I think a good way (not necessarily the most effective) to get the candidates discussing kids issues is to contact their campaigns and voice your opinions. Tell them you care about kids in this country and that you want to hear their ideas on how they plan to address the needs of children and families if they are elected.

My comment primarily addresses children and education. First, education must be a central focus of all remaining debates among or between our presidential candidates. It seems that the debates have thus far been focused on issues which pollsters have determined are most important to the electorate. Somehow, children's education has fallen off of the radar screen. Second, parents are our most powerful force. Organizations such as yours must reach out to parents so we may again put children's education at the forefront of each campaign's agenda. Education must become, once again, a central issue in the remaining presidential debates, and as candidates campaign throughout the states they need to talk about children's education. Third, NCLB [No Child Left Behind] has failed so many of our nation's children, particularly our language-minority and poor (low-income) students. It is not the panacea that it was promised to be. The support we were promised has not been provided, and our parents, legislators and presidential candidates need to know this. Finally, our presidential hopefuls need to take a serious look at the academic achievement data that is presently available on schools, and is directly connected to NCLB. In many of our poorer schools, the data is not encouraging. This is simply not acceptable. I truly believe that our candidates for president would gain votes if they pointed out the failings of NCLB and developed and presented a concrete plan for improving K-12 education, which they would implement in their administration.