THE BIG “E”. Yes, it’s all about the economy, but fueling any nation’s economic well-being is a robust education system, the real “Big E,” of the highest quality. Yet, nary a whisper about education during the grueling GOP campaign for president. In one of her columns during primary season, Jeanne Allen urged candidates – and reporters – to pay heed to the Big E. “In every state and community, education reform is the battle cry for those most afflicted by the nation’s 2,000 failing high schools, and for the approximately 70 percent of kids who are not learning at either national or international benchmarks,” she remarked. Allen queried why candidates don’t “seem to recognize, or discuss this. Where are the media pundits on the candidates’ positions on K-12 education? Is it fatigue? Apathy?” Almost as a follow up, Andy Rotherham recently penned his take on the lack of attention to education by the two nominees, President Obama and former Massachusetts Gov Mitt Romney. Party politics is Rotherham’s answer to Allen’s questioning of the brush-off of education. Both candidates have their own political “minefield to walk through,” an aversion to federally led solutions to national education challenges on one hand and the teacher unions on the other. Rotherham and Allen agree that the media “isn’t forcing the conversation,” as it should. For all of you who attend Presidential campaign town hall meetings or are inclined to write an op ed or letter to the editor, demand that both candidates state their goals and role in improving education for all children and that the media pepper each candidate with purposeful questions about this nation’s top issue.

POWER TO LEAD…is one of KIPP’s founding principles and the focus of an Atlantic piece by KIPP co-founder Mike Feinberg. Power comes from giving teachers the freedom to do their jobs, but joined at the hip is accountability and willingness to innovate when it comes to teaching children to high standards. As Feinberg explains, “when all these elements are combined — a clear goal and achievable standards, authority at the school level, and flexibility in the classroom — the results are powerful and transformative. A 2010 independent report by Mathematica found that the vast majority of KIPP schools produced academic gains in math and reading that are significant and substantial.” After Feinberg’s struggle in the mid 1990s to implement his idea within the Houston public school system, he must have been smiling brightly as he wrote how the district is “now in the process of infusing flexibility and accountability into their schools,” through Houston’s Apollo 20 program. Houston, we have a solution. Just look at KIPP.

LEFT OUT. That’s the fate of over 500 South Carolina students who would like to enroll in Greenville’s Tech Charter High School, but can’t. Why? School enrollment is strangled by student caps – 105 per grade and 420 for the entire school. These 500 or more kids are denied a top-notch education, as the school wins kudos for graduating all of its students, with all of its students earning entry into college. So, once again, this October a lottery will be held to determine who’s in an excellent school and who’s left out.

A TREND IN SOUTH CAROLINA? Greenville’s Tech Charter High School isn’t the only one in the state hammered down by enrollment caps. The Beaufort County School District and Riverview Charter also wrestled over numbers. A yearlong battle ended with the charter bringing a lawsuit against the district. A recent amendment to the charter is based on the court decision and was unanimously approved by Riverview’s board. The district board is expected to vote today. All the money ($50,000 for the charter and an undisclosed amount by the district) that could have been spent improving classroom education was derailed, most likely due to the school board’s jealousy of the charter’s popularity. Wasting money, and time for kids to learn, in South Carolina.

One point I want to make is that all of us are going to have responsibilities to get this economy education moving again. And when I saw an article today indicating that Wall Street bankers Congress had given themselves the education system $20 billion $100 billion worth of bonuses in new spending — the same amount of bonuses as they gave themselves in 2004 effectively doubling federal funding of education — at a time when most of these institutions were are teetering on collapse and they are asking for taxpayers to help sustain them, and when taxpayers find themselves in the difficult position that if they don’t provide help that where they don’t have any other choices for educating their children, the entire system could come down on top of our heads if the next generation – indeed, this generation – can’t compete in a global economy — that is the height of irresponsibility. It is shameful.

And part of what we’re going to need is for folks on Wall Street in the education BLOB who are asking for help to show some restraint accountability and show some discipline transparency and show some sense of responsibility. The American people understand that we’ve got a big hole that we’ve got to dig ourselves out of — but they don’t like the idea that people are digging a bigger hole even as they’re being asked to fill it up.

And so we’re going to be having conversations as this process moves forward directly with these folks on Wall Street the BLOB to underscore that they have to start acting in a more responsible accountable and transparent fashion if we are to together get this economy rolling again. There will be time for them to make profits an opportunity for those with rigorous programs to put them in play in the classroom, as is already seen in charter schools across the country, and there will be time for them to get bonuses quality teachers to excel and be compensated on their merits rather than their seniority — now is not that time. And that’s a message that I intend to send directly to them, I expect Secretary Geithner Duncan to send to them — and Secretary Geithner Duncan already had to pull back one institution that had gone forward with a multimillion dollar jet plane purchase tenure protection contract at the same time as they’re receiving TARP ARRA money. We shouldn’t have to do that because they should know better. And we will continue to send that message loud and clear.

Having said that, I am confident that with the recovery package moving through the House and through the Senate, with the excellent work that’s already been done by Secretary Geithner in consultation with Larry Summers and Paul Volcker and other individuals education reformers in the trenches, that we are going to be able to set up a regulatory framework that allows accountability, transparency and choice to rights the ship and that gets us moving again. And I know the American people are eager to get moving again — they want to work be able to choose the best education for their children, be it in a conventional, charter or private school. They are serious about their responsibilities; I am, too, in this White House and I hope that the folks on Wall Street in the BLOB are going to be thinking in the same way.

(brought to you as a public service by M.O.M.S. – Mothers Opposed to Misappropriated Stimulus)