DaytonDailyNews.com

COLUMBUS — Everybody knows how the exciting presidential race turned out between front-running Democrat Hillary Clinton and front-running Republican Rudy Giuliani.

Long-shot Democrat Barack Obama won.

And, of course, Obama defeated John McCain, the Arizonan given up for dead before he knocked Giuliani and other Republicans off the campaign trail.

More than a year after Obama's lopsided victory in the Iowa caucuses, another assault on the conventional political wisdom has begun right here in Ohio.

Gov. Ted Strickland says he's going to rip up the 19th century way Ohio educates its children, install a 21st century approach and, while he's at it, make the school funding system constitutional.

Good luck, governor.

Fixing school funding and reforming education have been to Ohio governors what Afghanistan has been to invading armies: a minefield.

The former Soviet Union was the latest invader to retreat from Afghanistan, a retreat followed by the breakup of what President Ronald Reagan called the "evil empire." Now the United States is battling in Afghanistan, and the going is even tougher than it has been in Iraq.

Back in Columbus, governors don't have to deal with the Taliban, but the barriers to making significant changes in education and school funding are formidable, if not insurmountable.

There's no end to the individuals and groups with deep and vested interests in any changes. They include students, teachers, school superintendents, school boards, legislators and, perhaps most importantly, taxpayers and voters.

While Democrat Strickland campaigned for governor in 2006 on a pledge to make school funding constitutional, the State of the State speech he gave Wednesday, Jan. 28, had far more details about reforming how education is delivered than it did about how the state should pay for its schools.

Those details included headline grabbers — universal all-day kindergarten, replacing the Ohio Graduation Test with new high school graduation requirements, four-year residency requirements for teachers and stiff accountability standards for teachers that make it easier to fire them.

If these changes have a chance of being enacted, it's probably because of the overwhelming support shown so far by another of the groups with a vested interest in education — the state's business community.

Reactions to the plan were glowing from three major groups: the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, the Ohio Manufacturers' Association and, perhaps most importantly, the Ohio Business Roundtable.

The roundtable, which operates mainly behind the scenes, is a group of chief executives from the state's major businesses. It helped former Gov. Bob Taft put together the overhaul of the state's tax system that was enacted in 2005 and is interested in Strickland's education proposal.

"The plan is comprehensive, dynamic and student-centered," Jerry Jurgensen, roundtable chairman and CEO of Columbus-based Nationwide, said in a press release. "I commend Gov. Strickland for his leadership and urge state officials to embrace the plan and work together to make it better, just as I am personally committed to working with my fellow business leaders to help it succeed."

Democrats now control the Ohio House at least partly because Strickland campaigned and raised money for them. They don't need much urging from Jurgensen or anybody else to get behind the governor's education plan.

But Republicans are a different matter. They still run the Ohio Senate and don't want to help Strickland's re-election chances. That gives Strickland's plan formidable odds. But whether they are insurmountable may depend on what business leaders want.

If the Ohio Business Roundtable asks Senate Republicans to help Strickland conquer his own Afghanistan, some of them may find it hard to say no.

Contact this reporter at (614) 224-1608 or whershey@DaytonDailyNews.com.