My post today at WHYY’s Newsworks concerns one of the primary challenges Sen. Barbara Buono will face in her gubernatorial campaign against Gov. Christie: differentiating her education platform from NJEA’s:

It may only be February, but New Jersey’s November ballot for the gubernatorial election can go to the printer right now: Republican Chris Christie vs. Democratic Senator Barbara Buono. It may not seem like much of a contest — Monmouth University just released a poll that gives Christie a 62% to 20% lead – but it’s still early and 78% of those polled professed that they didn’t know Buono well enough to render an opinion.

You can count on this: as the campaign revs up, we’ll be hearing much debate about education reform issues. In this arena, as in others, the two candidates have widely divergent agendas and N.J.’s education controversies — tenure reform, teacher evaluations, charter schools, vouchers – provide red meat for both Christie and Buono to elucidate larger issues of governance.

But let’s stick with education.

Read the rest here.