After reading John McCain’s education-centric speech to the NAACP yesterday, I had a pretty enthusiastic reaction. However, having just taken in McCain’s newly posted “Plan for Strengthening America’s Schools,” my exuberance has been significantly tempered.

Don’t get me wrong: I still think McCain’s emphasis on choice yesterday, even if it turns out to be only rhetorical, is great. We need national leaders (and state, and local) to stop parroting clap-trap about fighting to the last kid for the bureaucratic, special-interest-dominated, public-schooling system, and focus instead on helping children get the education they need. But while McCain’s straight (ugh!) talk about choice was refreshing, his plan hardly is.

All that McCain’s plan offers in terms of specifics is that he’d reapportion federal money slated for attracting, rewarding, and training teachers; somehow give principals more control over their budgets; and expand the use of online education. Oh, and importantly(though most voters, concerned primarily about their own kids, probably won’t care), McCain would increase funding for D.C.’s school-choice program.

All of this adds up to little more than tinkering and really doesn’t give voters much to hang their hats on. There’s nothing sweeping and bold like yesterday’s commitment to seek “school choice for all who want it,” and the largely programmatic changes McCain does offer are far too wimpy if he plans to take on Barack Obama, huge promise for huge promise.

Of course, it would be outstanding if McCain has kept his plan small because he doesn’t believe that Washington should be meddling in education. But if that’s his true motivation, he should put it front and center, offering something really principled that could appeal to both disaffected small-government Republicans and liberals who have had it with No Child Left Behind. But what McCain proposes would all come from the feds, and his plan includes nothing about cutting Washington’s education presence down to size. Oh, and there’s the matter of his apparent promise to “fully fund” NCLB…

Choice for all is a great theme. But from the looks of his plan, tweaking federal programs will be McCain’s true, disppointing, education focus.

Update: Here’s my chat with Caleb Brown about McCain’s push for choice in a Cato Daily Podcast (iTunes).