Back in Massachusetts, then-Gov. Mitt Romney proposed ideas on turnarounds and teacher quality that closely mirror proposals that President Barack Obama put forth just a few years later.

Case in point? Romney’s turnaround plan, which never got through the Democratically-controlled state legislature, but which called for districts to remove a school’s principal, turn schools into charters, and give local leaders more autonomy. Sounds very similar to the School Improvement Grant program to me. Romney was also hoping to tie teacher evaluations to test scores. Read all about it in this story.

Some interesting details from Romney’s record that didn’t make our Education Week story? He came out in favor of abstinence education near the end of his tenure as governor, when he was gearing up for his 2008 presidential run.

And in his book, No Apology, Romney wades even deeper into the curriculum culture wars, saying that he doesn’t think schools should consider all cultures as having “equal value.”

“Progressives de-emphasized the subjects that had previously been considered essential,” Romney wrote. “Rather than teach the history of Western and American civilization, they presented all the world’s cultures to our children and insisted none was superior to the others.”