Top Democrats have tried to have it both ways on education: give what they want to the corporate "reformers" who want to prove public schools are failing with endless standardized testing as an excuse to privatize public schools and skim our tax dollars as profits on the one hand, and keep teachers in the tent by funding education at a higher level than Republicans would and even budgeting money to keep teachers from being fired on the other.
But you can't have it both ways forever. In policy actions not just words, you need to side with students and teachers not those on Wall Street who see public education as the next speculative bubble, like the internet or housing, they can inflate and then pop, leaving us to clean up the mess they make of our children's lives.