Massachusetts students on education

Here's an analysis of education in the Presidential election from the youth of Press Pass TV:

"I think we all love teachers"

Thanks, of course, to Bob Schieffer for the above quote in response to Governor Romney's comment,that, while hiring teachers would not fix the economy, "I love teachers, and I’m happy to have states and communities that want to hire teachers..."

It billed as a foreign policy debate, but we did get a good bit of education-related talk in there. A few points:

• While it was nice to hear that neither candidate is in favor of sequestration, this would be more meaningful if we were hearing it from Congress, since, per Article I of the United States Constitution, budgetary power is invested in the Legislative branch.
• Governor Romney claimed some credit last night for education in Massachusetts being "number 1." It's important to keep in mind (as Diane Ravitch noted last night) that much of what has gone well in Massachusetts since 1993 had to do with reworking the funding formula, and the schools' success both pre- and post-dates Romney. What he can take credit for--and here's where the President's calling him out on this was wrong--is the John and Abigail Adams Scholarship, 'though, as Slate reported earlier this week, there's some question on how much good those scholarships are doing. 
• Since President Obama came out strongly in defense of class size mattering, I assume that we will be able to tell the Patrick administration that we're going to go back to using our federal Title I money to lower class size now? 

More of the same

And just in case you were wondering, Mitt Romney's education policy is, ah, just about identical to Barak Obama's.