. So, the smoking gun is in the hands of a presidential candidate who has flip-flopped (that is a pretty cool word) on educational issues.
Here is where Romney sits on the other issues, inluding NCLB:
Mitt Romney on education
On No Child Left Behind law
Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has talked about how his views on federal involvement in education have evolved. Romney said during a May 2007 debate in South Carolina that he supported abolishing the Department of Education during his 1994 U.S. Senate bid because "it was very popular with the (GOP) base.”
As governor from January 2003 to January 2007, he said he saw the impact the agency had in “holding down the interests of the teachers union.” He said that is why he embraced the No Child Left Behind education law, which requires states to test students annually. “I find the testing of our kids to be a good thing, to find out which schools are succeeding and which ones are failing,” he said at a New Hampshire town meeting in August 2007.
On making college affordable
As governor, Romney established a scholarship program to reward the top 25% of Massachusetts high school students with a four-year, tuition-free scholarship to any state public university or college.
Other education priorities
Romney supports vouchers that would allow students from low-income areas pay for private-school tuition. As governor, he advocated merit pay for teachers, English immersion classes for foreign-speaking students, and increased math and science requirements. He told a New Hampshire crowd in August 2007 that the failure of inner-city schools is “the great civil rights issue of our time.”
