Why aren’t candidates talking about education?

If there is any advantage to our nation's prolonged presidential campaign season, it is the increased number of opportunities to hear detailed, issue-focused answers from the candidates.

So it is a shame that almost all of the presidential debates so far have fallen short by neglecting the issue of education.

Of hundreds of questions asked during the Democratic and Republican debates, fewer than five even touched on education. To be fair, these same debates included thoughtful questions and answers on key issues such as Iraq, immigration and health care. Yet they also used precious time exploring the candidates' positions on amending the Constitution so Arnold Schwarzenegger could run for president, and what role these candidates would assign former President Bill Clinton to play in their administration.

Even though it is just under way, this election already is long overdue for a serious, detailed discussion on education. How our next president addresses this issue is going to have an enormous impact on all Americans, especially African-Americans.

In January 1965, six months after the Civil Rights Act was signed into law, Martin Luther King Jr. reminded a crowd in Selma, Ala., that no matter what gains had been made so far, when it came to full economic equality for African-Americans, there was still a "long, long way to go."

More than 40 years later, we can take some pride in the economic gains that African-Americans have made. Yet, as King warned, there is still a long, long way to go. But before the African-American community can accumulate greater financial capital, there must be an accumulation of intellectual capital -- and that cannot happen until we address the failures of our education system.

An Education Week report released just this summer found that the high school dropout rate for African-American students is greater than 46 percent. Thus nearly half of our nation's young African-Americans are beginning their adult lives without the most basic knowledge or skills needed to land a good job.

Only one out of 10 African-American eighth-graders reads above a proficient level, and only half can even read at the most basic level. In June, the U.S. Department of Education revealed that half the states have set fourth-grade reading benchmarks so low that they fall beneath even the most basic level on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. By the time they near graduation, African-American and Latino teenagers have math and reading skills that are no higher than those of white middle school students.

Further, a recent study by the Manhattan Institute found that black and Latino students are only about half as likely as white students to graduate from high school prepared for four-year colleges. That means minority students are more likely to fail college placement exams and need remedial classes in college.

But the impact of our inadequate schools is being felt far beyond the African-American community. Indeed, our deteriorating education system already is threatening our nation's economic security and placing our standing as a global leader at risk.

A recent report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that the United States has lost its leading position in preparing a highly educated work force. The United States is now tied with Latvia for average math scores among 15-year-olds. While 40 years ago, the United States had the highest high school graduation rate in the world, today we rank 19th.

This unending stream of reports and statistics catalogues our failure to meet our children's and our country's educational needs.

Now questions need to be asked of the people who want to be president about their plans to reverse this trend. What is their vision for comprehensive education reform? How do they plan to address the issue of adequate education standards? What can be done to ensure we have quality teachers in every classroom?

These are the questions the American people want answered. A Pew Research Poll taken early in September found that education was in the top tier of issues concerning both Democrats and Republicans, and that roughly 3 out of 4 voters want more coverage of the candidates' issue positions.

It is not too late to reverse the dangerous trends taking place in our education system. But if we want to address the education gap in our country, a good start would be addressing the education gap in our presidential debates.

J.C. Watts is chairman of J.C. Watts Companies, a business consulting group that advises Strong American Schools, a project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. Watts is former chairman of the Republican Conference of the U.S. House, where he served as an Oklahoma representative from 1995 to 2002. His e-mail address is JCWatts01@jcwatts.com.