(Campaign K-12)-Today the forum was the New America Foundation, a Washington-based think tank and the advisers were the Ubiquitous Lisa Graham Keegan, a former Arizona schools chief, appearing on behalf of Sen. John McCain's campaign, and Jon Schnur, who heads up New Leaders for New Schools and is informally advising the Sen. Barack Obama's campaign (along with just about every other Education Dem).

Neither covered much new territory on K-12 education, and neither one seemed eager to address the 800- pound gorilla in the room: No Child Left Behind. At one point, Keegan sounded incredulous that nearly every question she's asked on the campaign trail "pivots around NCLB" as if that is "the universe of education."

For an inside-the-Beltway education reporter like me, the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act pretty much is the "universe of education" since that's the main federal lever for shaping K-12 policy. But maybe I'm too Washington-focused or maybe it's just too complex or too much of a political hot potato to talk about on the campaign trail. Anyway, there were no mentions today of deadlines, or sanctions, or staggered testing, or anything else for which the devil is in the details. But both reiterated their candidate's support for some federal accountability based around testing, and Schnur talked up Obama's plans to improve the quality of assessments. LINK to Blog

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