Everyone seems to agree that “choice and competition” are the answers for schools. McCain gets in a dig at Giuliani by implying that he wasn’t any good for New York City schools. “In New York City, there are some remarkable things happening under Mayor Bloomberg and Joel Klein, with an educational system that was broken,” McCain intones. Rudy doesn’t respond to that.

—Dana Goldstein

Dana Goldstein, a former associate editor and writer at the Prospect, comes from a family of public-school educators. She received the Spencer Fellowship in Education Journalism, a Schwarz Fellowship at the New America Foundation, and a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellowship at the Nation Institute. Her journalism is regularly featured in Slate, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Daily Beast, and other publications, and she is a staff writer at the Marshall Project.