Former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., annnounced today that he is running for president.

Santorum, who served in the U.S. House from 1991 to 1995 and in the Senate from 1995 to 2007, has actually been talking about K-12 issues in early primary states. While on the pre-campaign trail in Iowa, he attacked the public education system, comparing it to industrial factories. He said that public schooling is too expensive and doesn’t do enough to tailor instruction to the needs of individual students.

“Big institutions have been won over by the left,” he told a group at the University of Iowa.

While in the Senate, Santorum voted in favor of the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act, which was approved by big, bipartisan majorities. But he got an amendment included that basically called for biology classes to include some discussion of the controversies surrounding some scientific theories (including, presumably, evolution). The language simply expressed the sense of Congress, so it didn’t have major force of law behind it. But it still helped fuel the culture wars. More background here.

Santorum is also a fan of school choice, free tutoring, and other options for parents, according to this analysis of his views, posted on a conservative website.