The Wall Street Journal’s Gerald F. Seib is wise in the ways of Washington and practiced at reading its political entrails. But is he right to think that K–12 education is the great centrist issue of 2010 — and that it will reignite the Democrats’ prospects by appealing to independents and least a few Republicans? Hmmm.

In a column on Democratic “opportunities to disperse storm clouds,” Seib wrote the other day that party leaders need to “find an issue that is popular in the political middle,” that some Democrats think education is such an issue, and that “Education Secretary Arne Duncan is taking steps that have actual bipartisan appeal.” As examples, he cited “forcing changes in ossified education systems by making states actually compete to win federal grants” and “helping parents with college access and affordability.” He says we should “look for more from the president on that.”

This may well happen as budget and state-of-the-union time draws nigh and the White House settles on its themes for the year ahead. Even without opening the Pandora’s box of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the administration’s “Race to the Top” (RTT) program will focus the attention of educators and state and local officials during 2010, and the administration’s final decisions on RTT will signal much about its approach to education policy and the federal role therein.

Arne Duncan and his colleagues have hinted that the priorities of RTT will also animate their NCLB proposal — and that they’re close to unveiling such a proposal and urging Congress to get cracking. Reauthorization of that contentious, landmark act is already three years late, and a big reason for that delay has been the absence of a plan that both Democrats and Republicans could support. If the Duncan team proffers such a plan, it’s imaginable that Congress will indeed start to move.

Yet there are obstacles aplenty that have little to do with NCLB itself. This year brings an exceptionally hard-fought election. While each party would surely gain by attracting lots of independent voters, it’s not obvious that “bipartisanship” per se would turn out to be an asset to either side. The GOP in particular may judge that its November prospects benefit more from painting the administration and congressional majority in the worst possible light than from cooperating with them. (Indeed, Seib’s analysis suggests that “bipartisanship” would work to the political advantage of Democrats.) Underscoring that calculus is the rancid mood left by the health-care fracas with its party-line votes in the Senate. Republicans on the Hill — and a nation of conservatives — are also still smarting from Obama’s assent to phasing out the D.C. voucher program. Then there’s the plain fact that neither Senate education chairman Tom Harkin nor ranking House member John Kline is anyone’s idea of a centrist.

Duncan is a centrist sort, however, and — riding the RTT wave (which could still crash down upon him) — can be expected to strive to convince both sides that the best interests of kids and schools call for an NCLB makeover that can only happen if each side yields some traditional ground.

For what it’s worth, we at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute sketched such a package a year ago, and our plan still has merit. Partly paralleling our suggestions — especially the precept of “tight about ends, loose as to means,” an inversion of the NCLB approach — but mostly on its own, the Duncan team emerged from 2009 with astute insights into federal policy and some appealing NCLB themes of their own.

Duncan and assistant secretary Carmel Martin outlined these in a recent interview with Education Week. In her words,

Continuing a strong focus on teachers and leaders and talent more generally. To continue to focus on college-ready common standards and assessments matched against those standards. Continuing the focus on the lowest performing schools, how we’re going to take aggressive action to turn them around. And continuing the focus on the data. . . . Another big goal . . . is to improve the accountability system . . . helping to create incentives to move towards this new higher college- and career-ready set of standards. . . . Continuing this disaggregation of data and looking at how the subgroups are doing. Also moving toward the growth model. . . . Having a much stronger focus on rewards for high-performing schools, high-performing districts, high-performing states. . . . We’re trying to find ways to create incentives and rewards for high performers at every level.

Add charter schools — another Obama-Duncan favorite — to this mix and one can see, at least thematically, an appealing, centrist sort of package. Yet actually enacting such a thing, not as one-time money like the stimulus package, but as part of the infrastructure of federal education policy for the long haul, will require major rethinking on both sides of the aisle. Democrats will have to agree to reward educational success and intervene forcefully in instances of failure. The former could mean shifting monies away from what have historically been deemed the “neediest” schools and districts, while the latter entails actions that teachers’ unions typically abhor. (So does rewarding exceptionally effective teachers, another oft-voiced administration priority.) For their part, GOP lawmakers (many of whom have been critical of NCLB) would need to buy into national (okay, “common”) standards and tests, to tie NCLB accountability to them, and to recognize that Washington is now charting the basic direction of U.S. education and prescribing its goals, norms, and standards.

In return, Republicans may be able to claim substantially increased state and local discretion in the actual operation of the education system as well as more and better choices via the charter sector. And Democrats may be able to boast significantly increased federal education spending and a laser-like focus on the performance of poor and minority children and the schools that serve them. The unions would applaud any loosening of federal micro-management of the “means” of education — though that will cause the “education reform” community to gag; it views all the gyrations by states to qualify for RTT dollars as proof of the efficacy of heavy-handedness by Washington.

It’s an appealing prospect, though, at least to me, and a package with centrist potential. That it’s a mighty heavy lift politically doesn’t seem to deter Duncan, who insists that “we really want this to be a bipartisan effort. We’re spending lots of time in the House and Senate on both sides of the aisle. . . . I continue to think that education is the one area that has to rise above politics. . . . The goal isn’t to get to 100 percent consensus. There’s got to be a body of substance that folks can come together behind. I think we have an opportunity to do that. Conversations on both sides of the aisle have been very, very encouraging.”

One can only wish him well. It won’t be any walk in the park.

–– Chester E. Finn Jr. is president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.