Yesterday, I participated in a panel discussion at the Washington Post about national issues in education with Robert Pondiscio of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute and Dean Bridget Terry Long of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. This followed a few other panels, including one in which Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his chosen school superintendent Janice Jackson lavished praise on their successful efforts to transform the public schools of Chicago, with nary a dissent.

Our panel did include dissent, since I was critical of school choice and the other two panelists supported it. I was critical of standardized testing, and Dean Long supported it.

Valerie Strauss did a great job moderating and keeping us on track.

In my opening statement, I argued that the key education issue of our time was the defunding of public schools by the federal and state governments. NCLB and Race to the Top had…