It was odd to hear candidate Mitt Romney take credit, during the Oct. 3 debate, for the top ranking of Massachusetts in education. A law was passed in Massachusetts in 1647 requiring elementary schools in towns of fifty or more families. This law is considered the beginning of public education in the United States.
Massachusetts’s strong support of education had been ingrained for three and a half centuries by the time of Mr. Romney’s term as governor. It would have been uncharacteristically impolitic of him to mess with it.
