The U.S. Supreme Court term that begins Monday promises to be one of the most important for civil rights in decades, with the potential for blockbuster decisions on issues from race in classrooms and the voting booth to legal recognition for same-sex marriage.

Related: Conservatives warily ponder prospect of an 'Obama court'

Less than a decade after ruling that the nation's colleges and universities can consider the race of student applicants to achieve more racially diverse campuses, a practice now widely used by the nation's selective schools, the court has agreed to take a fresh look.

The new challenge comes from Abigail Fisher, a white student denied admission to the University of Texas at Austin. The school admits the top 10 percent of academic performers from all Texas high schools, then considers the race of applicants as one factor in admitting the remainder of an incoming freshman class.

Evan Vucci / AP

People who waited in line overnight to hear the Supreme Court on a landmark case on health care hold their belongings as they make their way into the court in Washington, Thursday, June 28, 2012.

Fisher did not finish in the top 10 percent at her high school and claims that the consideration of race in reviewing applications cost her a spot at the university. 

"There were people in my class with lower grades, who weren't in all the activities I was in, who were accepted into UT. And the only difference between us was the color of our skin," she said. 

The university, backed by civil rights groups, contends that while the top 10 percent plan achieves some campus diversity, many of its classes would have only a few, if any, black and Hispanic students without additional considerations of race. 

Making it harder to achieve the diversity colleges need, argues Gregory Garre, a Washington, D.C. lawyer representing the University of Texas, "would jeopardize the nation's paramount interest in educating its future leaders in an environment that best prepares them for the society and workforce they will encounter." 

The Supreme Court that will hear the case Oct. 10 is different from the one that upheld a race-conscious admissions program at the University of Michigan law school in 2003. 

"Sandra Day O'Connor was on the court then, and she's been replaced by Samuel Alito, who has much less tolerance for affirmative action," says Tom Goldstein, a Washington, D.C. lawyer who specializes in Supreme Court cases. 

O'Connor, who wrote the decision in the Michigan case, retired from the court in 2006. 

As a result, says Pamela Harris, a former Obama administration official in the Justice Department, "I don't think anyone thinks affirmative action is long for this world." 

Justice Elena Kagan, considered one of the court's liberals, will sit this one out. She was the Obama administration's solicitor general when the Justice Department became involved in the case in the lower courts. 

The Supreme Court will take up another racially charged issue this term if, as seems likely, it agrees to consider efforts to scale back the landmark Voting Rights Act. 

Passed by Congress in 1965 and renewed four times since then, most recently in 2006, a key provision requires states with a history of discrimination at the polls to get federal permission before making any changes to election procedures -- from redrawing congressional district boundaries to changing the locations of polling places. 

Three years ago, the Supreme Court brushed off a challenge to that requirement but strongly suggested that several justices had doubts about its constitutionality, given recent electoral reforms. 

"Things have changed in the South," the court said in 2009. "Blatantly discriminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare." 

Pending cases ask the court to strike down the pre-clearance requirement entirely or throw out the list of areas, consisting of nine entire states, and of 12 cities and 57 counties elsewhere, that must get permission to modify their election procedures. 

The current map, says Bert Rein, a Washington, D.C. lawyer representing Shelby County, Ala., includes some localities that have made substantial reforms while missing other parts of the country that have failed to root out discrimination at the polls. 

As a result, Rein says, the system is unfair. "Florida has been forced into pre-clearance litigation to prove that reducing early voting from 14 days to 8 is not discriminatory, when states such as Connecticut, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania have no early voting at all." 

But Debo Adegbile of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund says the current map is a close enough fit to cover the areas of greatest concern. 

"Congress is not a surgeon with a scalpel when it acts to legislate across the 50 states. But it can reasonably attack discrimination where it finds it," he says. 

The court is almost certain to take up a host of challenges to the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996. 

It defines marriage, for the purposes of federal law, as "only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife." As a result, same-sex couples who get married in the states where such marriages are legal are accorded state and local benefits but miss out on more than 1,100 federal ones. 

After at first defending the law, the Obama administration notified federal courts early last year that it concluded the law was unconstitutional. House Republicans then took up the law's defense. 

A Supreme Court ruling striking down DOMA as discriminatory would not force states to permit same-sex marriage. But it would require the federal government to recognize those marriages where they are legal. 

The court could address the issue of same-sex marriage more directly if it takes up the legal challenge to California's Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in the state.  

Legal experts differ on whether the court is prepared to go that far, rather than deciding the DOMA issue now and coming back to the constitutionality of gay marriage in a later term. 

"We're not at the point where the Supreme Court will require the state of Mississippi to allow same-sex marriage," says Louis Michael Seidman of the Georgetown University Law Center. 

Among other questions the justices will confront: 

- Must police get a search warrant before taking a blood sample from a suspected drunk driver? 

- How far can police go in using drug-sniffing dogs outside someone's house? 

- Can a 1789 law, the Alien Tort Statute, be used to bring lawsuits in US courts for violations of international law that occur in other countries? 

- And, in an issue of growing interest to U.S. businesses, should more limits be placed on the ability to bring class-action lawsuits?

NEW YORK-- Mitt Romney softened his tone toward teachers unions and highlighted his record as governor of Massachusetts at NBC News' Education Nation summit Tuesday in New York.

The Republican presidential nominee offered one of the most detailed glimpses of his education policy at the forum this morning, laying off his often brusque language toward unions and playing up parents' role in the educational success of their children.

Teachers' unions, long the villains in Romney's public remarks on education, received somewhat gentler handling from the GOP nominee today, who said he "understood" the unions had to look out for their members, and that they had a right to strike over grievances -- but that parents also had the prerogative to look out for their kids' educations.

"The teachers' union has every right to represent their members in the way they think is best for their members, but we have a every right to in fact say, 'No, this is what we want to do, which is in the best interest of our children,'" Romney said, before offering his prescription for improving the quality of teaching. "I believe the best interest of our children is to recognize that teaching is a profession, like your profession, like my profession, like lawyers, like doctors, and that the very best are more highly compensated and rewarded and measured."

Recommended: Romney lays out vision for private sector-infused foreign aid

The former Massachusetts governor spoke and took questions on topics relating to education for 45 minutes here today as part of NBC News' Education Nation summit, and gave some of his most nuanced views yet on the issues at the heart of the effort to improve America's faltering public education system.

Romney also softened his tone, but did not change his argument, on the issue of class sizes, an issue on which he's battled teachers unions before, both in Massachusetts and on the campaign trail. Romney has called the fight for smaller class sizes a union-driven issue designed to spur the hiring of more teachers. He regularly cites a study authored by the consulting group McKinsey & Co. which shows class sizes, within a reasonable margin, are not a leading indicator of successful schools.

Slideshow: On the campaign trail

Reuters, Getty Images

In the final push in the 2012 presidential election, candidates Mitt Romney and Barack Obama make their last appeals to voters.

Launch slideshow

Today, Romney said his experience in Massachusetts taught him that class sizes "turned out to be a factor, but not a big one," to successful students, but continued to push for higher standards and pay for the best teachers, and for more parental involvement in education.

"The involvement of parents, particularly two parents, its an enormous advantage for the child," Romney said after retelling a story he heard from a teacher in Massachusetts who told him the way to tell if a student would succeed in school was whether or not their parents came to parent-teacher conferences with regularity.

Related: Education Nation – starkly different visions from Obama, Romney

Education has been one of the top issues for Romney outside 2012's dominant theme, the economy. The former Massachusetts governor often turns to the topic of education in speeches before minority audiences.

Romney held up several models for successful education reform; including his own tenure in Massachusetts, the reforms passed in Florida under Republican governor Jeb Bush, and the charter Harlem Children's Zone, some 100 blocks north of the site of today's event.

Romney even praised the current Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, mostly for his efforts to reward innovative schools and for opening options for more school choice, but stopped short of saying he would offer the Democrat a spot in his own cabinet.

"I'm not putting anybody on my cabinet right now, Brian," Romney laughed to moderator Brian Williams. "It's a little presumptuous of me, but just a little."

The Obama campaign wasn't laughing along.

“Mitt Romney’s education rhetoric today may have sounded nice, but it doesn’t square with his record or policies, which are informed by the mistaken belief that we can somehow improve our schools while cutting their budgets and laying off teachers," Obama campaign spokesperson Lis Smith said in a statement.

More Education Nation content:

• President Obama Addresses Education Nation Summit
• Summit Spotlight: Organizing for the Future
• Summer Spotlight: Getting Back to Work

Education has peeked into the forefront during the 2012 campaign for the White House with President Obama's push for low-interest student loans - and Republican challenger Mitt Romney's contrasting views (“shop around”) on how to pay for college. Obama has also seized on comments Romney made largely dismissing the impact of class sizes, using them for a TV ad running in battleground states.

But what's at stake in this election when it comes to education goes beyond the sound bites. The two candidates, like on so many issues, would take starkly different approaches, if elected.

Mario Tama / Getty Images

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaks at the Clinton Global Initiative meeting on September 25, 2012 in New York City.

Obama would likely try to expand many of the same initiatives he has pursued in his first term -- a reform-minded agenda implemented largely through the Department of Education and outside the purview of Congress. That agenda includes content standards that will be implemented in at least 45 states by 2014. Obama, who has not always been in the favor of the teachers’ unions that strongly support him, would continue to try and implement reforms while working with the unions.

Romney, on the other hand, takes a more adversarial approach to unions, which he sees as a large part of the problem. Romney’s plan calls for vouchers and a restructuring of funding for special-needs and low-income students that would assign money directly to individuals instead of schools and school districts. Romney would also try to implement “report cards” and make some changes to No Child Left Behind to recruit teachers.

What would they do – President Obama

1. Preserve funding

The president has warned against steep cuts to education and would fight to preserve funding for the Department of Education and programs like his competition-driven “Race to the Top” initiative.

“I have a question for Gov. Romney,” Obama said Aug. 22^nd in Las Vegas, “how many teachers’ jobs are worth another tax cut for millionaires and billionaires?”

The stimulus included about $100 billion for education. Much of the money went to states to retain teachers. The White House says as many as 160,000 teachers’ jobs were saved.

“Federal stimulus funds appear to have blunted the effects of the economic downturn on the K-12 education sector,” said Maria Ferguson, executive director of the Center on Education Policy at George Washington University after the release of a study from the center on the stimulus’ effect on school districts. “Although many districts still had to eliminate teaching and other key staff positions, our research indicates that the situation would have been worse without the stimulus funds.”

2. “Race to the Top”

“Race to the Top,” an initiative meant to spur innovation in schools, was funded through $4.35 billion in the president’s $787 billion stimulus plan, officially known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The president requested $1.35 billion for the program in his 2011 budget request. The first rounds of grants were announced in April and then September 2010.

Unlike “No Child Left Behind,” officially the “Elementary and Secondary Education Act,” Race to the Top does not set highly specific federal standards. It instead allows local school districts and states to compete over a pot of money – millions of dollars. They come up with their own plans on things like teacher evaluations and initiatives to improve student achievement and submit them to the Department of Education for approval.

The Obama administration argues this approach spurs innovation. Critics say it is too haphazard, inconsistent, and lacks accountability. Romney’s plan charges, for example, that once the money is “out the door,” the Obama administration “can only hope that change occurs.”

3. Common Core

Common Core is a set of math and reading standards developed with the Council of Chief State School Officers and and the National Governors Association. The standards are largely supported by the Obama administration, and the administration has encouraged the adoption of standards by tying them to some Race to the Top money.

Forty-six states will implement them by 2014. Some conservatives have pointed to this as a relinquishing control of state education to the federal government. Others object because the measures are untested.

4. Watering down No Child Left Behind and going around Congress

The Obama administration has largely bypassed Congress on revising NCLB. It was up for reauthorization last year, but the administration – skeptical that Congress would act – instead implemented a series of changes through the Department of Education. Obama’s Education Secretary Arne Duncan called NCLB a “slow-motion train wreck” and noted, “We must fix No Child Left Behind now, not in Washington but in real time.”

Under the Obama administration, states “can request flexibility” from NCLB provisions, “but only if they are transitioning students, teachers, and schools to a system aligned with college- and career-ready standards for all students, developing differentiated accountability systems, and undertaking reforms to support effective classroom instruction and school leadership,” the Department of Education announced on Sept. 23, 2011.

“This is Plan B,” Duncan said in June of last year, previewing the steps the administration would be taking over the next several months. “Plan A is to have Congress move. If that doesn’t happen, we can’t sit here and do nothing.”

Duncan’s criticism of NCLB, highlighted in a January Washington Post op-ed, noted that the law “created an artificial goal of proficiency that encouraged states to set low standards,” was too reliant on test scores, is “overly prescriptive” hasn’t “supported states.”

By February, 37 states and the District of Columbia had requested waivers. Now, 44 states have requested waivers and 33 have already been approved, according a spokesman for the Department of Education.

Members of Congress, who are never fans of the Executive Branch taking steps that bypass them, were not all pleased.

“The best way to fix the problems in existing law is to pass a better one,” said Sen. Tom Harkin, a Democrat from Iowa, who is chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, the same committee – with the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) at the helm – that helped write and pass the original NCLB legislation under President George W. Bush. “Given the bipartisan commitment in Congress to fixing [NCLB], it seems premature at this point to take steps outside the legislative process that would address NCLB’s problems in a temporary and piecemeal way.”

Republican John Kline, a congressman from Minnesota and chairman of the House Education and Workforce Committee, chided the president for what he saw as him seeking “sweeping authority to handpick winners and losers.”

As AP reported, “A Senate committee last fall passed a bipartisan bill to update the law, but it was opposed by the administration and did not go before the full Senate for a vote.”

And Democrats in Congress were skeptical that a bipartisan bill would emerge from the House, making it impossible to see a path forward for the legislation.

“Without a bipartisan bill coming out of the House, I believe it would be difficult to find a path forward that will draw the support we need from both sides of the aisle to be able to send a final bill to the president,” Harkin said in December of 2011. “Given that the HELP Committee was able to come to bipartisan agreement on a strong bill to reauthorize [NCLB], I sincerely hope Chairman Kline will reconsider his decision to not pursue a bipartisan bill.

5. On higher education, low-interest student loans

Obama campaigned for months on a provision to keep student-loan interest rates low, pressing Congress to act when visiting college campus after college campus. Young voters, of course, are a key constituency for the president.

The president continually pushed that government-subsidized student-loan interest rates would double if Congress didn’t approve the measure by July 1^st. (The rate would have gone from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent.)

Despite opposition from some Republicans in Congress, in late June, Congress overwhelmingly approved a one-year extension of the low rates.

Obama hammered Romney for saying that his “best advice” is for students to “shop around” for the most affordable school (more on that below).

“He said, ‘the best thing I can do for you is to tell you is to shop around,’ ” Obama said in Ohio last month. “That’s it. That’s his plan.

What would they do – Mitt Romney

1. Vouchers

The most specific criticism from Romney is about the president’s opposition to vouchers for children in Washington, D.C., known as the “D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program,” championed by House Speaker John Boehner.

A bill allocating $60 million over the next five years passed easily in the House, but has not come up in the Democratic-controlled Senate. Democrats argue it takes resources and attention away from public schools. Romney and Republicans contend Democrats are bowing to the teachers unions.

“Instead of eliminating the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program as President Obama has proposed, I will expand it to offer more students a chance to attend a better school,” Romney said in a May speech focused on education before The Latino Coalition’s Annual Economic Summit. “It will be a model for parental choice programs across the nation.”

Romney said in that speech in May that that too many poor and disabled students receive “a third-world education” in the United States. To help remedy this, he would restructure Title I and IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act) funds, meant for schools with low-income students and students with disabilities. Instead of assign the money to school districts and whole schools, Romney would want to assign specific amounts to those students and allow them to choose to attend better-performing schools.

There are a couple of potential problems with this approach: (a) “Any proposal to radically shift the use of that money would be almost certain to face a host of administrative, budgetary, and political hurdles from the Congress and statehouses on down,” Education Week wrote.

The New America Foundation similarly wrote that Romney’s proposal “undermines local control of schools, a concept many conservatives hold dear,” it writes. “Not only would states be required to implement open enrollment systems and transfer funds among districts, but districts and schools could no longer target their Title I funds to the schools or grades of their choosing. If candidate Romney becomes President Romney, we predict a long and tough road ahead for his education proposals, likely with resistance from both sides of the aisle.”  

And (b): There might not be enough money between the two programs to pay for the schooling of all the students Romney would want to support.

There is about $26 billion allocated for Title I and IDEA. There were about 21 million low-income students benefiting from Title I funding in the 2009-2010 school year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics – and another 5.8 million students covered under IDEA, according to Education Week.

That means the 26 million or so students would only get about $1,000 each.

2. Report cards

Romney pledges to “provide better information for parents through straightforward public report cards and will empower them to hold districts and states responsible for results.”

Of the report cards, Romney said in his May speech: “Parents shouldn’t have to navigate a cryptic evaluation system to figure out how their kids’ schools are performing.  States must provide a simple-to-read and widely available public report card that evaluates each school.  These report cards will provide accurate and easy-to-understand information about student and school performance.  States will continue to design their own standards and tests, but the report cards will provide information that parents can use to make informed choices.”

According to the Romney campaign’s white paper on education: “States will be required to provide report cards that evaluate schools and districts on an A through F or similar scale based primarily on their contribution to achievement growth,”. “These report cards will provide accurate and easy-to-understand information about student and school performance, as well as information about per-pupil spending in the local district. States will continue to design their own standards and tests, but information on the state’s National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) performance will appear on the school and district report cards, and the grading system will be standardized so that states with poor NAEP performance cannot assign artificially high grades to their schools.”

3. Attracting good teachers, eliminating seniority for hiring, firing

Romney’s plan would “eliminate” what he calls “NCLB’s ineffective ‘highly qualified’ certification requirement.

He would also “block grant” money “for states that adopt policies focused on improving teacher effectiveness. For instance, states seeking block grants will be required to establish evaluation systems based in part on effectiveness in advancing student achievement, reward effective teachers and principals with additional compensation and advancement opportunities, eliminate or reform teacher tenure, streamline the certification process for becoming a teacher, and prohibit seniority-based transfer and dismissal rules (including Last In, First Out layoffs).”

That is known colloquially as LIFO, an aspect of seniority that is a sticking point for teachers unions.

4. Seeking distance from NCLB

As noted above, Romney’s plan mentions NCLB, but he has largely distanced himself from the plan that was the chief domestic accomplishment of his Republican predecessor in the White House, George W. Bush.

Romney indicates a move away from federal standards. His white paper, instead says his administration would “work closely with Congress to strengthen NCLB by reducing federal micromanagement.”

5. Romney against Common Core, then for it -- just not tying federal money to standards

During an October 2011 interview with Huckabee on FOX, Romney praised Obama Education Secretary Arne Duncan for trying to “reward school systems that reward teachers for doing a good job, that remove bad teachers, that test kids to see how the kids are doing.”

But he added, “By the way, not everything that Arne Duncan is doing do I agree with. So, for instance, this national core curriculum they are pushing and trying to get states to take that on. I don’t like a national curriculum.  I like states to be able to draft their own curriculum.”

But in May, before Romney’s education speech, his campaign indicated he had shifted position. Education Week: “Romney's campaign staff said he is supportive of the Common Core State Standards, but thinks the Obama administration has gone too far in encouraging states to adopt them. Those policies ‘effectively are an attempt to manipulate states into’ adopting common core, said Oren Cass, Romney's domestic policy director on a call with reporters.”

Romney also said in a 2010 Fox interview that the federal government has a role in “overseeing our schools, or some portion of our schools.”

He does not mention “Common Core” in his white paper.

6. Supporting testing, “standing up” to unions

In 2007, Romney said he supported NCLB and, “I like testing in our schools.”

In 2012, he hinted at testing as part of the solution as well as “standing up” to unions.

“We looked at what drives good education in our state,” Romney said in a September 2011 debate. “What we found is the best thing for education is great teachers, hire the very best and brightest to be teachers, pay them properly, make sure that you have school choice, test your kids to see if they are meeting the standards that need to be met, and make sure that you put the parents in charge. And as president I will stand up to the National teachers unions.”

7. Supported temporary student-loan extension but opposes long-term government intervention - “shop around”

In April, Romney said, “I fully support the effort to extend the low interest rate on student loans. There was some concern that that would expire halfway through the year, and I support extending the temporary relief on interest rates for students as a result of – as a result of student loans, obviously – in part because of the extraordinarily poor conditions in the job market.”

But Romney has also said the “best advice” he could give students trying to figure out how to afford college is to “shop around” and not take out loans.

“The best thing I can do for you is to tell you to shop around and compare tuition in different places,” Romney told a student in Ohio in March. “And make sure you get the education you want for the cost you want. Make sure you can get your degree in four years – or less. Work hard. Get done in two-and-a-half years. Recognize, I mean, that college is expensive. You don’t want to have huge debts. And I know it would be popular for me to stand up and say I’m going to give you government money to pay for your college. But I’m not going to do promise that.”

He added, “My best advice is find a great institution of higher learning, find one that has the right price. Shop around. In America, this idea of competition, it works. And don’t just go to the one that has the highest price. Go to one that has a little lower price where you can get a good education and hopefully you’ll find that and don’t take on too much debt, and don’t  expect the government to forgive the debt that you take on. Recognize you’re going to have to pay it back. I want to make sure every kid in this country that wants to go to college gets the chance to go to college. If you can’t afford it, scholarships are available. Shop around for loans. Make sure you go to a place that’s reasonably priced. And if you can think about serving the country because that’s a way to get all that education for free.”

8. Continue Pell Grants (and the Ryan budget)

The budget proposed by Congressman Paul Ryan, Romney’s pick to be his vice president, would put a hard cap on Pell Grants spending. But Romney, at a Univision forum -- meant to appeal to Latino voters – took a different position, saying he would want them to “go with the rate of inflation.”

“I care about your education and helping people of modest means get a good education and we’ll continue a Pell Grant program,” he said. “I think the Republican budget called for a Pell Grants being capped out at their current high level. My inclination would be to have them go with the rate of inflation. I think it’s important in higher education that we get serious about the fact that the inflation of tuition has been much faster than inflation generally. And my view is we have to hold down the rate of tuition increases and fee increases in higher education.”

The candidates have sparred over how much the Ryan budget would cut. The Obama campaign charges it could mean 20 percent across-the-board cuts to domestic programs. But it’s unclear how cuts in the Ryan budget would be applied. Romney has said, although he’s broadly supportive of the Ryan budget, he’s not in favor of every detail.

9. Welcome the private sector

But when it comes to college loans, “Romney favors bolstering the role for the private sector, which he contends has been decimated by the Obama administration's choice to scrap the Federal Family Education Loan Program and ensure that all loans originate through the U.S. Department of Education,” Education Week writes.

“We welcome private sector participating instead of pushing it away,” said Oren Cass said, Romney’s domestic policy adviser.

Obama has criticized Romney for that, charging that would cause rates to increase.

10. Class-size controversy

At a charter school in Philadelphia back in May, Romney ran into tough questioning from a teacher when he said, in talking about the success of schools in other countries: “It’s not the classroom size that is driving the success of those school systems.”

At a GOP debate in Florida, Romney was more blunt. “[A]ll the talk about we need smaller classroom size, look that's promoted by the teachers’ unions to hire more teachers,” Romney said, adding, “[A]s president, I will stand up to the National Teachers Unions.”

Of course, as First Read has written previously, Obama’s pushes for performance pay, teacher evaluations tied to student achievement, and support for charter schools, have rankled those unions.

Part of the Chicago teachers’ strike, in fact, had to do with teacher evaluations. Obama’s former Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is mayor of Chicago.

*** UPDATE *** The post has been updated with the most recent number of states that have requested and been approved for waivers from No Child Left Behind.

*** UPDATE 2 *** The section on Common Core has been adjusted.

EAU CLAIRE, Wis. -- Reaching out to college-age voters Thursday, Vice President Joe Biden pitched the Obama administration's goals for improving the nation's education system and accused the Republican ticket of ignoring the issue entirely.

"Listen to what they say," Biden said of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan in remarks to about 3,000 on the campus of the University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire. "They hardly mention education at all except in the negative context."

The vice president accused Ryan of teeing up "massive cuts" to early education and Pell grant funding in his budget, and he argued that the GOP ticket would allow commercial banks back into the federal student loan market.

"They want to go back and have the banks be in charge of negotiating and processing your loans, costing the government 60 billion dollars in payment to the banks over the next ten years," Biden told the crowd.

Listing off items like teacher recruitment, student loan repayment caps, and scholarship funding, Biden pledged that "by the year 2020 we are determined that we will once again have the highest percentage of college graduates of any nation in the world.”

Romney, who touched on education policy during a Virginia rally today, and Ryan have focused mainly on policy issues like school choice and accountability for schools. While Ryan's budget addresses changes in education funding, the candidate himself has not laid out specific education cuts. 

"During President Obama's disappointing term in office the cost of college has skyrocketed and an increasing number of recent graduates are being forced to move back in with their parents because they can't find a job," Romney spokesman Ryan Williams said. "Vice President Biden is launching more dishonest attacks because he can't defend the Obama administration's abysmal education record and he is incapable of having a serious discussion about education policy. As president, Mitt Romney will work to make college more affordable and accessible for all students, and implement pro-growth policies that will create jobs for them when they graduate."

The recent teachers' strike in Obama's hometown of Chicago has cast a spotlight on education policy in the campaign, although Biden did not mention it in his remarks Thursday.

The vice president received a warm welcome from the mostly younger crowd in Wisconsin, his third trip the state this campaign cycle and his second since Ryan, a Wisconsin native, was picked as Romney's running mate.

He won applause for joking that he's "supposedly an expert on foreign policy," quipping that "an expert is anyone from out of town with a briefcase."

Biden's next campaign trip to a swing state will be a two-day tour of Iowa early next week.

College journalists from key swing states peppered President Obama with questions on Tuesday as part of the president's push to court young voters this week.

Obama hosted a conference call with student reporters at colleges and universities in swing states, which featured questions ranging from education to job opportunities for recent college graduates.

But the president kept the call on message, answering many of the questions with attacks on Romney featured heavily in his speeches.

"Gov. Romney's message and the whole republican platform basically is: if we cut taxes some more, even if it's paid for by raising taxes on middle class families, even if it means cutting out loan assistance programs, cutting out basic investments in research and science, voucherizing the Medicare program, that somehow we're going to be better off," Obama told students.

While the call was only technically available to student news organizations, NBC News was able to listen in on the conversation.

The president endeavored to explain some of his state-by-state strategy to the students.

One Ohio State University journalist asked why the president was specifically targeting central Ohio, mentioning that the president has visited Ohio State University multiple times in the past few years. The president said visiting the school wasn’t just about getting votes.

“Obviously OSU is a huge university and so there's a lot of students there," he said. "So it makes sense for me to make sure I'm going where I can reach as many people as possible.”

He continued: ”Part of my goal when I go to universities is not only to get votes but also to highlight some of the great work that's currently being done and you know, if Ohio is doing well, then America is going to do well."

He also gave that reporter a little scoop, “I expect if you're not completely tired of me, you're going to see me at Ohio State again."

And Obama wrapped up the call with the overall theme of the three college town stops today and tomorrow, by thanking the reporters informing students of the need to make their voices heard and “know the rules to make sure they're going to be able to vote.”

"Regardless of whether you're voting Democrat, Republican, the key here is to make sure that your voice is heard and hopefully people will get educated on the issues," he said.

LAS VEGAS -- It may have been the small, echoing gym filled with 2,700 yelling people, but at today’s campaign event, President Barack Obama felt more “fired up, ready to go” than he’s seemed in a while.

Today’s focus, like the two events yesterday, was education. But the president allowed himself to get a bit more expressive when talking about the importance of teachers.

Isaac Brekken / AP

President Barack Obama speaks during a campaign stop, Wednesday, Aug. 22, 2012, in North Las Vegas, Nev.

And while the actual content of the last two days' education-driven speeches hasn’t been incredibly different, the president’s tone seemed affected by the raucous crowd responses, including a sustained “four more years” chant to overpower a heckler who ended up being ejected from the event by Secret Service.

And this crowd also ended up drowning the president himself out as he finished up his speech, almost yelling: “We've got more veterans we've got to help. We've got more doors of opportunity we've got to open up to every single American. That's why I'm asking for a second term."

The president has spoken about his fifth grade teacher in the past, but bringing her up today allowed him to also put a personal spin on painting presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney as extremist on the subject of education.

“The right teacher can change a child's life forever. Look, I know this from personal experience. When I was in fifth grade, I had a teacher named Mabel Hefty. That was her name. And she was a great teacher," Obama started into the story. "I had just come back from living a few years overseas with my mom and wasn't sure how I'd fit in. And she noticed that, Ms. Hefty. And she took me under her wing, and she made me feel like I had something to say, and that I had some talent."

"Gov. Romney says we've got enough teachers, we don't need any more. You know, the way he talks about them, it seems as if he thinks these are a bunch of nameless government bureaucrats that we need to cut back on. Those are his words,” the president added.

The president's latest campaign jaunt took him to Ohio and Nevada -- two important swing states -- to press the case for education as many students get ready to head back to school. His campaign released complementary TV ads to additionally pummel Romney on education cuts.

"I've got a question for Governor Romney. How many teachers' jobs are worth another tax cut for millionaires and billionaires?" Obama said Wednesday, using more pointed language toward his Republican challenger. "How many kids in Head Start are worth a tax cut for somebody like me who doesn't need it?"

But according to NBC’s Garrett Haake, Romney was ready with an educational response during an event Wednesday in Iowa.

“If you want to invest in young people, let me tell you what you need to do, Mr. President," Romney said. "You need to make sure that our K-through-12 schools are getting better, all right, that's number one. Not just talk, but actually getting better."

COLUMBUS, OH – President Obama unveiled a new line of attack against Mitt Romney over education, casting his opponent as out-of-touch, and claiming he would institute harmful cuts to student loans if elected.

The president seized on comments first made by Romney in April in Ohio, in which he encouraged would-be students to pursue entrepreneurship, even if it meant they would "borrow money, if you have to, from your parents."

“I want to make sure everybody understands, not everybody has parents who have the money to lend," Obama said Tuesday before a crowd of more than 3,000 at Capital University.

While Obama did not mention Romney’s running mate Paul Ryan by name, much of his criticism of Romney’s education policy referred to the cuts to programs, including education, in the Wisconsin congressman's budgets.

“The economic plan my opponent has would cut our investment in education by nearly 20 percent,” Obama said. “It would cut those grants so deeply that one million of those students who we have helped would no longer get a scholarship at all. It would cut financial aid for nearly 10 million students a year.”

But Ryan’s cuts leave the Republican ticket open to Democratic speculation about what they “could” cut – something the Obama campaign underscored in a radio ad that aired in Ohio ahead of the president’s visit.

“What does it say about Mitt Romney that he chose Congressman Paul Ryan as his running mate, the architect of a budget so extreme it could slash education funding by 20 percent?” a woman’s voice says in the minute-long radio ad.

“Ryan’s budget could cut Pell grants for up to 356,000 Ohio students,” the spot continues. 

Ryan has indicated he would maintain a maximum Pell grant level of $5,500 while also increasing eligibility requirements for students looking to apply for a grant.

Obama on Tuesday contrasted that with his expansion of the popular higher education program.

"Since I took office we have helped more than three million additional students afford a college education with grants that go farther than they did before,” he said.

He also touted what he characterized as a victory over House Republicans in the battle to keep student loan interest rates from doubling, as they were scheduled to at the end of July.

“We fought to make sure the interest rate on federal student loans didn’t go up over the summer. We won that fight,” Obama said. “Some of these Republican members of Congress would have allowed those rates to double,” he continued, his one allusion to Ryan’s colleagues in the House.

Obama will continue his focus on education this evening at a rally in Reno, Nevada.

HOUSTON -- Mitt Romney likely didn't win any votes at the national NAACP convention on Wednesday, but the African American atendees gave the presumptive GOP nominee credit nonetheless for trying.

The crowd gathered in Texas for the civil rights group's annual meeting booed Romney for vowing to repeal President Obama's health care reform law.

Evan Vucci / AP

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaks before the NAACP annual convention July 11 in Houston, Texas.

"I'm going to eliminate every non-essential, expensive program I can find. That includes Obamacare," Romney told the overwhelmingly African American membership gathered for his address, as a chorus of boos forced the candidate to stop his speech for fifteen seconds, then veer off script to defend his position.

But this audience was never likely to be a friendly crowd for the presumptive GOP nominee, with African American voters supporting President Obama over John McCain 95 to 4 percent in 2008, and with current polls showing a similar split in this election cycle. Romney made note of the tough room with a joke at the start of his remarks.

"I appreciate the chance to speak first – even before Vice President Biden gets his turn tomorrow," Romney said. "I just hope the Obama campaign won’t think you’re playing favorites." 

Several attendees said after the speech that while they appreciated Romney appearing here, he would never win their support.

"I give him kudos for coming here, I really do. He had nerves," said Betty Bush, a retired auto worker from Alabama, who then added she could think of "nothing," that she agreed with in Romney's remarks.

"I thought it was courageous for him and gracious of him to come, and we really appreciate that," said Steven Goings, who traveled to Texas from Monterrey, California for the convention. "Certainly I disagree with most of what he says, but that's to be expected."

The candidate made several attempts to reach out to the black community specifically in his speech: highlighting his father's work on civil rights in the 1960's, pledging to improve the job market for blacks, who suffer from a disproportionately high 14.4 percent unemployment rate, and highlighting his education reform work as Massachusetts governor.

Romney's comments on education -- specifically his often-told story of protecting charter schools in Massachusetts with the help of the black caucus in the Massachusetts legislature -- appeared to be the most popular element of his speech today, here in the home city of the successful KIPP charter school system.

"We need Obamacare," said Liz Cotton, a grandmother from Virginia, when asked what she thought of Romney's speech, adding:"I agree with him on Charter schools. I think charter schools are really good."

Campaign officials said they were pleased with the reception Romney received overall, noting many of his positions -- including pushing back against China on trade issues -- earned notable applause. Several political analysts also noted today that Romney's audience today was broader than just those in the room if he could appeal to moderates and independents just by showing up at the convention. (As the Republican nominee in 2008 John McCain also spoke to the group, as did then-Senator Obama, who begged off this year citing scheduling conflicts)

But on the economic argument that he could be a better president for people of all colors in America -- the core of Romney's campaign message -- Romney appeared to make little headway with this audience.

"I wouldn't say there was nothing to his argument," said Goings, offering faint praise, and adding that he would "certainly" be voting for Obama again this year.

Romney was interrupted with boos twice more for criticizing the president in the course of a twenty five minute address to an audience that was likely the least-supportive one he has spoken to all campaign season. He earned only smatterings of applause for his policy positions, but ultimately receiving a brief, cordial standing ovation from the several hundred attendees as he wrapped up his remarks.

Political gamesmanship enveloped a battle over legislation to prevent student loan rates from doubling at the end of June, as House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) denied that Republicans had resigned themselves to the notion that no deal could be struck.

Boehner and New York Sen. Charles Schumer (NY), Democrats’ messaging chief in the Senate, waged a war of words on Capitol Hill on Thursday following a Politico report that House Republican leaders had told their rank-and-file members that reaching an agreement to prevent student loan rates from jumping was “unlikely.”

The report prompted Schumer to pounce on the issue, which is imbued with election-year politics.

"These overheard comments by Speaker Boehner confirm our suspicions that Republicans were never serious about wanting to stop rates from doubling on college students,” he said in a statement. “To many on the hard right, government should not play a role in helping students afford college. Speaker Boehner seems to be following their lead and throwing in the towel on this issue a month before the deadline.”

If Congress does not act, student loan interest rates would rise from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent. Both President Obama and presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney said they support legislation to prevent the jump, though the hangup in Congress has revolved around how to finance the cost of that bill.

Recognizing the political potency of the issue, Boehner’s office pushed back hard against Schumer and sought to clarify the speaker’s closed door comments.

"Boehner told the members that the president wants to fabricate fights on things like student loans because he's out of ideas; he doesn't want to talk about his record or his failed policies.  Told them the House has passed a responsible bill, and that we are waiting on Senate Democrats,” said spokesman Michael Steel. “But that if the interest rate lapses because of their inaction we can fix it retroactively.  He also reiterated what he's said before … that if there's a solution that can pass both chambers, we're ready to talk about it."

Congress has been in a stalemate over how to pay for extending the current student loan interest rates into 2013. The cost totals $6 billion, and House Republicans want to pay for it by taking money from a preventative health fund created under President Obama’s healthcare law. Senate Democrats want to close a tax loophole that large corporations use to avoid Federal taxes.

The House passed their version of the bill; so far, the Senate has not passed anything.

Going a step further so as to prevent being painted as intransigent, House and Senate Republican leaders sent a letter later on Thursday to Obama, outlining three possible ways they would be willing to pay for the price tag of the student loan bill. Those possibilities are outlined here.

Mitt Romney found himself on the opposite side of a skeptical audience on Thursday in Philadelphia, after he seemed to dismiss the impact of class sizes on student achievement.

Mario Tama / Getty Images

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney greets students in a music class at Universal Bluford Charter School on May 24 in Philadelphia, Pa.

At an event capping a weeklong messaging effort surrounding the presumptive Republican nominee’s education policy, Romney cited a study by management consulting firm McKinsey to back up his argument that the number of students per teacher in a classroom wasn’t the most important predictor of academic success.

But the former Massachusetts governor’s assertion differs from the evidence produced in large, recent, peer-reviewed academic research showing that class size does, in fact, impact student outcomes.

“Well, if you had a class of five that would be terrific; if you had a class of 50 that’s impossible,” Romney said, when asked his view on class sizes. “So there are points where I think those who have looked at schools in this country and schools around the world, McKinsey for instance … went around the world and looked at schools in Singapore and Finland and South Korea and the United States and looked at differences and said gosh, schools that are the highest-performing in the world, their classroom sizes are about the same as in the United States. So it’s not the classroom size that is driving the success of those school systems.”

A teacher in the audience pushed back, citing a landmark Tennessee study conducted by a Harvard researcher in the 1980s – famous in the world of education research – which looked at the Tennessee STAR program, or Student/Teacher Achievement Ratio, in which the state reduced class sizes across the board by about a third, from 22-25 students per teacher down to 13-17.

The study of the program -- conducted when current U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Republican, was governor – found “compelling evidence that smaller classes help, at least in early grades.”

Romney didn’t respond directly to the teacher or study during the event in Philadelphia.

Political food fight

The Obama campaign tried to capitalize. “Larger Class Sizes Are the Answer to a Better Education? On What Planet?” blared an email from Obama spokeswoman Lis Smith.

That was echoed on a conference call today. “Romney insisted in face of logic, that small classes don't help,” said Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter. “Two years ago, [he] claimed that effort to reduce class size may hurt. I'm not sure what universe he's operating in. Every parent knows that smaller classes are preferable. Everybody knows that except Romney.”

But Romney did acknowledge in Philadelphia that having the smallest classes are optimal, but that they’re not the driver of success in the classroom.

The Romney campaign pointed to Obama’s Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who noted – not as a matter of personal opinion, but of official administration policy – that class sizes should be increased.

“In our blueprint for reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, we support shifting away from class-sized based reduction that is not evidence-based,” Duncan said, according to a transcript of Duncan’s speech, posted by Education Week, at the conservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute.

Duncan has also called class size "a sacred cow," "and I think we need to take it on," said in March 2011. He later said, "My point there was that I think the quality of the teacher is so hugely important. I've said things like, give me the parent, give me an option of 28 children in a class with a phenomenal teacher or 22 children in a class with a mediocre teacher. If I was given that choice, I would choose a larger class size."

After the Obama conference call, Romney spokesman Ryan Williams boasted on Twitter: “If @BarackObama believes what his campaign is saying, he should fire Arne Duncan for supporting @MittRomney's view on class size.”

Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul released the following statement:

“If President Obama is as focused on class size as his campaign seems to be, his outdated view of education reform puts him at odds with leaders like Michelle Rhee, Bill Gates, and his own secretary of education -- all of whom have said that improving teacher quality gives kids the best opportunity to learn. Secretary Duncan even said that he ‘would choose a larger class size’ if it meant having a better teacher in the room. President Obama should be ashamed that his campaign is launching such cheap political attacks at the expense of a serious discussion about education policy. If he actually believes what his campaign is saying, he should fire his education secretary for supporting the same view on class size that Governor Romney is advancing.”

A broader reading of Duncan’s remarks before AEI shows he believes smaller classes are a good thing, but because of state budget restrictions, school districts need to find ways to adjust.

“Consider the debate around reducing class size,” he said. “Up through third grade, research shows a small class size of 13 to 17 students can boost achievement. Parents, like myself, understandably like smaller classes. We would like to have small classes for everyone -- and it is good news that the size of classes in the U.S. has steadily shrunk for decades. But in secondary schools, districts may be able to save money without hurting students, while allowing modest but smartly targeted increases in class size.”

In fact, research bares out that smaller class sizes have resulted in gains in K-3, but results are either inconclusive, not significant, or non-existent for older children.

The Obama’s campaign’s Smith responded this way, in an email to First Read: “Both experience and evidence show that smaller classes are better than bigger classes, especially for young children.  But class sizes aren’t the only thing that matters, and President Obama and Secretary Duncan are also working to raise academic expectations, invest in teacher quality, and turn around struggling schools. That’s very different from Mitt Romney, who thinks that smaller class sizes don’t  matter or can even be harmful.”

Taking on unions

Romney has accused Obama of being held captive by teachers unions, but positions like the one taken above by his education secretary, as well as his administration’s push on merit pay, teacher evaluations, and support for charter schools, have rankled those unions.

Obama has said, since the 2008 campaign, that reforms were necessary but that he would try to work “with” unions. Romney has taken a combative tone and blamed unions for promoting class size at a September Republican presidential debate in Florida.

“[A]ll the talk about we need smaller classroom size, look that's promoted by the teachers’ unions to hire more teachers,” Romney said, adding, “[A]s president, I will stand up to the National Teachers Unions.”

Romney’s tough talk toward labor has been a hallmark of not just his education plan, but his overall economic strategy. It’s understandable, in some ways, why Romney, like many mayors and governors of both parties across the country, would want to cut out teachers’ unions. As with many businesses, unions often prove to be an obstacle in an executive’s ability to enact wholesale changes or implement new programs – like pay for performance (merit pay), or fire teachers regardless of whether they’re underperforming.

Body of evidence

Parental involvement, effective teachers, and competent administrators are certainly major factors in how well students do. But studies have found that class sizes, when reduced by more than a couple students, especially in early grades, can have an impact on student achievement.

A study conducted in Tennessee -- published in April 2011 in the Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, conducted by researchers from the University of Chicago and Virginia Commonwealth University -- found improvements as a result of smaller classes in “reading, mathematics, listening, and word recognition test scores” in early grades.

A California study, conducted by economics professors at the University of Kentucky and Amherst College and published in The Journal of Human Resources, also found that test scores improved -- even when taking into consideration the number of inexperienced teachers that had to be hired to fill the 25,000 jobs created by the state’s $1 billion effort to reduce class sizes. After a few years – when the new teachers gained experience – the cost of hiring those teachers was net-even.

“[T]here is little or no support for the hypotheses that the need to hire large numbers of teachers following the adoption of CSR [class-size reduction] led to a lasting reduction in the quality of instruction,” according to the study. “Overall, the findings suggest that CSR increased achievement in the early grades for all demographic groups…”

And on cost: “From a purely distributional point of view, the benefits of CSR were allocated in a quite regressive manner in the short term but in a close to neutral manner as of six years following the implementation of the policy.”

A Florida study, which followed up on the California results with a study of Florida’s similar effort, conducted by a Harvard researcher and government professor, found the class-size reduction had a minimal impact. The results “indicate that the effects … on cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes were small at best and most likely close to zero,” according to the study.

But as it also points out, class sizes were only reduced by two or three students per class: “One might not expect a large effect given that over three years class size was only reduced by 1.9 students more in the treated districts than in the comparison districts, but I also find no evidence of positive CSR effects in grades seven and eight, where the relative reduction in class size was three students.”

The Romney campaign, for its part, when asked about these studies, didn’t deny that class sizes impact student achievement; it’s just not “his focus.”

“The governor said, ‘Just getting smaller classrooms didn't seem to be the key,’” a Romney aide told First Read by email. “His policies address ensuring better teachers in the classroom and rewarding their success which is a very important part of improving student outcomes. That’s his focus.”

The Florida study also notes that providing additional teacher resources and supports, like the STAR Program did, combined with smaller class sizes, could have also had an impact: “It is impossible to disentangle the effect of reducing class size from the effect of providing additional resources.”

That’s something the original Tennessee study made a point of as well: “The benefits derived from these smaller classes persist leaves open the possibility that additional or different educational devices could lead to still further gains. For example, applying to small classes the technique of within-class grouping in which the teacher handles each small group separately for short periods could strengthen the educational process (essentially a second-order use of small class size). The point is that small classes can be used jointly with other teaching techniques which may add further gains.”

Like in many things, and especially in education, there’s no magic bullet. It’s a combination of a variety of tools, including class size.