Paul will use a speech Friday to unveil a major push on education reform. Rand Paul courts African-Americans

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), as part of a methodical effort to reach out to voters beyond the Republican base, will use a speech Friday to the National Urban League to unveil a major push on education reform, which he said will include “school choice, vouchers, charter schools, you name it — I think we need innovation.”

Paul, reaching out to youthful and minority audiences as he builds toward a likely 2016 presidential campaign, talked privacy in Berkeley, California, in March, and earlier this month began an effort to make sentencing reform one of his signature issues.


The senator will be in Cincinnati on Friday for the Urban League’s annual conference, which this year has the theme, “One Nation Underemployed: Bridges to Jobs and Justice.” Paul’s speech will be heavy on criminal-justice reform but will also give a peek at his plans on education.

“I’ll say this in my speech in Cincinnati: ‘Look, I grew up and went to public schools. My kids have gone to public schools. But, frankly, not all public schools are equal,’” Paul said. “And … we can’t just allow the status quo to go on, where some public schools are just incompetent, and kids are not really getting an education. And … this puts them at a lifelong disadvantage.’”

( Also on POLITICO: Rand Paul: I wouldn't question Israel)

“Some public schools are good,” the senator added. “Some are actually very good. So, I think we can’t just keep doing the same thing and expect a different result.”

As an example of the innovations he’ll promote, the senator said he is fascinated by Khan Academy, the nonprofit with a huge library of instructional videos, founded by former hedge-fund manager Sal Khan. Paul said he became interested in the program while helping his kids with math problems.

“I remember a video on the Doppler effect, and saying, ‘My goodness, this is a better explanation,’” Paul recalled. “I took a lot of science and math growing up, and it’s the best explanation I’ve ever seen.”

“If you have one person in the country who is, like, the best at explaining calculus, that person maybe should teach every calculus class in the country,” the senator said. “You’d still have local teachers to reinforce and try to explain and help the kids, but you’d have some of these extraordinary teachers teaching millions of people in the classroom.

( Also on POLITICO: Rand Paul's new, rich friends)

“The mantra has always been, ‘Oh, we need 10 people in the classroom for everybody to learn,’” Paul continued. “Well, no, maybe actually you need the opposite: You need 2 million people in the classroom, and having a teacher that can communicate with all of them. … These would be innovations that aren’t occurring in the current system, because there’s a stranglehold by people who like the current system and benefit from it. But the kids aren’t the ones benefiting.”

Paul spent last weekend at a tech conference in San Francisco, and said he thinks “there’s only upside potential” for the GOP in Silicon Valley.

“I think like so many other venues, Republicans have just said, ‘Oh, this is where Democrats go,’ and the Democrats have dominated Silicon Valley,” he said. “But when I’m out there, I don’t hear that from people. I hear from people that, yeah, we’re actually much more fiscally conservative than the president, and we’re socially moderate. And then a lot of them will say, ‘Frankly, we’re more libertarian than we are Republican or Democrat.’

“And I think when people talk about a third way — a way that’s not entirely Republican and not entirely Democrat but takes the best of both worlds — that is most people you meet in Silicon Valley. And I think that’s a microcosm of a large segment of voters, really, across America that aren’t completely comfortable in either party.”