Tough-talking Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani loves teachers. No, really. But he loves children more.

In one of the very few questions on K-12 education to come out of the GOP presidential debates, the former mayor of New York City was quizzed last week on his 1999 statement that the city’s school system was “no good and beyond redemption” and should be blown up. His now-infamous remark enraged the city's teachers union.

That said, why does Giuliani think he’s the one to reengage the nation’s teachers, who already have been alienated by his statements and the No Child Left Behind Act, asked one moderator at the Oct. 22 Florida debate sponsored by Fox News.

“I love teachers. I think teachers are wonderful. There are great ones, there are average ones and there are bad ones, but I really care about the kids more,” he responded.

Giuliani then spoke of a privately funded scholarship program in the late 1990s that paid tuition to private and parochial schools for 2,500 low-income students in New York City. That program convinced him of the need for school choice, he said.

“It seems to me the thing that's wrong, right at the core of No Child Left Behind, is the enforcer of standards should not be the bureaucrat in Washington or on the board of education. It should be the parent. We should have choice. We should empower parents. They should decide -- private school, parochial school, public school, charter school, home school,” he added.

Of course, Giuliani is working hard to convince GOP voters that he is conservative enough to carry the party’s nomination, and the Florida debate was hardly a forgiving format. But if he wins the primaries, it will be interesting to see how he handles his opinions of choice and the New York City schools—the same system that just brought home the 2007 Broad Foundation Prize for Urban Education for its reform efforts.

Joetta Sack-Min, Associate Editor