The "Education Candidate?"

In yesterday's USA Today, Wendy Puriefoy (CEO of the Public Education Network) writes of the "need for (Presidential) candidates to tell us how they plan to improve our nation's public schools."

Ms. Puriefoy must not understand that the Commander-in-Chief is not the superintendent of schools in chief. Her questions about reducing class size and making schools safer are great questions for our states' governors, but irrelevent to the office of President.

It is embarrassing the number of people in positions of influence who do not understand that our nation's public schools are actually a collection of our states' public schools. Yes, the federal government provides some education funding to the states, and thus has a horse in the race, but it is our individual state's Constititutions that provide for public education, not that of the United States.

If Puriefoy and others believe this is the time to federalize education, make all teachers federal employees, remove education budgets from the states and pick them up with federal tax dollars, then that is the case she should make, not waste time with questions not relevent to the Presidency.