Education is a big issue in the Maryland gubernatorial race, according to the Baltimore Sun. Yet on the K-12 topic the candidates?Democrat Martin O'Malley and Republican Robert Ehrlich?are saying many of the same things. They both praise President Obama's Race to the Top program; they both want to avoid, even with budgets strained, removing dollars from Maryland's schools; and they both claim to believe in the utility of charter schools (although Ehrlich?says that he's more pro-charter than O'Malley). Do the candidates' similar sentiments perhaps indicate that, generally, conversations about K-12, even those exchanges occurring in the states, are simply far more ?reform?-oriented today than they were a mere two years ago?
?Liam Julian, Bernard Lee Schwartz Policy Fellow